(I am skipping ahead through my O'ahu diary to bring you this very important update.)

The day before I left Waikiki, D turns to me and says, "You know what my biggest regret is?".

"What?" I reply tentatively, since the mood of this last day has been melancholy, to say the least.

"Five weeks you have been here, and I have never gotten you a lei."

"Um," I brilliantly riposte. "Have you been reading my blog?" (I had posted this late the previous night.)

"No," he says, offhandedly. Then, suspiciously, "Why?".

"No reason...."

He whisked me off to the florist, post-haste. "I look forward to seeing what you choose," I told him. I don't say anything more to him, because that's the kind of testing nightmare of a beloved I can be, but secretly, I hoped he would choose one based on scent rather than appearance. Really I am giddy about getting a lei at all, just as I had resigned myself to flowerlessness.

He emerges a few minutes later and hands me a box. As I open it, he says, "It wasn't the most beautiful one there, but I smelled them all, and this one was the best." I grin at him.

And then I don't take it off for the rest of my time in Hawaii.