Before Mike and I went to Hawaii, I was under the impression that when you get off the plane, you automatically get a Hawaiian lei. I thought there were people at the airport that give you a lei when you get off the plane, just like on Fantasy Island. I guess I had seen that image so often on television that I believed it was true.

Mike tried to convince me that it wasn’t. I’m sure he was worried that I would be disappointed when I got off the plane and there wasn’t a Hawaiian ambassador to give me a necklace of flowers. I wasn’t worried about being disappointed and after analyzing where my view of Hawaii had come from (Fantasy Island?!) I realized that Mike was probably right and that there wouldn’t be a group of women and men in flowered sarongs placing leis on the necks of everyone who walked off the airplane.

We left for Hawaii on the opening day of the 2002 Olympics. There was a huge snow storm and extra security because of the fear of terrorists at the time. We ran to our plane, carrying our shoes and ended up sitting on the tarmack for two hours waiting for de-icing. As our plane landed in San Francisco, our connecting flight to Hawaii lifted off without us on it.

I wasn’t worried. I knew that they would get us on another flight, even though we might be a little late. Mike, however, was near tears. At one point it looked like we might have to wait twelve hours in San Francisco and Mike nearly lost it. I tried to console him, “It’s okay, we’ll call Cory and ask to crash at his place. We’ll take him out to dinner or something.” Nothing would calm him down. When they said, “We can get you on a plane, but they’re leaving NOW. RUN!” We grabbed our bags and ran as fast as we could. We didn’t even know which island we were heading to. All we knew is that they told us to run.

For the seven hour flight, we sat apart. They were the only two seats left on the plane and no one was willing to trade. We passed notes to each other for about five minutes, but that became too cumbersome. We found out that our plane was landing in Maui instead of Kona. This seemed to devastate Mike, but I was just glad we didn’t have to spend twelve hours in San Francisco.

When we got to Maui, we changed flights to Kauai, finally able to sit together on the quick jaunt between the islands. That’s when Mike told me. He had arranged for a company to give me a Hawaiian lei when we landed in Kona. They would have been waiting for me to get off the plane when we had a layover there, but we missed that flight. He was so disappointed that I didn’t get my lei. I looked out the window and saw the emerald green island below us and felt a wave of love hit me. Mike had tried to make my fantasy of Hawaii come true and the rotten snow of Utah ruined it for him.

That was the most romantic thing Mike ever did for me and I will love him forever for it.