TheGirlsWedding

I didn't catch swine flu. At least I don't think I did. But I did get a major case of homesickness for Hawaii. When people ask me about the wedding, I tell them that it felt like I was at a garage party in the heart of Waipahu. The only things missing were the mosquito punks, the buckets of water under the outside lights to catch the moths, and the old guys in the corner playing Sakura cards and drinking beer. There was the beer drinking but not the card playing.

There was Hawaiian plate lunch food: steamed rice, teri chicken, fried noodles, kalbi ribs, mac salad, green salad. The cake was so good. It was a coconut type filling and so tasty that I had a piece as big as my head. Well, maybe not that big, but definitely bigger than I would have taken had it not been coconut in the center.

Dawn, Noelle's sister, sang "What are you doing for the rest of your life?" by Na Leo as Noelle and Edie danced. I folded up a dollar bill so small and put it so deep down Edie's shirt that I don't think Noelle had a chance to retrieve it. Oops. Seriously, I wasn't trying to cop a feel on your wife, Noelle. We sang "Dahil Sa Iyo" to Edie. It was a great moment; Noelle, her cousins and me belting it out to her wife. Edie said later that it was the only time she had cried all day long. It was so very sweet. Afterward, her cousins told her, "You're part of the family now, Edie."

During the reception, we had a jam session with guitar and uke playing, stumbled through Hawaiian lyrics that we had to plumb the depths of our memory to find those elusive melodies. We were cracking jokes and laughing. Noelle at one point told us the, "Watch out, watch out, watch out," story that had us all rolling. Music, laughter, free flowing wine and beer, and yummy cake. What's not to like?

I absolutely fell in love with Noelle's extended family. My head actually hurt from laughing so much. We reminisced about going to St. Joe's for grade school. We did the usual, "What school you grad?" stuff that is kind of a given when you gather a bunch of people from Hawaii in a room. And while I was just home to Hawaii only a couple of months ago with my own family, the visit was so colored with grief that I still miss home. The abject joy of hanging out with family, how Dawn's son Aston called me Aunty even though he had never met me before, all the inside jokes, how when I said, "chai wait," that I was understood perfectly (yeah, that slipped out of my mouth at one point and actually surprised me because I thought those Waipahu roots were well buried)-- I miss that.

Oh well, my brothers with respective families, my mom, Hubby's parents and my sister-in-law, will all be here at the end of the month. That means that I need to somehow get it so that there shouldn't be a red plastic wrap on my front door emblazoned with the word BIOHAZARD. I need to clean this house. That's the downside of family gatherings. But the upside is that I get to see everybody -- and we'll be laughing over shared inside jokes and singing loud bad karaoke in the media room.

I can't wait.