Light in a Box

"You gotta marry that girl," the voice in my head said as a brown haired girl in a hooded sweatshirt walked into math class on the first day of high school. I mentally scolded myself for such an outrageous reaction to a new face. Fast forward twelve years and I find myself drifting in the Caribbean under a golden sky. I have my arm around my wife as we cuddle in the net of a catamaran celebrating one year married to "that girl". It's in this moment with the sun setting and the turquoise water lapping below us that the voice in my head says "this is perfect." We had arrived in Aruba four nights earlier for our anniversary honeymoon and after three days of technology separation I was free from the LCD urges. I surprised Sarah with a romance package upgrade that included a champagne breakfast and a sunset cruise. The sky was clear, the sea was calm, I had my lady love and an open bar. The voice in my head couldn't have been more ri...

It was black outside. I'm talking a prehistoric darkness, before fire was invented when only the sun emitted light. The headlights helped illuminate the road but beyond the beams was a world of black. I tried to imagine the scenery as lush tropical forest, maybe mountains in the distance or maybe the trees blocked their view. There had to be some structures along the route either houses or storefronts, at least a gas station. There could have been dinosaurs watching our headlights whizz through the darkness and we never would have known. After all, this was the home to Jurassic Park. There had been no discussion about staying on Oahu, Sarah's sister was going to be there with the band, it just made sense. When Sarah and I decided to spend some time on a second island of Hawaii the choices came down to Maui and Kauai. Then I found out Kauai was where Jurassic Park was filmed and there was no longer a decision to be made. The darkness we experienced on our initi...