Love Story
At the dead-end of beachside Puako Rd., a secret slice of Hawaiian Heaven, in a two story plantation house called Ho’onanea, Leigh Fitzgerald rose with the sun, as she does every morning. She tied the laces of her running shoes, clicked on her iPhone, and began her morning ritual of checking work messages, speaking to family and friends, absorbing the day’s NPR programs, and feeling the trade winds blow back her tumbling brunette tresses.
Andrew O’Riordan did not rise with the sun. Imitating the sleeping habits of a lion, Andrew managed to lurch himself out of bed by the time the sun had already climbed above 13,000 ft. Mauna Kea Mountain. He had something on his mind today, something of the greatest importance. It was not his newly shaved head. It was not his looming trip to India with Leigh. It was not whether the surf would be cranking. Andrew was thinking Big Thoughts, because today he would ask Leigh the Big Question.
Like When Harry Met Sally, Leigh and Andrew’s lives had criss-crossed for days, months, years.
The first time Andrew met Leigh was April 2008 for a job interview. Andrew flew in a prop plane across the Alenuihaha Channel from the Big Island to Maui, and then soared over the West Maui mountains to Kapalua Airport. It was 7:30 in the morning and Leigh was waiting alone for Andrew in her Gold Jetta Wagon.
Leigh took Andrew for a coastal drive on Lower Honoapiilani Rd., pointing out favorite beaches, quaint neighborhoods, markets, old plantation buildings, stately resorts, and rugged mountains. The tour finished at Maui Preparatory Academy, where Leigh worked as teacher and principal.
Andrew was then subjected to seven hours of interviews, sample lessons, and classroom tours. On the campus tour, Leigh hovered wistfully at the bottom of the Lower School Quad, pointing out a grassy knoll: “If I’m ever to be married, this is where it will happen,” she said.
Andrew was overjoyed! He was going to get the job, move to Maui, and live happily ever after.
One month later, Andrew did not land the job. Some combination of wearing slippers and socks to his job interview, misfiring a few dates about the Russian Revolution, and coming off as a little too green meant that Andrew would continue to live with his mother. Sigh.
Andrew fumbled with the precious diamond ring. The luminous diamonds were arranged in a trim, flush square, with a rising diamond in the center. It had first been gifted to his Great Grandmother, Miss Leona Wood of Shawneetown, Illinois, by Big Joe Wiseheart, in 1919. This ring had symbolized a marriage that lasted well beyond a Golden Anniversary up until Big Joe’s last breath.
This was the most vital heirloom in Andrew's family. It had moved from Miss Leona to her daughter Connie to Andrew's mother Holly, and now it was being bestowed to Andrew. He was overwhelmed, stunned, and slightly terrified. He had found the ring, or rather, the ring had found him. What next?
Leigh had returned from her run, and she was now firmly ensconced in her workday. Calling co-administrators, wrangling with insurance companies, preparing for an afternoon candidate interview, she was firing on all cylinders.
“Leigh, I need you to come with me for a few hours," said Andrew. "I’m taking you to a secret place. We need sturdy shoes, snorkels, and flashlights in plastic bags. Let’s go!”
As Andrew walked out the door, he realized he had forgotten one item. He rushed upstairs, eyed the glistening diamond ring, and buried it in the pocket of his surf trunks. He was setting the stage, possessed by a Greater Power. He only half-knew what would happen next. . .
Two years after his failed job interview, Andrew returned in April 2010 for a second bout with Ms. Leigh Fitzgerald to apply for a teaching position at Maui Preparatory Academy. In the interim, Andrew had busily worked his way up as a teacher and Boarding Parent at Hawaii Preparatory Academy, while Leigh continued to rise in her principalship at Maui Prep.
This time he was ready. With a fresh pair of shoes, polished lectures, and more confidence, Andrew landed the job. Now he could move out of his mother’s home, begin his career at Maui Prep, and life would be golden!
But Leigh was blasting off for greener pastures. After six years working in schools on Maui, she was taking her career to Los Angles to serve as Head of Upper School at Wildwood. Andrew was arriving and Leigh was leaving, two searching souls on different paths. . .
The Scene: The couple parks their car at a seemingly random point on a country road in a lava rock desert in North Kohala. Armed with water bottles, backpacks, and sunscreen, they trample down a razor sharp kiawe field to where the island vanishes into the sea. Andrew takes Leigh’s sweating palm and guides her gingerly over coal black A’a lava. The tropical sea glows in luminous hues of turquoise and aquamarine.
“There it is!” Andrew cries. There, in a black lava rock field hovering over the ocean and descending to become a technicolor coral reef, is a hole. Inside the hole the ocean surges, flushing the caves beneath with its watery jaws. “That’s where we’re going.”
Andrew jumps into the hole and falls into the ocean. He attaches his snorkel, flashes on his light, and calls Leigh in. Leigh makes the jump, and there they are, floating together in a sea-cave. Andrew grabs Leigh's saltwater cool hand and the two swim together toward the receding sunlight of a lava tube. “We’ll swim underwater, and we’ll arrive at an underground beach. That’s where I want to take you," says Andrew. He grasps down at my boardshorts to ensure the diamond ring is still in his pocket. It is. He is approaching the point of no return. . .
Time passed, as it inexorably does. Seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years. Leigh and Andrew sought out many people, adventures, and experiences, most of which had nothing to do with each other.
Andrew slowly cobbled together a life, a community, and a home in West Maui and at Maui Preparatory Academy. So many aspects of life were sweet, but Andrew carried on mostly alone and searching.
Leigh had embarked on her own journey. To challenge herself, to better herself, to learn more, Leigh had returned to the North American Continent, but she was engaged in a pitched internal battle the whole way. Her heart yearned for Maui. Her dear friends, the soothing sea, the people of Aloha, the trade winds, the inescapable warmth. Her mind and body lived in Santa Monica, but in her dreams she traveled back to the islands.
Leigh visited Hawaii often during this stretch, as often as she could. Andrew and Leigh criss-crossed at times at graduation parties, running races, common friends’ houses. They shared little details about their professional lives, and then drifted away to speak to others.
In December 2011 Leigh shuttered the doors to her apartment in Los Angeles and moved back to Oahu. Sharp people snapped her up into a fascinating position, and before long she had taken the helm at a paradigm-shifting charter school educating students across all of the islands. Leigh was back in Hawaii, this time to stay.
Shut your eyes for a few moments. Feel how your mind sharpens its attention to sounds, smells, sensations.
Leigh and Andrew emerged from the mini lagoon onto the underground beach inside the sea cave. The air hung moist and clammy above the softly surging sea, which sloshed against the white coral rocks and the black lava rock walls of the cave. Thin shards of luminous light reflected through water into the cave, but the couple was buried in the subterranean catacombs of Hawai’i. Relishing the secret, silent darkness, the two talked about how long they could survive in the cave together, and everything else that came to mind. Andrew fingered the Ring of Power nervously. Would this be the Moment. . . ?
2012 was a full year for Andrew and Leigh. Leigh consolidated her professional position and reconnected with her Hawaiian ohana, and she also searched for a home of her own. Through experience she had learned that Hawaii would be where she would spend her days and nights forever. No more departures.
Andrew continued to play the game of West Maui apartment roulette. Jumping from shared apartments to garages to Manhattan-sized studios, finding a steady, affordable home consumed much of his attention. For a time he considered outfitting a trailer and living in the hills, until a concerned acquaintance asked, “Are you having a premature mid-life crisis?” Finding someone to share his time with seemed like a luxury in the midst of searching for consistent shelter.
Autumn 2012 was a pregnant period for both Andrew and Leigh. New possibilities for jobs, partners, and homes appeared and vanished for each of them. Doors opened and shut, and unknown paths scattered in every direction.
In September, Andrew ran the Front St. Mile in Lahaina, awkwardly and in goofy trail-running shoes. Leigh stood in the crowd and cheered for the kooky Middle School Cross Country Coach. Andrew embraced all applause he could garner.
On their first non-date, Andrew and Leigh spent two hours at Mala Wharf together that passed as if it were five minutes. Leigh thought little of it; Andrew wondered how it had been so long since he had enjoyed the company of someone so much.
Days, weeks, months passed. The planets and stars shifted in the sky, as Andrew wondered when he would find a chance to take out the beguiling Leigh on a deliberate occasion. Would he make the leap before it was too late. . .?
It was now or never. 30 minutes is a long time in a space black sea cave. Andrew spoke sweet words out loud, but his mind raced ferociously. "Can I do this? What will I say? Should we leave?"
His thoughts blurred together. He reached into his pocket one last time to check the ring. As he pulled it out of his trunks, he realized that it had come untied from the string, which meant that it could have drifted out of his pocket and into the sea when he was swimming into the cave. His heart skipped to a faster beat on imagining his mother’s reaction at losing his Great Grandmother’s Ring. His nerves were becoming unbearable. He had to make a move. . .
1,642 days. Leigh and Andrew had known each other for that long. Life was passing by, they were both searching, and the earth continued spinning and revolving. Andrew stood on the Northern tip of Oahu and stared out into the great abyss. He was worried that life might be running out ahead of him, that he needed to seize the moment before it was gone. Andrew dove into the sea and swam across a wave-filled, wind-ruffled, shark-friendly ocean channel to a small island. He clambered up the sharp rocks, pulled himself into an ocean cave, and sat silently for a few minutes.
Back on land, he picked up his phone and requested the honor of Leigh’s company at the Jingle Bell Ball. Leigh replied, “I would love to go.” It was November 12, 2012.
Before the Ball, on December 1, Andrew and Leigh watched the sunset together. He remembered something she had said on the first day they had ever met, and he took her to that grassy knoll at Maui Preparatory Academy, a place where she always imagined something magical might happen. . .
On Tuesday, June 11, 2012, in the middle of a glorious summer day, a couple emerged from a sea cave into a protected tide pool. The girl beamed from ear to ear. The boy grasped her ring finger, lifted it out of the sea, and together they savored the scintillating glow of a one hundred year old ring. It had taken each of them their lifetimes, but they had found one another.
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