The Tao of Family Vacations

I can’t imagine a better place to spend my 43rd birthday than Kauai.

I warned my daughter and husband that this was to be a quiet, contemplative trip full of reading, meditation and healthy eating. Mostly because I had been sick with a sinus infection for way too long — and because I had just re-read “Eat Pray Love” and “A New Earth.”   I wanted that kind of mind-altering transcendence but I was going to do it on a family vacation right next to the kiddy pool.

Soon after arriving at a Kauai condo, I was unlucky enough to trip and drop an unused compact, shattering the mirror. Thankfully, my daughter Savannah was out at the pool with her Dad and not at my side where she customarily resides. If it weren’t for my unfortunate bout of gastro-intestinal rebellion after the myriad of homeopathic remedies I had been imbibing, she could very well have been hit with a shard of glass.

Lucky.

As I stared at the glass, I had one of those time stands still moments. Crap. Turning 43 — the start of another 7-year cycle of bad luck.

No way, I decided. For me, it was going to be good luck. That was that. Good luck. If terrible things started happening, that would mean more spiritual growth and learning. What is luck anyway? It’s all about perception, right? I’ve been watching Oprah long enough to know that.

This was Day 1 and I was not going to let the mirror, nor my age, ruin my introspective week. I was going to ‘be’ myself out of this superstitious neurosis, and I only had 10 more minutes before Mac and Cheese.

Breathe. Breathe. Be. Be. Just let the earth be. Let each other be. Be what we are. I am. I am. I am. Namaste.

Day 2: Hanalei Bay. It took 3 hours but Savannah finally jumped off the pier. I was playing with her proud self on the air mattress while she sang Abba songs. A realization — if there is no good or bad luck — in fact, no good or bad, just perception, then what is the point of… well, anything?

Good and bad to be in Hawaii when North Korean missiles were facing this way; good and bad to be sick — you can argue any situation flipped up or flipped down. O.K, as Eckhart Tolle would say, my mind was doing that thinking thing again. I needed to sit with myself, but there was no time that night for meditation after bath and books then right to bed.

Day 3: Free time for meditation! Savannah in Kids’ Camp and Kent paddling. This time I was going to go deep. Ah, but not so easy. By now my alternate brain was dissecting my life (my alternate brain was akin to my dessert stomach). Before I knew it, I had worked myself into a lather over the unimaginable — you know those stupid doomsday scenarios that you imagine to such an extent that you are grieving for people who are still very much alive?

The worst of it? I couldn’t even have a Mai Thai because I was on antibiotics. Only my liver felt lucky about that.

Day 4: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Same day. Gone. Too shocked to meditate.

You may not be surprised to know that days 5, 6 and 7 were full of distractions, fatty foods and rum drinks. Savannah had befriended most of the guests with kids and our days and nights were full. Not to mention the age-old “Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum, look at me! Mum, Mum, Mum, did you see that? Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum!” Really?  What did I expect?

On day 8, I donned a mask and snorkel and pushed through the shore break. It was a narrow channel between two shallow reefs and right in front of me were three Nemo-style sea turtles. Pretty lucky, right? To avoid alarming them I veered right, scraping my knees on the coral — too bad but — you got it — lucky no sharks. I held tight and watched as they swooshed about, grabbing a bite or two of coral when they could. They were unfazed by the constant interruption of waves and swell. I was fascinated. Frenetic fins, heads tossed from side to side but somehow calmly focused.

A group of snorkelers spotted the turtles from shore and invaded this scene en masse from the opposite side of the reef. The turtles, of course, were out of there. I am not sure if it was because I had been floating for a while watching them, or if the big guy didn’t see me until he was very, very close, but this magnificent dude came to within inches of my mask before he actually realized I was there — at which point he looked me right in the eye.

That one instant — when he saw me not as a coral shelf but as a being — turned out to be my one moment of true meditative bliss for the trip, a moment I am still revisiting. Yet there was no real intensity or transfer of ancient turtle wisdom. Just one very cool creature looking at. . . me.

And there I was.

It’s early Friday evening, vacation is over, and we’re back home in Novato, Calif., and Savannah is uber-happy. As I watch her fossicking about the backyard, I feel surprisingly content. She runs over with great delight showing me that a ladybug has landed on her arm, a classic sign of good luck.

“You know what that means?” I ask? “It means that you are the perfect place to just be.”