North Star

11 | rainbow drive-in

2009

"Can I get a slush float too?"

My dad stared at me with a questioning frown. I could picture him replaying all of the times I had asked for one before, but by the time I finished my food, I had been too full to finish it. But, like always, and without me having to ask twice, he turned toward the cashier and asked them to add it on.

We tried to have dinner at Rainbow Drive-In at least once a month. Sometimes we missed a month because something came up on that one day we had scheduled for it, like one of our parents having to work or someone getting sick, or even just life getting in the way like it always wanted to.

Mom was the only one that got the shoyu chicken plate while the rest of us opted for the classic and most-know loco moco plate. To me, nothing beat the sea of brown gravy they drenched over the plate, with a perfectly fried egg with a golden runny yolk in the center that reminded me of the sun.

"She's so pretty, Mommy!" Leimomi yelped, tugging on our mother's hand as she watched a young woman walk past from the pick-up window carrying her food. The woman blushed and thanked my sister before disappearing into the night. "Everyone is so pretty today! I love today!"

"They are," Mom said, smoothing her hand over Leimomi's silky brown hair. "And so are you."

"You too, Mom!" Leimomi looked over at us. "Nani and Hoku too! And Papa!"

"Especially Papa." Dad tapped on his belly with one hand and used his other to rub the beard he'd been growing out. It definitely suited him, even if he did that embarrassing move in public. The beard seemed to soften all of his features, making him appear like a gentle giant as opposed to the threatening figure he was often made out to be. There was nobody kinder and more welcoming than him.

"Yeah, Papa!" Leimomi held up her hands and, upon seeing that a table had opened up in the seating area, started running toward it, almost knocking down some random tutu in the process.

"Eh!" Mom clicked her tongue, but Leimomi wasn't paying attention. She turned to Kanani and pointed her finger between them; a silent command.

Kanani, whose head was buried in her phone, followed through without needing to be asked twice. By the time I turned away from them, she had already wrangled Leimomi and made her sit down calmly so she could go back to whoever she was talking to.

"I'm gonna shishi real quick," Mom whispered before weaving her way through the other lines to find the bathroom.

Dad and I stood there by the counter waiting for our order to be ready. Since it was the weekend, Rainbows was busy, hence the slingshot attempt from Leimomi to snag an open table. It was even busy enough that if I had been with anybody else, I probably would have suggested going somewhere else. Someone less crowded and less suffocating. Parking was a pain and I didn't always think the loco moco was worth me feeling like I was being surrounded on all sides by strangers, many of whom I could tell weren't from here. But I stepped closer to my dad which shielded me from the wind, and as I leaned my head against his arm, the nonsensical chattering muted into a whisper, which also helped. It was something I used to do a lot when I was younger and we would watch scary movies. As incredible as Jamie Lee Curtis was, Michael Meyers was far more frightening to me, so I would bury my face in my dad's arm and let the terrifying theme song and masked figure become background noise to the steady beat of my father's heart.

Aside from the rubbing his beard thing, I never understood how so many kids I knew from school were embarrassed to be seen with their parents in public, or even their entire family. Maybe I was just looking at it through rose-colored glasses. Perhaps I was just lucky. I didn't know what happened behind the closed doors of a family's home. But I was a quiet person who kept to myself a lot, which meant people felt comfortable talking around me about just about anything, probably more comfortable than they should have been. They assumed someone like me wouldn't have anyone to tell any of their secrets to. (And they were right.) Or they saw me as an inanimate object. As lifeless as a mass-produced painting on the wall, or the receptacle in which they threw their trash. A lot of kids my age talked about their families in a way that confused me, especially when they gave their reasons as to why they felt that way, often superficial or immature. They mocked their parents for things that should have been considered green flags in any family dynamic. Things that I valued beyond what I knew I could ever express, and things I knew others wished they could have themselves. But I guess that was the point. We were all growing up, and I wasn't the only one who felt like the world was working against them. It was normal for people my age to rebel or try to find their own voice separate from those they spent their entire lives around.