Cindy Luis: Time can be measured by when a son becomes a man

It seems like forever ago. That measurement of time between reality and can-the-years-really-have-gone-by-this-quickly.

How is it possible that 30 years have passed since readers were first introduced to my son in the sports pages of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin? It was 1991. He was 4.

And I was (maybe still am) a bit overprotective, admitting to purchasing a way-too-big jockstrap in my weekly column “Keeping Score” for his first foray into competitive sports: the Kailua Basketball Association.

Over the decades (seriously?) stories have been shared about the magical baseball glove — the one involved in an unassisted triple play. About how numbers were learned by driving up the Pali and looking at the mile markers, associating them with the uniform numbers of the Rainbow Wahine volleyball team.

And about why Christopher Joseph Koalelepio Wells was nicknamed “Tiff.” (Hint: Read “The Amateurs” by David Halberstam, a book about the U.S. Olympic rowing team and the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games. Tiff’s late uncle M. Christopher Wells was a coxswain on that ’80 crew team).

It’s been a privilege few have been afforded, that of telling stories in print that felt more like those told when sitting around the holiday table with ohana. Because that is what our readers are considered — family — much like when one of Tiff’s earliest plane rides was returning from the 1986 NCAA women’s volleyball regional in Stockton, Calif.

We were among the first to board, eventually joined by the Wahine, who had been eliminated from the postseason by eventual national champion Pacific. As they walked past, I said, “Look, it’s Auntie Tita (Tita Ahuna), Auntie Teee (Teee Williams), Auntie Suzie (Suzanne Eagye) … ”

A woman next to us said, “You can’t possibly be related to all of them.”

Actually, in many ways, we were and continue to be. The emphasis is on the “we.”

The “Parents Message” written in his baby book was of my hopes that he’d have a happy life with few regrets, that he be the best he could be, and that he go after his dreams and make them real.

It is with humble pride and awe that I can say that he has and continues to do so. Tiff Wells has become the “Voice of Hawai’i Volleyball” for KKEA, 1420-AM, a nationally respected radio broadcaster who was much in demand for interviews last month when we were at the NCAA men’s volleyball tournament in Columbus, Ohio.

He reminded me that the last national championship team I had covered was when he was 21 months old: the Wahine of 1987, a team with many of those same “aunties” from the previous year’s plane ride. What made six weeks ago so special was being able to sit a few tables away from him on the Covelli Center concourse, listening to his internet broadcast while I was covering the title match.

It forever will be the highlight of our unique bond, that of being the only mother-son duo in sports media nationally for over a decade. As the Warriors drew closer to finishing the sweep of BYU, he said he began to think about what to say when Hawaii won it all.

“Because,” he said, “that call will be forever.”

Listening to it then brought tears to my eyes, as does this memory now. There once was a little boy who did his own play-by-play using baseball cards when he was 6 … and he has far exceeded any aspirations penned in a baby book.

There have been the forever-ago columns of Tiff’s graduations from ‘Iolani (2004) and Pepperdine (2008).

And, now, this one: His graduation from Mom.

In two days, he marries his best friend and perfect teammate: Taryn Bohan. Their love of sports is only surpassed by their love of each other, something that was never in question while planning a wedding during the crazy uncertainty of COVID.

It’s “so them” that the smaller-than-hoped-for number of guests will receive Topps trading card-inspired photos as favors, with their “statistics” on the back and them repping their favorite MLB teams on the front: she the San Francisco Giants, he the San Diego Padres.

The game of life is filled with many uncertainties, but I feel confident in this outcome.

On Saturday, forever ago becomes forever after. Happily.