Breathing fast and slow

For 10 years, I was the founding member of a book club. In that time, I read more than 50 books with a group of women that I am lucky to call my friends. When exchanging e-mails with the group, one of the members routinely began and ended her missives with "Aloha." She had visited Hawaii many times, and until my most recent--and first--trip to Hawaii, I did not understand the affection for this word. Unlike the sand I have continued to shed for the better part of this first week back from Maui, finding it every morning in the sheets with me upon waking, I am reluctant to let the way of Aloha, or the spirit of Aloha, slip away. I like how this word expresses both greeting and farewell as well as love, affection, peace, compassion, and mercy. " Aloha ," one says, so that love protects one's goings and comings. That's a whole lot of sentiment for three syllables, much like the three sounds of A U M, which are said to express the first three stages of consciou