Twenty
some years ago I got the idea to leave my home in the Allegheny Highlands
in search of - well, I wasn’t sure what - but I knew it wouldn’t
include six month winters. At my going-away party my friend Karen said
she wished me “sunshine and romance and exotic islands covered
with flowers”.
I’d always had a romantic attachment to the idea of living on
an island. The closest I ever came was summer vacations on Asateague
Island where wild ponies galloped through the foaming surf in the dazzling
coral light of dawn. The allure of those mornings nestled in my heart
and took root.
It is intriguing how a simple wish unfolds. The first romance of my
new life began on the sun-drenched beaches of Galveston Island with
a golden-skinned Australian who wooed me through hot afternoons with
pitchers of sangria on the veranda of the Hotel Galvez. Steamy summer
nights found us dancing under the stars on the porch of the Balinese
Room over the churning waves of the Gulf of Mexico.
I was young enough to believe anything was possible in those days. All
these years later experience has shown me that I was right about that.
Fast forward: Twenty years go by and I am living on another island -
from Galveston to Gloucester. I’ve traded three months of ninety-degree
weather for three months of wintry weather and consider it a good one.
On sultry summer mornings when the scent of beach roses wafts through
the salt-water air I remember Karen’s wish - sunshine, romance
and flower covered islands. I am not sure how it has happened but I
am living in my dream.
Everyone needs a special island in their soul - a place to go to when
the icy winds of winter come. Be it the winter of changing seasons or
the winter of changing fortunes. Everyone needs a secret retreat - a
place to drift away and remember who we were. Where we can rejoin that
dream-filled young person and remember that possibilities are ever renewing.
On a bitterly cold February morning I leave this frozen island and board
a plane for the tropical blue of the Caribbean. From the air the island
glows emerald in a blue topaz sea. My heart is dancing. Below me sunshine
sweeps over shimmering white beaches and a riotous tangle of jungle
lush with hibiscus and azalea blossoms.
Entering a new world always mystifies me. I take so much for granted
in my daily life. When I escape to a place where I am the alien - the
one whose language is exotic and whose face is different from the crowd
- it humbles me and thrills me. I am lucky to be in this place of relaxed
attitudes toward time and toward the conventions we North Americans
take for granted. I am lucky to be joining someone who has spent many
years here and knows it well. I am very lucky that he is someone beautiful
whom I love.
Every moment here is bliss. Days are warm and filled with breezes. We
drive down roads lined with tall sugar cane to beaches sheltered by
ancient rosewood trees and coconut palms overrun with wild yellow and
red hibiscus. We lie languorously in the sun sipping tropical fruit
juices from hollowed out pineapples and read newspaper articles about
snowstorms in New England.
At night we savor the warmth listening to the call of tiny manuelito
birds and the clitter-clatter of palm fronds chattering in the breeze.
In the distance there is a soft, deep churning sound.
What is that? I ask.
Waves, I am told, breaking over the coral reefs. There are dolphins
out there, too, he says.
Mornings I swim laps in a pool where grapefruits plop from the heavy
laden trees. Local women walk the beaches balancing baskets of papayas,
bananas, coconuts and pineapples on their heads. For a few pesos they
prepare the fruit with a knife tucked in their belts and present it
wrapped in a dish made of palm leaves. We buy braided strands of small,
juicy, impossibly sweet mandarinas to hang on the kitchen wall and eat
like candy.
One day we take a cable car up the mountain sailing over coffee bushes
and giant old mahogany trees to a tropical rainforest blanketed with
dozens of varieties of wild orchids.
Another
night we have dinner under the thatched roof of an open-air restaurant
and watch a full moon rise shimmering out of the sea. I am besotted
and enthralled and more at home than I have ever been anywhere in my
life.
Back in Gloucester I find my thoughts drifting - to all the islands
of my life. What a gift they have been! What a refuge from dark and
uncertain times.
One night a few summers ago, the man who shared his island with me,
took me to another magical place - on this island. We took a bottle
of wine and climbed the stone wall at Lane’s Cove to watch the
sun flame down in its flamboyant glory. We talked about our lives and
our dreams and watched as meteors streaked the deep black of the night
sky.
I call this cove Safe Haven, he told me. When I am here nothing else
in the world can touch me.
Against the star-strewn sky his face is achingly beautiful to me.
I wish us all islands to tuck in to our dreams, safe havens to find
escape from our worries. I wish us all the fulfillment of my friend’s
wish for me - sunshine and romance and exotic islands covered with flowers.
In our lives and in our hearts.
