The Reef

I love to snorkel. Someday I want to learn to dive. On one of our trips to Hawaii I set out to find the best water to get into, and my kid and my spouse came along, not to snorkel but to keep me company. We searched online, found a few spots people spoke well of, and drove out to them.

The first one, I waded in and looked down and there was nothing. Dead reef. Bleached white, no fish, no color, just the bones of it on the sand. The next spot was the same. The one after that too. By then the two of them were not so happy with me for dragging them from beach to beach to look at the same emptiness. We gave up and went back to the hotel, and I walked into the water right there beside it, and that was the best place to snorkel of the whole trip. Yellow tangs, a Moorish idol, a trigger fish (the Hawaiians call it the humuhumunukunukuapuaa, and I dare you to say it), and a sea turtle holding steady in the current.

This painting comes from that. It is another way to hold what I saw before it is gone for good. My kid still brings it up, how I hauled them across an island to stand over dead reef.