Laie, 96762

A personal essay by Katey Workman

My deepening relationship with my happy-place hometown.

Love is an ocean.

It begins playful. Fun. Frolicking crystal that flows on resting sand—light, beautiful— shallow.

But it soon gets deep. It becomes meaningful as the shore’s playful blues turn into mysterious indigo depths that swallow the light. Color is made when particles of light reflect off of what it encounters, but all that bounces back is abyss, because there’s no bottom. Not for miles. Only the bravest venture past waist-deep. The bravest and the most foolish.

We do not love the ocean for its shallows. We are bewitched by its leagues and intrigued by its depth. Intrigued by what we still don’t know of it, longing to know what else it holds, and in humbled awe of the majesty it commands.

Pain in the Asphalt

A personal essay by Katey Workman

Discovery of my own selfish Christianity

Mom sent a picture of a sign in a park that issued the following warning: "DO NOT LET YOUR DOG ON HOT  ASPHALT. IF IT'S TOO HOT FOR YOU IT'S TOO HOT FOR THEM". It detailed the severity in temperature difference between air and asphalt: 77° F outside equals 125° F on the asphalt, 87°F equals 143°F, and so on. The warning was intended, of course, for dog owners who care about the well-being of their pets, and was posted, no doubt, by those selfless pet-o-philes who care as much (if not more) about your Fido than you do. While I am neither dog-owner nor dog-lover, I wish I'd seen the sign myself before embarking on a mid-afternoon walk. 

Do you think you could come?

I had laid my plans for today already. Mounds of class assignments had reached an eyebrow-raising height and it had taken all my freshly won self-restraint to refuse fun things before first getting my work done. After all, how could I dependably spout my new favorite motto (that I had learned just the day before) "work first, then play," if I was to crack only on day 2? No, I needed to focus.