I breathed a sigh of relief as the plane lifted, no turning back now. Over the long ride to Hawaii my mind drifted back to the start. Bill and Melanie, Melanie and Bill. It had been “us” since mid-way through our junior year at Clark County High School, and, I naively assumed it would remain “us” forever. How can two people drift so far apart? I closed my eyes in an effort to squeeze away the tears that threatened to overtake me, and allowed myself sleep to shut out the emotions. As the plane descended upon the Honolulu Airport, a sudden trepidatious feeling overtook me, and I quickly whispered up a prayer for protection.
Leaving the airport, I thought of my cousin Kai, and hoped she would be up for the interruption in her routine; although she had said I was welcome to visit she had sounded rather vague. I couldn't blame her for hesitating, after all I hadn’t seen her since we were kids. The taxi slowed, and I couldn’t help feeling that the driver must have gotten the address wrong. Surely Kai, the clean cut, seemingly privileged girl of my memories could not possibly have ended up living in such a seedy-looking part of town. I paid the fare, got out and slowly walking toward the door, half-hoping the taxi driver would at any minute yell, “sorry, wrong address”; instead, he screeched his tires and sped away. I stepped onto the delapidated porch and knocked on the huge heavily splintered wooden door nervously waiting while cumbersome footsteps clopped laboriously towards me. The door creaked opened, revealing a very large middle-aged man, clad in clothing comprised of feathers, bark cloth, and wood. Nervously I uttered something about Kai, and without a word the eccentric man stood to one side as if to allow me passage.
The house was pitch black, and as I took my first step inside, instantly I was falling for what seemed an eternity. I must have passed out, because as I was slowly coming to, strange faces of men and women dressed in the same feathery attire as the doorman filled my vision. I was disoriented and everything was blurred, as if I had been drugged, but I had no memory of anything. I was strapped to a wooden plank, but how? Hadn’t I just been at the door of what I assumed was Kai’s house? What was happening to me? And where was Kai? I longed for the familiarity of Bill and home. As I groggily watched, the people began to sway to some sort of tribal dance. I struggled in my drugged state to decipher the chanting of these villagers. My eyes scanned the random faces surrounding me, until resting on a somewhat familiar one. There, in the midst of the primitive village people, was a vague semblance of the little girl cousin I knew so long ago; her eyes were rolling back in her head as she crazily danced and chanted with the others. I opened my mouth to scream, but like a horrible dream in which you attempt to cry out but can't, pathetic utterances were all I could muster the strength for.
All at once I could feel my body began to rise, higher and higher, as my captors tugged at a crude homemade pulley. Their chants grew fainter until they were barely audible as I continued the long, scary, trip upward. I finally landed on a platform at the top of a gurgling, spewing volcano. I screamed again, this one from the very core of my being, but now, there was no one around to hear me. Once again I was moving as the platform inched closer to the center of the gigantic, fiery mountain. I remembered my brief earlier prayer and whispered “Dear Jesus, please help me!” My last thought as the platform started to dip was how much I loved my husband and how I would never be able to tell him that again. In what seemed like an excruciatingly long time I began to fall in slow motion, deeper and deeper into the scorching hot vapors, yet, amazingly, somehow I felt no heat; then what felt like a monstrous vacuum sucked at me, and again I fell into a deep state of unconsciousness. When I awoke, confused and visibly shaken, I was standing in front of the same door that had set the bizarre events of the past hours…minutes… in motion.
As fast as my feet would move I flew off that porch and to my astonishment found my cell phone in my purse – how was it that my purse was now on my shoulder – I pushed redial to summon a cab to return me to the airport. Had I just experienced what seemed so real in my mind? Had God just saved me, or was it all a dream? It was all so hazy in my mind, I couldn’t be sure. One thing I could be sure of; I was going home. Home to Indiana, home to Bill; home to anything life would present to me. After what I had just been through real or imagined, I was prepared to make my marriage work, no matter what it took. Once more I pulled out my phone, I was so excited to tell Bill I was on my way back, and to say the “I love you” that I thought was lost forever.
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