Mai Tai

and brightly colored fish

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We went snorkeling in Hawaii. My sweet and patient husband, knowing me better than I know myself, suggested we dive right in physically rather than metaphorically the first morning we spent on the island.

He took me down to the man-made but still fish-filled lagoon at the resort and had me swim in slow and splashy circles in the shallows to get used to the fins. He said my first kicks were only twenty-percent below water. I spluttered and kicked water at him.

The next day, we went to Shark’s Cove, which had no sandy beach and no protection from the small summer waves. My nails dug into the lava rock I clung to as I struggled to get my gear on. After the seventh wave hit me square in my unmasked face, I decided to just bow to the power of the sea and lay down, floating ungracefully in the foot-deep water to get my flippers on. With that done, my plan was to crawl along the three feet left of rocky water until I reached the open space.

I put my now-masked face under the water and shrieked.

“What?” my husband shouted, concerned as his wife tried to scramble to her feet looking rather more like a beached whale than a woman.

“There’s fish under there!” I shouted back.

I pictured fish out where the water got deep not here in the blustery shallows and had been shocked to find the entire cast of “Finding Nemo” finning around my face.

“Well, duh,” my husband responded.

That was my favorite part of the trip besides the cocktails, one of which was a shocking emerald green concoction with a graham cracker rim called the “Key Lime Colada” that tip-toed just to the edge of sickening.

Most of the newer cocktails available in Hawaii look like they were designed to match the color-scheme of the fish found below.

But this week, we’re looking at a classic cocktail — The Mai Tai.