At the base of the cliffs, at the Asaga Inn, I meet the human welcoming committee. It’s a mishmash of personalities and nationalities and generations. Cousin Rosalie is the first to rise and give me a bear hug. She explains that her Australian accent comes from a life in the Outback, working as a nurse for a humanitarian organization. She’s arrived for the reunion with her four brothers and two nieces, all of whom live in New Zealand. Wait, I ask, why New Zealand?

Rosalie holds my hand in hers as she answers. “You see, my mum, Auntie Pu‘e, fell in love with a Maori man long ago and converted to Catholicism,” she begins, pausing to note that this was an extraordinary move for the daughter of a Protestant preacher. “Eventually it was OK, but she and my dad made the hard decision to go to New Zealand, where they thought the children would get a better education.” The children are today a mix of engineers and social workers, testament to their parents’ foresight.

It’s been forty years since Auntie Pu‘e set eyes on Olosega. As her children tell me her story, Pu‘e herself sits with her three siblings under the artfully thatched roof of the Asaga Inn’s porch. The four elders sit back, laugh and indolently fan themselves. There’s my husband’s father, a quiet, observant man, Puleisili Sr. There’s Auntie Malologa, who raises tropical birds and longhaired cats back in her yard in Pearl City. And there’s Auntie Saumolia, whose emphatic voice I notice right away—even though, unlike the others, she speaks only Samoan. In the coming days, she will insistently see to it that I wrap my tongue around the vowel-laden vocabulary, and I will end up learning more from her than I have from my husband in a decade.

The circumstances that scattered these four apart are as dramatic as the ones that at one point cleaved my family and probably yours, too. My husband has told me the story. It began when the four’s father—my husband’s grandfather—passed away very young. Two of the children stayed in Olosega, and two were sent to Pago Pago to be raised by relatives. In those days, the pain of separation was compounded by the difficulty of long-distance communication. But the children never forgot each other. Here in Olosega, the story takes on greater poignancy as Auntie Malologa tells me how, when they were old enough, they searched for one another in Pago and cried for days at the joy of finally tracking one another down.

Like my husband, these elders never doubted they would return to Olosega. One of the delights of being in their presence now that they have returned is the way they marvel over how little has changed. They’ll wander along, suddenly stop and let out a cry of joy over a coconut tree from childhood. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren, preoccupied with electronic gadgets, are only vaguely aware of how momentous this occasion is for the older generation. But Olosega will get through to them, I know.