It was raining in paradise. 

I was sleeping in the car until we hit a pothole and I jerked awake to my dad making a hard right into a gravel parking lot, shaded by palm trees and other exotic plants looking plants. I sat up, disoriented. It was our third day in Oahu and my parents had rented a minivan to drive us all around the island. We were nearing the end of our day and my siblings and I had wrapped ourselves in towels and the backseat.

“Where are we?” My brother and sister were awake now, too.
“Nut farm,” was my dad’s abrupt answer.
My mom twisted around to look at us. “Do you guys want to come?”

“I will,” I say. Both of my siblings shake their heads so it's just my parents and me whom dash through the rain into a small shack.

I'm instantly greeted with the smell of coffee. My mom and I gravitate towards a little side room with paper cups and pots of the blessed bean. As I stirred my creamer in, I took a chance to look around. There were three rooms. The first room, which we walked into, had the typical Hawaiian souvenirs, the shell necklaces and the cheesy postcards. The second room had the coffee in it and from here it spread out to the main third room. There were no windows and the roof was metal, so you could clearly hear and see the rain falling into the tropical forest outside. It was was humid and my shirt stuck to my skin as I walked over to my dad, who was sampling different kinds of macadamia nuts.

“Here,” he said, putting cinnamon glazed nuts into my open hand.

“Mhm.” I popped them in my mouth. “Oh wow,” I mumble. “That is so good.” My dad and I move down the line picking and sampling everything from honey-glazed macadamia nuts chocolate covered. In the end, we settle on the plain roasted macadamia nuts and the caramel-glazed. While my dad is checking out, I grab another cup of coffee and seek out my mother.

I find her sitting with a lady in a corner that I'd missed earlier. She turns to face me. “Isabelle, we have to buy this lotion. It's herbal. And it totally helps with migraines.”

“Sure thing, Momma,” I say to her, and held out my hand.

After we bag all of our items, we bid “Aloha” to the cashier and find ourselves running in the rain again.