The Ohi'a Tree
an excerpt

I dozed off and on and my dreams were populated with Hawaiian friends and family. Allie was no longer Allie and Nathan was no longer Nathan. They were barefooted brown little kamaianas running wild down the dirt roads and into the mango groves. They were sliding down waterfalls on tea leaves into cool mountain ponds. They were screaming in abandonment and joy. The t-ball was gone, and the ballet lessons. Now it was hula dancing and surfing. And I was out of my proper tucked-in button-down shirts and A-line skirts, wearing instead bikini tops and cut off blue jeans. And I wore flip flops instead of my usual one-inch and square-toed heels. We all wore flip-flops now, whenever shoes were called for.
As the tea cooled in it’s cup on my lap and my mother slept relatively peacefully in her bed, I dozed lightly, in and out of an alternative world as an alter ego, becoming, for brief moments at least a what-could-have-been Lily in a what-might-of-been world.