Someone Help Me Find My Brains!

Brains! You Don't Want to Lose Them!. Read on, Dear Reader, for more about Brains!

We're spending time with two Maui-born granddaughters whom we have not seen for three years. The younger is seven so she barely remembers our last visit. The girls twitter around us like two little shore birds, little bits of laughter escaping their lips, making quick jumps to new things, asking funny little questions.

Yesterday we wandered down to the small beach in front of Mama's Fish House where they had a good swim in the little cove. While in the water and later on the sandy beach they picked up little "treasures", broken bits of shells and funny looking rocks and broken coral tossed up by the ocean, and placed them carefully into plastic ziplock bags.

The Little One found two round pieces of coral that had been shaped and sanded by countless tossings of the waves. Little One called them "brains" and it was obvious she had found similar ones before. She placed these in her baggie, too.

It startled me several times when I heard her exclaim something akin to "Where are my brains?" after she had mislaid her bag of "treasures".

Again later, "Who took my brains?"

It seemed a dangerous situation that Little One could not find her brains!

Then we took a little walk up a small set of stone stairs and wandered through a small residential area behind Mama's. We were surprised to find this cemetery and surprised that some of the graves were enclosed by fence and seemed to be tended while others outside the fenced area were right adjacent to the path. Apart from some faded silk Christmas flowers, these seemed totally neglected. We saw an upright stone cross surrounded by waist high grass several feet away from the other "outside" grave sites. I didn't know if the cross were a gravestone or perhaps placed there to mark this as a Christian burial ground. Little One found a single silk flower on the ground and we encouraged her to lay it on one of the stones...that it had been brought to the cemetery as a remembrance by some family member and we should leave it there out of respect.

Later we washed the sand from our feet at the outdoor shower and then came up to our room where we made a smoothie of fresh orange juice combined with fresh frozen papaya and banana. It was quite tasty, tart and sweet.

The girls stayed overnight and this morning, after another trip to the beach (a 30-second walk from our door) they left with their father to go to a little friend's birthday party.

Funny thing. Little One left her brains on the balcony table. They're still there...in the plastic baggie...in plain sight! She forgot them!

I wonder if she or her friends will notice.

(small giggle here)

.