June left for the mainland yesterday to visit our son Brian, his wife Kris and their two boys. Brian is a Apache helicopter pilot and is stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas.

Papa’s buddy Gunner is now a little over two years old and can’t stop chattering. (I’m Papa.) Gunner’s new brother Hunter is two months old and having some health issues. June went up to help Kris as they work through this. Kris’s parents, Ron and Etsuko, took the first shift—they were there for Hunter’s birth and just came home a week ago.

This is the first day that June’s been gone and I am having to adjust to her absence. I can remember the first time she was away from home for any length of time. I wanted to prove that I could take care of everything and my strategy was very simple: Don’t use too many dishes. Keep things simple.  Only one utensil out at a time.

Once I got the first couple of days under my belt I looked around and decided I could handle the house plants, too. So I put one of the hanging baskets in the sink and turned on the water, because I remember June watering the plants that way. When I got ready to hang it back up, something didn’t look quite right. I looked closer and discovered it was a plastic plant!

I remember telling that story to my old friend Bill Stearns a few years back. We were on the same flight to Honolulu a few years ago and he told me stories of the old days of cropdusting in Hawai‘i. He was the original cropduster and the first to use an airplane to spray and fertilize sugar cane. His company was called Murray Air.

What he was doing was so new and so unique that the Ka‘u sugar plantation boss gave him a cottage next to the Catholic priest. Bill told me how he would get himself all slicked up and travel the long way from Ka‘u to Hilo in order to meet the Hawaiian girl who would later become his wife.

They were married for more than 50 years, and she had just passed away. Sitting next to him on that flight to Honolulu, I knew he was having a hard time adjusting. So I told him my story about watering the plastic plant as a way of illustrating how we sometimes take them for granted. He could really relate; he laughed so loud that he choked.

Bill and I really liked each other. When we first got into the banana business we used his company to spray our crops. When we got behind in payment, June and I worked out a repayment schedule with him and paid back every penny on time. And when I was sponsored to join the Rotary Club more than 20 years ago, Bill did not know about it in advance, but he stood up and told everybody loudly that he was vouching for my character. He did not have to do that and I never forgot the gesture.

Another time, at an annual meeting of the Farm Credit Association, I was nominated to the board of directors. When I found out it was for Bill’s seat, I withdrew my name. He will always be one of my all-time favorite people.

June will be gone for at least a month and maybe longer, so I’m keeping her in the loop at work by copying her in on all the emails.

As for me, I have to fend for myself. I am taking this opportunity to eat at every single lunch place in Hilo. And I’m looking forward to cooking small meals for myself. Not as a chore, but as an opportunity to try different things.