Photo courtesy Jason Tesauro
I’m not color blind; I’m color deficient. There’s a difference. The world has always been very colorful to me, but for decades, I didn’t exactly know how “Jason color” differed from “actual color.”
Recently, Bruce Kiraly at Grove Eye Care issued to me Ishihara’s Test for Colour Deficiency. Most American males know this gender-specific test by its colored dots that form numbers and patterns. I have mild deficiency in viewing reds and greens. So, what does this have to do with a Hawaiian vacation and grandparents?
Wait for it.
For the trip, Kiraly recommended EnChroma color blindness glasses, and I scored two pairs. With these new lenses, I was able to see Oahu’s radiant palette of flowers, fruiting trees and rain forest foliage with amped-up saturation. Moreover, with the profoundly heightened contrast, my visual acuity and depth perception deepened. Speaking of profoundly heightened contrast — here it comes — nothing clarifies one’s familial relationships quite like two weeks of one-on-one time, times nine. That accounts for my wife and I, five children and my parents.
A Hawaiian Island beach house sounds super dope and chill. Or, it sounds like a tiny space with no escape and, possibly, volcanoes. Faced with a much longer timetable than the usual holiday visits, and minus the predictable, unifying banner of birthdays or Thanksgiving, our family unit’s cliques, chemistry and peccadilloes were in high contrast, indeed.
I love my parents, but there’s a reason I no longer live with them.
Nonni and Pop, as they are known to the kids, are young enough to enjoy some Maui Wowie and old enough to need a few extra breaks. Going in to the trip, my wife and I knew that it wouldn’t entail a series of drop-offs with grandparents so that we could dash off for mai tais and nooners. Instead, the intention was to spend our time as a nine-some with some optional hiking, snorkeling and beach excursions for subsets of the whole. Pre-setting certain expectations on the mainland turned out to be a smart move. To neutralize jet lag, we arrived and departed with a sleeping strategy. Likewise, to avoid an even more debilitating post-trip pathology called debt lag, we plotted spending boundaries. How to feed our clan became the $6,400 question (because that’s how much we spent just on airfare to get there). The routine went like this: breakfast at home, picnic lunches, home-cooked dinners, frequent impromptu treats and a few indulgent meals out.
Thus arose the Costco Kerfuffle. Everyone on vacation deserves to be heard and feel safe. For my wife, good food and her I-own-my-own-business efficiency are two pillars of holiday travel. For my mom, Costco and I’m-on-vacation insouciance are hers. My wife bit her lip and our cart was laden with enough onions, oaked chardonnay and out-of-season asparagus to survive a tsunami. I should’ve seen this minor eruption coming, but those glasses only fix my color vision, not Mama’s boy blind spots. On the plus side, there were ample limes and pineapples for waves of tiki drinks. Oh, and we would need them to overcome our vacation’s Mauna Loa, the North Shore Sebastrophe.
Properly blending piña coladas takes skill. Blending a blended family with grandparents takes Jedi mastery. Sebastion is our second oldest, but the OG grandchild for my parents. I remind my mom not to play favorites, but she’s anointed him with Most Favored status since he was a zygote. In the midst of Sebastion getting rightly upbraided by my wife for willful insubordination, dear old Mom defended him, in front of the other kids, undermining a stepmother’s already thorny authority and initiating a turf war that reached magma-flowing high tide at our Sunset Beach paradise with days still to go. Hence the reason we observe this rule at home (and abroad): “Thou shalt not countermand another parent in front of children.” Solidarity first, debate later.
I gently elucidated this for my mother, but by then the blended crew had been awkwardly cleft in twain. In the tropics, it took extra time for this lava flow to cool.
For those of us without a Blade account, the destination vacation is just life in another place, with more free time and aloha shirts. There is still laundry to do, lunches to pack and family dynamics to negotiate. Turns out, I’d been suffering from another form of red-green deficiency, a kind of merry Christmas blindness to the complex interplay of these nine souls. Those glasses put Hawaii into clear and colorful perspective, but did nothing in close quarters. Fourteen days, three generations, two eruptions and one helluva time together added up to laughs, tears, hijinks and idle joys to fill a dozen photo albums, and half as many therapy sessions, because an extended and blended family love certainly ain’t black and white. Even I can see that, now.
Jason Tesauro, a modern papa to a fivesome under 17, invites you to join him live through life at the speed of love/chaos/adventure.
