What surprises is how the ancient and the modern are often lightning-quick, intuitively one. All week I have been in a feather’s brush awareness with two sentences. These are from a reading chapter last week’s essay relied on: “Many women are sensitive the way sand is sensitive to the wave, the way trees are sensitive to the quality of the air, the way a wolf can hear another creature step into her territory from over a mile away. The splendid gift of women so attuned is to see, hear, sense, receive, and transmit images and ideas and feelings with lightning speed.” (392) Being sensitive can still happen while being lightning-fast easygoing.

And miracle this last week is a staycation lightning during a family road trip. With my 15-year-old teenager named Darien, in my Mama effort to create a meaningful vacation week distant from his routine school hours, I counted on being sensitive and counted on a few brain cells remaining after all the parental navigating to launch our family from the house pad. How surprising when we saw an ancient truth while on a modern family voyage. First though is easygoing popcorn.

Popcorn revives weary souls like Mamas aiming to design thoughtful living. In a few thousand bowls I have combined popcorn, butter, and salt to weave three essential life flavors in one serving. Always works and takes precise timing to ensure a kitchen space stays free of popcorn hurling every which way. I keep a close eye so I don’t lose an eye to random firing kernels.

For many years I have relied on a pot covered with a plate or kitchen towel making resourceful what is rather than what is not, which is a pot with a lid. Given my thrift store pots and pans set, lids are extra. One day I will buy a full combo and that day has not been here for a third of Darien growing up these last five years. I go with a reality how resources are and don’t we all stay indigenous to what is intuitively working? But a not so sensitive shocker is that a few days ago I went into wild woman mode like Estes encourages and bought a modern popcorn preparer. My antique indigenous method was done about to be changed.

First time in my decades of living this contraption being counted on. Plug electronically into a wall socket, activate on button, pour a half cup of kernels, place a wide bowl underneath popcorn chute, and two to three minutes later popcorn arrival is done. A modern marvel based on an ancient crop grown worldwide and for this beleaguered Mama a staycation lightning as in fast soul food or supportive nutritional fare for being intrepid while I go into a one-day vacation plan.

Because this week we are experiencing Fall Break based on how the Hawai’i Department of Education calendars learning for the year. Continually for “free” days (is there a free the Mamas movement?) I’m in a scramble to keep a teenager connected to the world besides a phone screen. On this road trip we arrived to a movie screen where popcorn for sure could have been served except the focus is a planetarium theater at the Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo on Big Island.

On a light feather wish to leave the house at 8 a.m. the car departed la casa at 9 a.m. because family time guarantees an hour delay and so crisply at 11 a.m. after commuting ourselves across the island for two hours, I sat relaxed in a planetarium movie theater at the Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo on Hawai’i Island. Or did I already write that? I’m fatigued because you know exactly why, so proofreading costs extra.

In this creative bubble a chair reclines slightly to view an entire global ceiling or a 360-degree planetarium theater. From this visual perspective I saw how the Japanese, Greeks, Canadian Quebec Native Peoples, Hawaiians, and Navajo (Dene) perceive the same geometry precise stars I often stare at while on a night walk with our family dog Bell. The short movie is called the One Sky Project.

Navajo First Peoples see seasonal changes in how stars are shifting through Thunderbird who exists in the sky wielding purposefully a full feather that crosses an entire horizon of stars. In autumnal weather thunder and lightning signal healthy rains to follow nourishing crops like corn, a staple in ancient cultures such as the Navajo. Staycation lightning I thought while I wandered out of the planetarium theater. An easygoing fast way to reassure my soul that in a modern world an ancient way to admire starlit skies is healthy good for our spirits.

While I was watching this short film, Darien discovered Imiloa Astronomy Center’s key designated area for exploring astronomy through a Hawaiian perspective. Important is Hokule’a, a Hawaiian built advanced canoe that circumnavigated the entire world in 2014 on a three-year voyage based on how the sailing team decoded bright shining stars—and nature’s other messages simply no modern GPS on board—every human sees nightly weather permitting.

Exactly how this was accomplished is explained in the planetarium theater when a young astronomy expert demonstrates for the audience in the starlit sky above us how to read star movements thus gauging where to sail directionally. The experience was wonderfully insightful and quite boring because of so much talking narrative when this Mama had promised a movie to be seen. After the “lecture” I heard a few “feedback” comments from our family teenager at lunch. Even so, as a family we decided to return for one more hour touring the Imiloa Astronomy Center.

An unlikely fortitude to return after lunch, while another staycation lightning was journeying to Maumae beach on a Saturday morning. The precise day when a resident teenager was vacation free day one. Yet here is Mama with a plan and sensitive surprise is we all went. While walking the road to access sand and ocean I bravely ventured into describing a historical Hokule’a anecdote. That in the last few days of sailing an ancient mariner, a wise kupuna expert, guided his mentee to decode a bird flying above Hokulea. Misunderstood at first is which direction the bird flew carrying several twigs.

When the bird was seen flying in one direction Hokulea was turned 360 degrees around to follow, taking the sign as signal land is near. But looking closely at how many twigs the bird carried, the skillful kupuna realized this bird was not going but returning. Perhaps a small atoll was nearby yet the larger island was the bird’s destination where a significant nest was being built. Hokule’a again turned around 360 degrees and within a few hours the ultimate land sighting celebrated Hokule’a having sailed around the globe.

Sharing this historical story with Darien along the beach walk, I was easygoing sensitive that he might even be listening. Teenagers can be appearing to listen and yet an ear pod for music is strategy to keep appearances going. Yet I saw a few further real historical anecdoting chances, which riskily I went there despite a haphazard guess as to being heard, a progress not perfection effort. For example, once the family dog Bell had waded in ocean water and I also ventured in for a swim, the hike back to the car parked at Spencer Beach Park began. Ten minutes or so is the sojourn.

On the way I saw a land sign with a familiar Hawaiian symbol, and I asked Darien to walk on over and read what the writing described. He repeated that where we were standing was Queen Emma Land Trust 1848. Now as serendipity history storytelling goes, just a few minutes before I shared a brief description of the Great Mahele or when Hawaiian land was colonized from a shared ahupua’a communal acreage (sea to farm and farm to sea reciprocity) to privatizing ownership.

Historically evolving as a continual separation of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) from their own land. Having been educated in Hawaiian public schools since second grade, Darien has been reading about the Great Mahele for years. Which gave me a sense how living in a culturally complex location means “vacation” days are for family leisure, sure, and lively respect that the entire island is a thriving Hawaiian indigeneity learning center not just at Imiloa Astronomy Center, a staycation lightning sensitivity to what is all around.

The last film of the day screened in the planetarium theater was called Habitat Earth. The brief movie was carefully showing how each physical action in our ecosystem called global earth has influence on every living presence surrounding. Living in my presence begins in my physical self and I work to be present especially on family road trips.

Prayer and meditation and nutrition before I walk out the door are essential. And I would add having a mindset for historical context. A new popcorn maker changes my life on a simplicity level and what life teaches me is this is my only best place to begin. Seeing a sign way off in the distance on an ordinary beach walk and taking the time to read and recognize the meaning is a best place to begin.

And is the point made in The Mahele of Our Bodies Na Mo’olelo Kupuna Mahu/LGBTQ. Meaning that after the Great Mahele and lands lost to ways of living on that land—hula, chant, fish, farm, ceremony, and spirit—then being in a body, especially an LGBTQ one, had been criminalized from a colonizing point of view based on Christian heterosexist enforcement. Author Teves has written this book to reveal how LGBTQ Kanaka Maoli thrived across decades, still—a historically inspiring and insightful text to recognize an inclination for living life freely always has abundant resilience.

Placing my ordinary lesbian Mama life in a long view while living on these Hawai’i lands described is a best place to begin. I am in my right female lesbian body on healthy earth land in a precise moment, and a name on a paper land ownership title won’t change my sensibility. I live freely.

Each day when I begin, I’m listening for the lightning awareness around me. In gratitude I discern where diverse energy originates and what is my role to interact harmoniously. Once clear, I acknowledge the rest is not mine. Staycation days on Hawai’i Island are humbling like this because I haven’t traveled many miles but seeing around me has brought, my concurrent historical and modern awareness, so far. In the morning on a rush to drive to Hilo so I could see the movie at 11 a.m. I forgot my smart phone. Going into an entire day without a phone was a best place to begin being connected to life wholly. The word imiloa in Hawaiian means to seek far.