This started with my mom. She picked Maui, booked the first trip in 2001, and then kept booking it, and I grew up going because she took me. Somewhere along the way it stopped being her island that I visited and became ours.
So we both write here. The List is a family record and it stays we, because the visit counts belong to all of us and splitting them would ruin the only thing that took twenty five years to build. The guides and the field notes carry a name, because those are one person talking.
Between us that is 14 places, 203 meals, and 10 we keep going back to. Where we have only been once, it says once.
Found the island first
She is the reason any of this exists. She picked Maui, booked the first trip, and kept booking it, and the habit of going back to the same places long enough to know whether they had slipped is hers before it was mine.
Keeps the record
I grew up going to Maui because she took me, and somewhere in there it became my island too. I am the one who writes things down, plans the trips down to which morning is the snorkel morning, and cannot stop making itineraries for other people.