It’s hard to turn off the thoughts of trying to figure things out but there is no on/off switch; by not listening and not reading so much from the outside world it does become easier. It frees the mind from the clickity-clack of background noise so I’ve been able to allow a smoother transition from the mind numb to the brain dead. I listen to the soft wavy sounds of the Caribbean Sea, lapping at the black-streaked sand, and I let my mind ebb and flow toward some sort of neutral gear in neural locomotion.
There are three restaurants at the resort. One is very formal, and it’s the one my wife booked for us to celebrate yet one more year of my life on this earth. It’s a bit fancy and we were concerned with my options of formal dress. I usually take one good pair of slacks, a sports coat, and a couple of dress shirts on vacations but we never end up going to the fancy restaurants. I didn’t do it this time—saving the room in the suitcase for more pairs of shorts.
The fancy restaurant did, in fact, have a dress code. My wife called to make sure I could get in with my limited wardrobe options. She told the hostess that I had a pair of jeans or a pair of shorts that were of good quality. The hostess told her neither were ideal but the shorts were preferable to jeans. I think I looked pretty island chic when we entered the restaurant. Codes, however, are meant to be broken and the guy seated in the back of the restaurant, somewhat purposely hidden from sight, sported a choppy blond mullet—business up front, party in the back—and jeans. The pièce de resistance was the wife-beater tee shirt with some innocuous logo from some other resort. In fact, compared to him, I was rather dapper.
Haute cuisine is lost on my chilidog palate but it was Caribbean-influenced and was pretty tasty. My wife asks me what I want for dinner and I always answer: Something tasty. Checked that box.
There’s a mid-level restaurant in which we dined a couple of times but the most fun of the three is built seaside with a wharf extending forty or so yards into the relaxed waters of The Narrows, the thin passage between the Atlantic and Caribbean. It’s where the water taxi docks to take adventurers to the sister island, Nevis. It also ferries Nevians, or possibly Nevites, to and from work at the resort.
The entertainment was interesting. They had a DJ—even for Sunday brunch—that played a mix of different hip-hop with the obligatory steel drum accoutrement. One night was disco; the songs would begin with some songs by the Bee-Gees, ABBA, or other atrocities and meld into the hip beats, or whatever it was supposed to be, designed to make you want to dance. It wasn’t annoying and rather hilarious. No one danced, though.
Our waitress is from Nevis and she was very proud of her island and I began referring to her as our director of Nevis. Her name began with “E” but within the unpronounceable name lived the word Queen and that’s what she went by. She was a pretty girl, probably mid-twenties to early thirties. Her face was kind and eyes were filled with happiness and wonderment, maybe an expectation of something fun about to happen; but I noticed when she disengaged, her eyes became withdrawn as if something not so happy was within her life; but she always put her best face forward.
My wife is a much better interviewer than I, so they babbled around about different things and we learned a lot about Queen and the world through her eyes. She studied Shakespeare. When I told her I could never really relate to his works she crinkled her nose at me. She is a hard worker and had saved for and purchased her own home on Nevis. She told us she had been born in Grenada. When I told her that we had been to Grenada and it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever been, she beamed as if I were complimenting her directly.
Yes, Grenada is a beautiful island but I didn’t tell her that I also witnessed the abject poverty. I didn’t tell her we drove up a steep hill with corrugated tin homes lazily strewn along the way, half-naked kids running around like they had no care in the world while their parents looked on from cooking fires or pinning wet, hand-scrubbed clothes to laundry lines.
I told her we were in awe of the waterfall in the jungle with three pools and were amazed by the crazy local who did a backflip from each waterfall into the deep pool below. I saw her pride well up inside and it made me smile.
On one of the days, we strolled the twenty yards from our room to the beach. I tried to navigate the rocky break in the shore in order to swim before I realized I would eventually twist my ankle and nosedive onto the ancient coral reef or remnants of a lava bed, I didn’t know which.
I settled for the tidal pool between the shore and the break. The waves seeped over the coral and into the pool. I sat, digging in heals and fingers to anchor me against the swirling of the constant sea. I felt something picking at my arm. At first I thought it was a crab or some other sea creature I had no desire to encounter, but it wasn’t harmful. A silver fish, no longer than four inches, turned and nudged my calf. Then there were others and they began dancing around my legs, bumping each other into me, swimming under my bent knees. I sat still and after a few minutes, they disappeared into the swirling water. Moments later, a different school of fish, this time possibly sunfish with bright shiny scales and orange underbellies, did the same. Each school took turns using me as a playground. This continued for some time.
It’s hot down here. I was somewhat hoping it to be a bit cooler. Up north, much of the U.S. is captured in heat. There are media rumblings—all contrived propaganda—that global warming is rearing its ugly head. It seems we’re all about to die. They fail to mention that the summers in the mid-1930s were far worse when the heat crushed the land and sent the mass migration to California. The descendants of those Okies are migrating back to the east now. The governments in the west have created a dust bowl of economic, cultural, and societal ruin. I caught a glimpse on TV of nasty women shoving looted goods into their car. Looting is becoming a national pastime. It is not only a symptom of our economic decay but a tipping point in societal collapse. Are things really heading in that direction?
I don’t know if this line of thought would resonate with the Kittians or Nevians, or even Queen. I doubt it would. They are filled with wonderment and pride and are naive to the world outside of their turquoise sea. All the same, I think they suspect things are going very badly elsewhere. You can see it in their eyes when they don’t think you’re looking.
Wonderful post! Wish I was there, Fred. I’ve always wanted to visit St. Kitts and Nevis. I think Nevis is where Alexander Hamilton was born? Your contrast of people who want to get away to the islands versus people who want to get away from the islands is evocative of islands I have lived on in the past. Very enjoyable reading, and thanks for sharing these telling spots in from your vacation… Enjoy the rest of it!