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When I ask people to come and visit, implore them really, it is because having guests validates my existence. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but I find that living here in Barbados makes me feel like I am somehow in a parallel universe and I desperately want contact with the universe where I used to live. This isn't meant to be a depressing tome about what you have over there and we have over here, but more about my state. I continue to live in the past and future and rarely glimpse the present here. This is surely my own fault and something I am aware of and working on.
There are moments of presence that more often than not have to do with sitting at eye level to the people, Lily and Virginie. I can smell them, feel them, hear them, breathe them in and just love them. In those moments I am so there. But find me doing housework or other mindless tasks and my mind always leaves Barbados. Even the times that I am with friends, socializing, participating in school events, a part of me is thinking about how I will view those moments when I am living somewhere else. Didier and I often say, we will look back on this period in our lives and laugh, but even now, we are looking back at it before we've even left.
It has taken me a long time, at every stage in my life, to feel secure in new situations, to feel like I am able to let down my guard and be myself, to let people really know me. My friends in a parallel universe have made it over that hurdle with me and with them, I feel free. When friends and family have come to visit, I have been able to open my heart a little to Barbados and be here. As we may be here another two years, please, please come and visit. You will certainly have a marvelous vacation (I am still a fabulous hostess on Mars) and I will more and more allow myself to be...here.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
It is when people visit us in Barbados that we venture out into the world of dining, tourist stops and shops. It isn't that we aren't interested at all, (at least I have some interest, Didier not so much), but that much of the island's activities are set up for tourists or for repeat offenders (Norms, regulars). For example, when you call to make a reservation at a hotel, for scuba diving, for a tour to anywhere, they ask at which hotel you are staying. Locals either don't or can't afford some of the activities and ex-pats have either done it all before or wouldn't be caught dead participating. We have fallen into that category at times, but have now discovered that we were missing out on some things. Even if just to say we would never do them again.
Didier's best friend whom he has known since he was eighteen years old, and his family came to visit us for two weeks and stayed in our guesthouse. As they have three children ranging in age from eight to sixteen, exciting activities and events had to be generated to prevent boredom. A pool, the sea, and some sunshine were just not going to cut it. So they made haste out of the compound and oftentimes, we followed, sometimes led. We went up north to show them the Animal Flower Cave and to our favorite beaches and sights on the East Coast, as well as a visit to our favorite seaside restaurant and bar, Cassareep in Speightstown. At their suggestion, we took a long drive with multiple roundabouts to go to Rockley Beach near the Accra Hotel and Resort, which seems to cater to Americans, on the South Coast.
I will say, that if I were visiting Barbados and not living here, I would more than likely stay on the South Coast. It has a more energetic vibe and lots of options to eat, drink, and be merry and my favorite, sidewalks! It even boasts a beautiful boardwalk along the beach. The waves were more exciting at Rockley and the fine sand and sun made the water almost glow turquoise with layers of cobalt blue. Not so great, driving back 40 minutes in the car with two little girls under 5 years of age who were hot and tired and bothered. We ate gyros at Opa, Lily had a slice from New York Pizza (yeah, right), and we all gorged ourselves on ice cream from Chilly Moo's before we left for home. That was a treat for all.
While we still haven't done the Mount Gay tour or the Banks Brewery crawl, after one year on the island, we did venture out to dinner at Zacchio's and almost, almost ate at Surfside in Holetown. Steel drum music, tiki torches on the beach, and fruity cocktails add to a gorgeous Caribbean vacation; people dream about those sunset scenes. But we live here and are not really fans of any of that hocus pocus. Sure, there is more offered in Barbados by way of fine dining and entertainment, so this is not about a lack of exciting things to do. It's just that our focus is on the girls who, while precocious, are indeed quite young and not particularly interested or thrilled by late night dining or alcohol-fueled tours.
Our guests, like others before them went surfing, and loved it. We've visited the Soup Bowl where expert surfers show their stuff during a well known tournament every year and are thrilled at their feats. But we haven't gotten out there on a long, or short board for that matter...yet. Didier and Frederick did scuba dive, once with Fred's daughter, Fiona and another time just the two of them, and they all loved the experience. Thanks to Didier's week off from work, he was able to enjoy these activities.
Generally speaking, Didier works like a maniac and once summer ends, our routine will return. Lily will start school, Virginie and I toddler and mommy activities and lessons, and all of us will go back to the business of living here. Enjoying the sun and sea and year round heatwave, but doing day to day tasks and chores, paying bills, going to the grocery store, doctor's office, dentist, and swimming lessons too. We may get around to doing all of the stuff the brochures boast, but we may not. We are not tourists. It's not all sunshine and piña coladas. We live here.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
Last night, with the blessing and kindness of our guests visiting from New York, Didier and I were able to go out for the second time in a year. For dinner. Together. Without the children. While I was a little nervous about Virginie who is in a wicked separation anxiety phase, I had to seize the opportunity when it was available. It felt so good to put on some clothes on that hadn't been spilled, vomited, or peed on, wear some heels and basically look how I looked before the people came.
Scarlet is a sweet, little restaurant in Paynes Bay on the West Coast of Barbados, opposite the more familiar and more expensive, Daphne's. It was a lovely surprise for me, a red jewelry box with Warhol portraits of Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe, lacquered surfaces and exotic flowers. The music was a mix of 50s and 60s hits, rhythm and blues, early rock n' roll, girl groups, and a little George Benson thrown in. George Benson will always make me smile because he reminds me so much of my dad because of his good looks and because he was one of my dad's car driving music faves.
Finally for dessert, which was more standard and less adventurous than the rest of the menu, but do the trick with chocolate, for me anyway, we chose the hot chocolate pudding and the sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce. The most delicious treat of all was the time and the conversation with my husband. I had not realized how much we really needed some time away.
Stephane and Sophie, the owners of Scarlet, are a very nice couple with a beautiful little girl, who know the struggles of the restaurant business and raising a family. I'd met Sophie at my first Toddler Group and liked her instantly. Didier had the opportunity to meet the couple at an event at the US Ambassador's residence for a discussion and presentation on US trade and import of various foods. Didier and I have often wondered what the next path for us will be and have talked extensively about opening something again, something where we won't find ourselves working for anyone but ourselves. It's a tough call. We know the hours are deadly and that restaurants and all service industries really, are dependent and often hostage to the whim of the public, but it would be ours. Ours to win or fail.
But last night we let that topic, like all others, come freely and loosely in and out of play while we laughed, touched hands and feet, smooched and talked of life in the heady, romantic language of courtship, not the clipped, exhausted shorthand of parents. It was glorious.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
Last night I went to my friend Wendy's house after dinner,as she had gathered a group of women for a "Girls Night In," where we could all sit together and listen to music and chat and drink wine...and drink wine. Man, it's been a long time since I had a night on my own with no children and no husband even. Talking with these women, all of whom have kids who swim with Wendy, about the trials and thrills of raising and loving our children in Barbados was thrilling. I realized what I had been missing all this time. Friends. People to commiserate with. Not bitch and complain about life, but to talk, work things out, mull things over thoughtfully and always, always maintain a sense of hope.
I am a hopeful person. Many times in my life I have lived with hope as my only guide through tough patches, even the roughest patches, and had lost that during those early months in Barbados. I don't beat myself up. Post partum, roving bands of monkeys and bugs the size of my eyelids would probably do that to many. Add to that, new acquaintances who found little joy in their lives as my only contacts and one can imagine the hopelessness. I can't live like that.
Daphne, Edna, Vicki, Wendy, and Katie, my friend visiting from New York, and I represent a range of cultural and life experiences, yet we all spoke the common language of motherhood. Daphne and Vicki are both Barbadian, Daphne as a transplant at four years old and Vicki born here but raised in the States and here. Edna is German and has been in Barbados for eleven years. Wendy is English and Katie and I rounded out the group, an Irish-American and African-American respectively. Many of us have mixed children and the conversation about the Bajan take on our relationships and kids left us all in stitches. Daphne, married to an Asian man from Trinidad, has been asked about her "Chine-y babies." Vicki, Edna, and I have little girls with curly hair and brown skin and we often hear obsessive comments about their looks as though doing some sort of math problem to determine who they favor our husbands or us. The answer is both. They are ours. Ours.
It felt so good to share. To chat. To laugh out loud again. I left at 11:15, sure that Didier was worried about me, but more concerned that Virginie would wake up to nurse and find me gone. The ladies continued into the night, the last leaving at 1:30 am! With Lily's 5:45 wake up that would have given me just a little over four hours of sleep. Forty is not the new twenty. I have been recuperating all day and I was the first to leave, something I am completely unfamiliar with. I hope we will do it again soon. Maybe I will take a nap and stay out a little later than my bedtime next time.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
In my twenties I was fond of saying, "You will know if you are meant to be a couple if you can travel well together. That is a true test." I am not sure where I heard it first, but I thought of it often as Robert and I traveled in Europe together (Germany and Austria to see his family and then other cities as we could navigate) as a gift from my parents for my college graduation. As history would show, we did not fare so well. We were not great traveling companions as truthfully, our relationship was probably over before we'd even left. I just wasn't ready to let go. Robert had opened my eyes to an artistic, laissez-faire lifestyle, where one could follow his dreams and money could allow you anything. He was a true Bohemian and philosopher, an extraordinary musician (he played a classical guitar that could bring tears) and thinker, but also a rich young man with a tortured youth who was trying to reconcile this dichotomy in himself. The times were heady.
He was magic to me. A diamond with sparkling eyes even as the torment of injustice clouded the clarity. I'd loved no one like him not only because he'd allowed me to see myself too as more than suburban, as beautiful, as an artist with a voice and a vision, but because he had a compass for truth and was not won over by flash, smoke and mirrors. We read The Illuminati Trilogy and saw black and white magic everywhere. Losing him broke me on a psychic level because I still could not see the magic in myself and I'd believed our coupling to be celestially ordained. I thought all the shine was his. We were victims of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of youth, but there had been light.
My heart was rescued when Ismael, a gorgeous Spanish sculptor, creator, cyclist, reggae connoisseur, whom I'd known for years as a classmate and friend, came back into my life. He was, he is, like no one I had ever known then or since. No one had been as gentle with me in my life. No one had honored me, treated me like a queen, loved me that way. When we were first together, I melted in the pleasure of him. He was tactile. He handled everything with care, a real naturalists long before this was popular. He showed me nature and taught me to seek the special quality in even the smallest thing. We walked in the woods of Vermont, considered life and the abundance in nature in such a real and present way. He did not mess about with chatter but talked with conviction about the things that mattered to him. He was so lithe and sensual and physical and present. We lived in different states and he would not settle for a life in the city on my terms. In the end, he was right, but at the time I did not want to give him up. I fought and fought viciously, I am afraid and regret the small things we did to hurt one another to make the break.
Foolishly, I ran to the arms of Khalil, a phony record producer in Atlanta and got myself so twisted and hurt and confused, that I feared allowing myself to love ever again. After him there were lovers and affairs and hopes, but I was not able or willing to commit myself again. Fear racked me and while I hoped there was a love for me, I did not hang my hat on anything or expect it to come. I truly let go and was rather shallow in my relationships for years.
When I think of how I have come to find myself living in Barbados with a husband and two beautiful little girls, and I often do, I can really cherish the lessons learned, the loves, the heartaches. It is because of this incredible journey that I wonder about the expression "soulmate" as it is usually used to describe one's current love partner, and embrace it as a collection of people who guide us to this penultimate moment. This moment too is not perfect, but there is a comfort, a security, a sense of our need to do it together. Even in the blind moments of rage, there is a desperate pull towards Didier that is thrilling and romantic and terrifying and calming all the same.
I have been thinking about love for the past week now, after reading of the love between Lady Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter, a love affair and marriage that lasted over thirty years, after both had been previously married for eighteen years! Before our paths crossed, Didier had been married for fourteen years. On seeing him that first day in the restaurant, I just knew that this would be a significant love and it is. I have been driven to the edge of sanity by this man but have also experienced the calmest me I have ever known. I can close my eyes and see us as old people, see our daughters trusting in life and love by the look in our eyes.
Save Khalil, I have been in touch with my lovers past and I have seen them grow more into themselves and find loves that have helped them soar. They have started families, continued creating and developing into fine human beings, artists, fathers, loving partners, and I love them for driving part of the way on our journey. And with Didier, always driving the car, literally, but letting me navigate some times, figuratively, we have found a way to travel together. Well. He and the girls are my life and I am not sure where we are going, but I hope we will all go together and do it for a long time.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle
One of the first things we were told when arriving in Barbados was not to handle the tiny green apples on the trees ringed in red paint. They are the fruit of the machineel tree and are extremely poisonous. Found along the coast including our favorite secluded beach here, the machineel tree releases a toxin in its creamy white, milky substance. The Caribs used to use the sap of this tree to poison their darts to ward off intruders and tied their captives to the trunk of this tree ensuring a slow, painful death. It is said that the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon was felled by an arrow dipped in the sap of the machineel by the Calusa in Florida and died shortly after. What I am trying to say is, the plant is no joke!
Somehow my husband managed to bring one home (long before I arrived with the girls) and cut one open, curious about its delicious fragrance. Something prevented him from tasting it which would have surely caused his death, as he would also more than likely not seek medical treatment when the vomiting began. He was lucky.
Didier's BFF and family are visiting with us for two weeks and on our first trip to the beach I did mention that this plant was to be avoided at all costs. I think the message was duly noted and no one touched the little apples or the tree bark during our visit to the beach. Yesterday, it appears, was different. LB, the eight year old son picked up an apple while on a surfing excursion on the south coast and I imagine that when his mother saw him handling the fruit, she grabbed it from him and threw it. This morning, young LB's hands were swollen like baseball mitts and nickel-sized blisters were forming at his knuckles. Day three of the trip. Off to Sandy Crest 24-hour Medical Center where it was confirmed. Poisoning for the machineel tree. It's green fruit is called in Spanish, "la manzanilla de la muerte " or the "little apple of death" and its sting is apparently pretty painful.
I am a melty popsicle. It's been hot, but I think this condition is particular to my make up. Even our guests visiting from upstate New York, in all their whiteness, and I refer only to their physical whiteness, are not stressing from this heat. They spend more months out of the year in cold and they are not melted. They are a little pink. At all times, I am dripping.
Some people sweat and others glow. I am drenched. Here in Barbados, those who have lived here all their lives, don't even look like the heat is phasing them. When I first arrived in Barbados, my friend Eva, who was visiting and also sweating her brains out, and I were told that after being here a while, our "blood would thin and we would better able to handle the heat." After careful consideration and commentary from my husband, we realized this was kind of ridiculous and impossible. As Didier pointed out, "Your blood is going to thin? How is that going to happen? So there should be fewer heart attacks on the island then and with the national weight problem, I don't think that is the case." All said with a smirk and French accent, he still had a point. I think what the person was trying to say was that I should acclimate at some point and respond less profusely to the temps. One year and counting. Sweaty mess.
(c) Copyright 2010. City Mom in the Jungle.
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