After a rather uneventful flight from LA, I landed in Honolulu and immediately knew I was in the tropics. California hadn’t exactly been cold, but the humidity in Hawaii was inescapable. It was the kind of weather that I loved though, so I couldn’t wait to get out and be amongst it. I made my way through the terminal, collected my baggage, and then looked around, wondering which exit I should take to get out onto the street. As I approached one of the glass automatic sliding doors, I saw a dark-haired woman passing by on the footpath, with an earnest, slightly concerned look on her face. I sped up my pace and ran out the door to catch up with her.

“Ashleigh!” My sister heard me call out and instantly turned around, her expression morphing into a relieved smile when she realised it was me.
“Thank God I found you,” she said with an exasperated sigh as she reached me and gave me a big hug. “I hate this airport, I had no idea where you were going to be coming out.”
“Don’t worry, I’m pretty used to these places by now,” I said with a cheeky smile.
“I bet you are! How was the flight? How are you? Wait, let’s get to the bus, you can tell me all about it on the way home.” We headed to the bus stop and jumped on board. The ride between the airport and the centre of Honolulu was the better part of an hour, so after not having seen my sister for about eight and a half months, we had plenty of time to catch up.

***

Ashleigh had moved to Hawaii in May, only a couple of months after I had left to begin my year of travelling. She was doing work experience in hospitality as part of a course that she had started back home. When I learned that she would be moving to Hawaii, I had decided to reschedule my existing flights so that I could stop over and visit her on my way back to Sydney. Well, it was actually my mother’s idea: it would be the first time that she wouldn’t have both of her children with her at Christmas, which was amplified by the fact she wouldn’t have either of her children with her, so it was some small solace that while we wouldn’t be with her, at least the two of us would be together, and we’d still be spending Christmas with family.

However, the day that I arrived happened to be perfect timing. Up until now, my sister had been living in a share house in the heart of Honolulu, but today she was moving to a furnished studio apartment, which she would share with her boyfriend on a part time basis, given that he worked and partly lived at the navy barracks where he worked in the US navy. He was going underway on a submarine for a few days, which was a pretty routine thing as part of his job, but it meant he wasn’t around to help with the move.
“So, you’re not going to have to share a house with anyone else when you’re here,” she said. “But, I’m going to need your help moving some of my stuff to the new place.” She didn’t have a lot of stuff, and the house wasn’t too far away, but she also didn’t have a car. So after we arrived at the house, we collected all her stuff up, threw out a bunch of things she didn’t want to take, and ended up calling two taxis and loading all her stuff into the cars to take it to the new apartment. It was less than a 5 minute drive, but carrying everything would have taken literally all day and involved multiple trips. Helping someone move house was probably the most randomly domestic thing I had done in a long time, but it wasn’t too long before we had unpacked everything and were setting up my sisters new apartment.

We spent the afternoon hanging out and setting up the new place, finding places for all her things and blowing up my air mattress, with me assuring her that the place would feel a lot bigger after I went home – after nine months of travelling, I’d definitely acquired more things that I had left with. In the evening she took me down to the Tony Roma’s Restaurant, where she worked as a hostess as one of her two jobs. Though on the way there, she got a strange message from her boyfriend.
“Wait… he’s supposed to be on a submarine? That must mean… that must mean he didn’t go! Maybe you’ll get to meet him tonight after all!”
And sure enough, much to my sisters excitement, he walked into the restaurant just after we’d sat down and ordered our first drinks.

“Robert, this is Nick. Nick, this is my brother Robert”, Ashleigh introduced us, rather unnecessarily, since each of us had already heard so much about each other through her. Though it was nice to finally meet him, and it didn’t take too long for us to warm up to each other and enjoy a decent steak together.

***

Between the two jobs she was working at two different restaurants, Ashleigh was actually pretty busy most of the time. Nick’s work was a lot more sporadic, since the free time he had when he was home was contrasted by the 24 hour shifts of duty he had at the navy base. He would be around for a few days though, so we had the chance to hang out and get to know each other. During one of my first days, when Ashleigh wasn’t at work, the three of us set out to buy supplies for Christmas. This would also be Nick’s first Christmas away from his family back in upstate New York, and his mother had been worrying about it even more than ours, so we’d promised that we would go out and decorate the small apartment as best we could. First it was off to Walmart to buy Christmas lights and some small decorations, and then we headed out to get a tree.

“We’ve gotta have a real tree, though,” Nick had insisted. I’d thought it must have been a tradition for his family, to always have a real tree (I’d already explained to Todd back in San Francisco why they’re a lot less common back in Australia), but I soon learned that it was the opposite – despite living in a place where he probably could have chopped down a tree from the forest just beyond his backyard, Nick’s family had never had a real Christmas tree. That he was in Hawaii and very much in control of this years festivities meant that he could finally realise his dream of having a real fur tree as his Christmas tree this year.

Except… when we showed up at the yard where the tree were being sold, the three of us probably wore the most disappointed expressions on the whole island. It’s safe to say that traditional Christmas trees do not thrive in the tropical climates of Hawaii – either these pathetic excuses for Christmas trees had very much struggled to grow in such an environment, or they were runts that had been rejected and shipped over from the mainland, a journey which undoubtedly did them no favours. I had to believe they were imported into Hawaii, if nothing else for the exorbitant cost that we were expected to pay for them. For a tree that barely stood taller than my sister, and was definitely shorter than Nick, we had to make the executive decision that it was not worth it. We headed home, slightly disheartened, with nothing but a roll of Christmas lights and a few dashed dreams.

In the evening, Ashleigh had to work, so while she was there Nick took me down to the Hilton Hotel resort. Every Friday evening there was a firework show in the garden areas that were open to the general public, so we wandered down there to kill some time after grabbing dinner.

Afterwards we headed home, and the two of us brainstormed a little more about how we could make the apartment feel a little bit more like Christmas, even though we didn’t have a tree. Ashleigh had seemed a little dejected by our inability to secure one, given that the tree is a general staple of the holiday. So we pulled out the Christmas lights, and a box of decorations that Nick’s mother had sent over from the mainland. We unrolled the lights and tried to discern the best way to place them around the room, when suddenly I had a flashback to an image that I had seen on Facebook about a month ago. I pitched the idea to Nick, and he instantly loved it, so we set to work setting up the lights so that we could be finished before Ashleigh got home.

When Ashleigh finally arrived home from a long evening shift, Nick stopped her at the door and told her to cover her eyes.
“We’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “No peeking.”
He guided her across the room (all three paces – it was a studio, remember), and then I hit the lights on the wall to turn them off before flicking on the Christmas lights.
“And… open.”

And she was able to behold the roll of lights that we had strung up against the wall in the shape of a Christmas tree, with some of the lighter decorations hanging from the wires, and topped of off with a pre-fixed ribbon bow at the very top, in place of an angel or star. Sure, it wasn’t a masterpiece, and it probably didn’t look as good or as colourful as either Nick or I had imagined it might. But as the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts, and Ashleigh was thrilled.
“Oh my God,” she said, half rolling he eyes but still clearly pleased with our efforts. “You guys… We finally have a tree!” It had been a long and exhausting evening at the restaurant, so she hadn’t been in such an excellent mood when she arrived home, but coming back to a little bit of dysfunctional Christmas magic had definitely put a smile on her face. “Thank you, both of you,” she said as she gave each of us a hug and a kiss. “I can’t wait to spend this Christmas with my two boys!”

***

Christmas Day itself was actually a pretty easy-going day. We woke up in the morning and Nick cooked us bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then we took turns Skyping our families back home. First we called ahead to Nick’s family, who were a few hours ahead of us and were already finishing up their Christmas lunch, and then over to Australia where it was already Boxing Day, and my mother and aunty were already onto the champagne. There wasn’t much in the way of gift exchanges though, given that it was just the three of us. Ashleigh had bought me a cute pair of underwear, and I gave her the necklace and earrings that I had picked up on the Grand Canyon Tour in Arizona. Other than that, it was just Ashleigh and Nick exchanging a handful of gifts. Not that I’m complaining – it was just an extremely different experience from the past Christmases of large family gatherings where exchanging gifts took up a significant portion of the morning.

By the early afternoon, it was time for Ashleigh to head into work. Nick was pretty happy to spend the afternoon relaxing at home, but there’s not much privacy or personal space in a studio, so I ended up grabbing my towel and heading to the beach. Ashleigh and Nick’s new place was only a 10 minute walk from Waikiki Beach, probably the most famous and popular beach in the whole of Hawaii. The shore was lined with hotels, so the beach was always packed, but there was plenty of sand and places to stretch out in the sun, so I found a relatively quiet section and settled down with my book and spent the rest of the day without a care in the world.

I stayed there literally all day, to the point where I was able to watch a beautiful ocean sunset. Despite being surrounded by a small horde of people, being there by myself helped make it feel like my own personal slice of paradise.

After the sun went down, I headed back home, and eventually Ashleigh returned from work with three juicy steaks from Tony Roma’s, which she had picked up at the end of her shift. She brought a few servings of our favourite sides too, and so together we sat around in Ashleigh and Nick’s new home and celebrated a successful end to our experimental yet still thoroughly enjoyable Christmas.