By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Missing Hawai'i is a funny thing. It's very personal. You can gather up a group of Hawai'i expatriates in any state or any country, and the commiserating only makes it so far.

"Eh, I miss the smell of pua kenikeni."

"Me too!"

"And swimming in the punawai."

"Yeah! I did that, too! Cold, yeah?"

"And sticking li hing mui inside a lemon and sucking out all the juice."

"Wait, what?"

In which Hawai'i were you born and raised? What Hawai'i did you see on your visit?

Was it the chickens in the back yard, burning wood for hot bath water, Bull Durham bag on the kitchen faucet side of Hawai'i?

Or was it the old Waikiki that was somehow both quieter and shinier than what is there today?

Is the Hawai'i you long for a place where you never locked your doors, where unannounced visits from neighbors were a good thing, where most restaurants didn't open on Sunday nights because everyone was home having dinner with the family?

Sometimes, when you talk story with a person who moved away from Hawai'i years ago, the Hawai'i they describe is so far away from anything that sounds familiar, it's as if time and distance has turned their memories into happy fiction. They get pretty frustrated when you can't relate. After about the third, "No, I never heard of that," they give up. Nobody wants to hear that THEIR Hawai'i isn't there anymore.

It's not so much that their memories are inaccurate, just that the Hawai'i they miss is unique to them.

Webster dictionary defines nostalgia as "a wistful yearning for something past or irrecoverable" from the Greek nostos — to return home — and algos — pain, grief.

Many of the letters to the editor that appear in this paper from folks who used to live here express just that: a grief for what no longer is. The letter may be about politics or social policy, but underneath the issue is that sadness for something past.

The thing is, many of us who live here now miss it, too.

We're nostalgic for a Hawai'i that just doesn't exist anymore.

Some things are specific:

Shishido manju.

Saloon Pilot crackers.

Azuki beans in Tasaka guri guri (Tasaka guri guri is still around, but they haven't sold the beans for years.)

The sun shining on cane tassels.

Being able to find shells on the beach.

Being the only family on the road on a Sunday drive.

Other things we mourn are harder to name. They're not brand names or food items or favorite places that have been paved over; they're feelings of security, of familiarity, of home. Those emotions are the one thing every person who has felt that Hawai'i homesickness shares.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.