In late July my friend Ben returned from vacationing on Saipan, his birthplace.
“I was in the water all day, just like old times,” he said with the dreamy smile of one who has spent open-ended hours floating in the sea.
He reminded me of the Hawaiian monk seal and her pup who, as of this writing, have been basking and nursing on Sans Souci beach and in its waters since June 29, when Kaimana was born there.
Within three weeks mom Rocky was teaching Kaimana to swim and simply be at home in the ocean. The two would roll and play in the lapping shore waves, touching noses, the baby splashing with her hind flippers and occasionally steadying herself with a fore-flipper against her mother’s body.
Someone posted a video, described as a swimming lesson, but to me it looked like a bodysurfing sesh, mother and baby, side by side, riding the gentle waves and backwash off the Natatorium wall the way small kids ride a parent’s back in the Waimanalo shorebreak.
Kaimana was like any baby, puppy, kitten or cub — inquisitive, explorative, cuddly — with her own irrepressible, bright-eyed, nose-up personality.
“They were so cute, swimming and playing, and the way the mommy barked when the baby swam a little too far away,” said a friend, a vigilant mom herself, who watched the seals with her two young sons.
No doubt all the human spectators found something to relate to.
There was what some interpreted as family drama, when Rocky fought off a visiting male seal (“the daddy,” an excited small boy told me), who retreated across the channel to the beach at the Outrigger Canoe Club, where he lay for a couple days, thinking who knows what.
There was a cautionary tale for keiki in Kaimana’s three (so far) brushes with danger while exploring the uncharted tunnels of the crumbling Natatorium while her mother barked frantically, calling and searching for her.
Who knew these hazards were so easy to access until she vanished into them, like Alice down the rabbit hole?
By inadvertently alerting the public to this danger, the runaway seal may have saved a few human youngsters from getting sucked in and trapped by, say, a king tide.
Instead of thanks, she will be sent into exile on a secret, remote shore for her own protection.
We’ll see if that works. The first monk seal known to have been born in Waikiki may have other ideas.
I SAW Kaimana and Rocky only a couple of times, but just the thought of them lit up my days. The happy, trusting wild animals were a source of comfort and hope in a summer fraught with North Korean missile tests and memories of my grandfather’s plans to convert our concrete garage into a bomb shelter during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
One night, when my husband and I walked over to Sans Souci, the two were lying on the sand near the water’s edge. Rocky slept, but the baby’s darker head kept poking up and surveying the scene over her mother’s back.
It had been predicted that early last week Rocky would wean and separate from her pup. On Monday morning I watched the pair lying in the shallows just after low tide. They weren’t frolicking. They seemed wrapped in a slow dance of goodbye.
The tide was rising, gently nudging them onto the sand, but they didn’t seem to want to either go ashore or take a swim. Instead, they seemed content to just relax together in this suspended place and time in between.
Occasionally, the baby would raise her head and swim off a little ways while the mom stayed inshore. This time, though, Kaimana came back without being called. You could feel the pull of instinct dictating they soon would have to part, and you could feel the pull of love against the instinct.
I remembered dropping off our son at his first sleep-away camp, and that long-ago, primal pain of separation rushed back to sweep me away on its tide.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.
