This is Me....pt 2......Makaha - the early days

March 3, 2020

As I mentioned in my previous intro blog..... I grew up between Makaha and Honolulu.

My grandparents had an old bright blue quonset hut on Upena street in Makaha and my mom had a little beach house just up the road.

Childhood days were waking up and scrambling across the reef to Aki beach or running on the steaming hot blacktop road to Makaha surfing beach. Stopping every so often to try to cool our blistering feet on the dry grass on the side of the road....usually stepping on kookoos (prickly weeds) and then jumping around trying to pull them out of our toes. I didn't surf in those early early days, but I had my brand new Morey Boogie Board and I'd get smashed in the shorebreak all day long. We'd finally make our way back home when our stomachs cramped from hunger dumping piles of sand out of our swimsuits in the outside shower.

Sunburned, salty and pleasantly tired from playing in the ocean all day...we didn't have a TV, so boardgames or card games were our evening entertainment. Falling asleep to the rhythm of the ocean playing in our ears.... When the waves were too big and crazy, we'd have spirited games of volleyball or croquet in the front lawn.

For Christmas one year, got a pair of rollerskates with Kryptonite wheels - I thought these were the absolute coolest thing EVER!! I would race around and around the block all summer long, timing myself. I saw Beth and Eric Heiden compete in speed skating in the Winter Olympics and I somehow thought I'd make this a "thing".

Later in my adult life, my 2 sons, Kainalu and Kamakani and my husband ( at the time) moved to Makaha and lived in his family home. Literally just on the other side of the beach from my grandparents and my mom's houses.

And to top it off.....we were moving to a street named after my family...HOLT street!! That history will be another blog entry!! My sons grew up a 2 minute walk to Makaha Beach, the original surfing mecca of Hawaii and the home of watermen and waterwomen respected the world over.

I co-founded the Westside Wahine Surf Club along with Rell Sunn, Pua Mokuau, Dalani Tanahy ( Kauihou), Claudia Woo, Haze Wentling (Pave), Tinky Leach, Cathy Sipe (Beauford), Kathy Terada-Pagdilao & Al Amasiu. This group of ocean loving women eventually grew into a community of over 100 women and girls and we produced the very first ALL-WOMEN"S amateur multi surf sport event - The Westside Wahine Surf Jam.

To Be Continued......More on this in the next blog.........

My mama