"An absolutely gorgeous piece for a significant milestone in Emily-Katelyn's journey in life. Jim's creativity, beauty and insight produced a beautiful gift that brought me to tears".
This matching pair of bracelets coordinates are on the north shore of Kauai. Kalihiwai to be precise. Below is the Mother to Daughter Letter and the location map. Thank you Kim, absolutely beautiful!! Dearest Amy,
Even though your dad was sick we knew we wanted to have a family. Yet his treatments were rendering him sterile. So, to plan for the future we were banking sperm. As you can imagine that was an interesting effort and sorry if this is TMI now. One day we were laughing with his doctor about this effort and Dr. Jeff said off handedly “you guys should just get pregnant now the natural way, why don’t you try”? After mulling over the reality of being pregnant and having a child while we were fighting cancer we decided, yes, it would be a good thing. What better way to focus our energy? What better happy “project” could there be than starting our family?
We decided to let nature take its course. If it were meant to be it would happen. So, I stopped my birth control and we went on with our lives as normally as possible. Normal included neighbor island getaways. We had a favorite spot on Kaua‘i, a family friend of Pete’s had a cabin on the river/beach at Kalihiwai. We loved it there. We’d lie around on the punei on the lanai and read for hours, many times to each other. We’d play cards and scrabble. We’d cook and eat yummy food. And the best thing we did there was making you.
This is a picture of us on one of our day trips to Waimea Canyon during that fateful trip. It’s sweet that Pete is embracing my belly, yet we did not know yet what was already growing there. In his special way he must have known.
And so, I’ve commemorated this time and place with this bracelet for you. It has the latitude and longitude coordinates of Kalihiwai Beach and an inscription that tells, to me, one of the simplest most beautiful stories of my life.
22° 21” N 159° 42” W
July 1988 PETER + KIM = AMY
Honey I’m so glad you have been such a beautiful part of my life these last 21 years. I am very proud of you and love you very much. I’m very sure your dad would feel the same way. I wish for you all the best this year and many more. You have the world at your feet and I’m sure you will carve out a wonderful life for yourself. I am blessed to be a part of it.
