After a month or more of unseasonably warm weather, temperatures have dropped back below freezing. Ordinarily at this time of year, 29 degrees would feel mild, warm even; but on Friday it felt bitter cold. The strong westerly breeze, damp and raw, didn’t help matters.

I walked across the harbor bridges to Fairhaven, all bundled up; and, if truth be told, feeling a little sorry for myself. It had been a week filled with too many little things to do, I had lost sight of the big picture, lost in the trivia of church work. And now it was cold, and it was supposed to snow. I walked along with my head down, brooding.

As I got to the gas station on Fish Island, for no reason at all I started to sing ‘ukulele songs. I’ve never been to Hawai’i — the closest I’ve come is reading the old James Michener novel, which isn’t very close — so I really don’t know what Hawai’i is like, except that it must be warm and friendly:

I wanna go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawai’i,
I wanna be with all the kanes and wahines
That I used to know, long ago….

A truck pulled up beside me into the gas station and a man got out. The noise from four lanes of traffic running right next to me meant I could sing at the top of my lungs and he could barely hear me:

I can hear the old guitars playing
On the beach at Honaunau
I can hear the old Hawai’ians saying:
Komo mai no kaua i ka hale welakahao….

(Years ago, my ‘ukulele teacher told me that last line doesn’t mean anything at all, it’s just there to confuse the haoles.) Further along, a man stood on top of an old semi-trailer amidst all the junk and old machinery on Fish Island; a bulldozer rolled up to him, raised its bucket up, he stepped in and was lowered down. I kept singing:

When you love, ‘ukulele style,
With every note your heart will float
Far away to a tropic isle,
Where a ‘ukulele tune is softly played….

I kept walking along past the parking lot for Pope’s Island marina. The bright February sun crisply lit up every little piece of trash and broken shell along the highway. Ordinarily the trash would bother me, but I just kept singing.