Just Like a Woman
Don, Jesse, and I were at breakfast on the lanai of our hotel room in the slightly run-down Maui Lu hotel just after Christmas, 2004. It was the second day of our stay, and we had decided to breakfast on the mouth-wateringly sweet pineapple we found at a Kihei grocery. Date palm fronds swished in the breeze in front of us and a sprinkler watered the lawn. Mockingbirds shrieked and the air was soft. Don went downstairs to find a toaster and returned with, amazingly, buttered toast! Don and I had planned the trip for a year. When he and his son Jesse (then age ten) made pancakes on Christmas day on our back porch in the cold drizzle of a Northern California December, I thought to myself, Jesse has no idea where he will wake up tomorrow! Maui was the final stop in the Christmas hunt we set up that year, shipping a suitcase to our hotel and laying clues all over San Francisco until we got to the airport. The final clue was at the Maui Lu reception desk. While we ate breakfast, a...
