Impressions of George Town. I pull out of the Tennis Club yesterday, ready for errands, a hopeful for a trip to the bank, clean and new. Cross the road to the side I think I should be walking on in order for the cars and trucks that come rattly-screaming up and over the hill on the narrow one-and-a-half lane road out of town. I am walking slightly behind a youngish Bahamian man. A friend of his appears out the entrance road to the quarry, riding a 4-wheeled ATV. They speak quickly, laugh, the friend moves on with the parting words, “and to tink I tought dat was wit you….” I know they mean me. I am wearing short shorts, a little tank top, sunglasses and wet hair piled up ontop my head. I have a backpack on my back and Columbia sandals on my feet. I look like a “cruiser” for sure (a boat person). Don’t I? What do I look like to these Bahamian men? I know I am going to be running the gauntlet on the way back into town, and cross the street to avoid the men who gather in front of the Silver Dollar bar. Why am I afraid of them? I am an educated woman, an American, an old women’s libber…all they do is…say things. Anywhere I went alone in Nassau, men would make comments. The impersonality of the city and hustle and noise diluted the effect. Here, I don’t feel comfortable at all. Although it’s cloudy, I retreat behind my sunglasses. If they can’t see my eyes, they can’t see me. I can pretend I can’t see them and not pay any attention. I don’t want to be rude, but I am in a strange culture here that I don’t understand. I’ve almost made it to the library when a couple of guys spill out of a truck right in front of me. One says, “good mahwnin beeyoutiful, it justs makes my day to see a pretty young ting like you...” I am a 48-year old mother of three, veteran of three caesarians with the scars and less than perfect abdomen to show for it. Is this guy blind? How can I respond? How can I not? He did say good morning so I stammer out…”gee thanks” or something and try to move on quickly. His buddy is saying , “c’mon, c’mon, c’mon over heah, c’mon”. I accelerate. I am a stranger to their ways. I am a “wealthy” cruiser in a third-world country being completely thrown off my game by two men whose easy banter confuses and embarrasses me. My sunglasses do not shield me sufficiently. I refuse to be intimidated. I will walk places by myself. I do my business quickly at the library and head determinedly for J & K. It’s quiet, cool, dark, and full of other cruisers. I am safe. No one has made comments along the way. The sunglasses worked. I settle down to something I know and love – surfing the internet.
Susan arrives looking for a fax. I met her first at the St. Francis Resort. She was trying to get onto their wifi. So was I. We had a little chat and I was charmed by her southern drawl and freckled face. She is a fellow jewelry lover. She wears great fun stuff and lots of it. She will surprise you: seated she looks just like a sweet little Southern lady, but when she stands up she approaches six feet in height. I mentioned yesterday that she is here on the Black Pearl look-alike. What I may have omitted is her story. She tells it to me in the unlikely setting of a little green shack on a Bahamian out-island, quietly and sincerely. She comes from a farm in Tennessee. She is here with Skip, who was first a high-school sweetheart and then came in and out of her life at times. She led a reasonably gentlewomanly sheltered life in the South, full of PTA meetings and lunches and charity work and society affairs. Things changed, her sons grew. Then she lost one. Lost a son. My throat goes dry. Panic. Racing pulse. Unimaginable heartache. No way. I am NOT losing mine. That would be a guaranteed trip to the psychiatric hospital. I am stunned, speechless. I croak out, “ Oh, I am so sorry…” She must have told this story many times before, she barely loses a beat and continues. A brief acknowledgement of the profound consequences of this event; she says that she became a social worker to work with troubled youths after his loss. She did not find her salvation there, but in the unheralded reappearance of Skip in her life and his offer to sail to the Caribbean aboard a pirate ship. Susan had never been aboard a sailboat. Skip sailed a few times, small boats, small lakes. What has she got to lose? To the utter astonishment of her friends, her sons, the pick-a-little ladies back in Tennessee and society page editors, she decides to go. Yes, she gets on board this pirate ship and the two of them make their way to an old pirate capital – George Town. Fifteen months later, they are still on the boat. Here’s the point: she tells me she is a new woman. She feels strong, confident, alive, almost fearless. She has recreated herself. A phoenix. A new path. She confides in me that even her most well-heeled girlfriends back home are jealous. She is living the fantasy and becoming in the process. We celebrate our becoming quietly with a promise to get together in the next few days. We are now sisters in the sisterhood of women who cast themselves out to sea with no experience and a dream to follow.
Today it’s not nice out. We are being buffeted by one cold front after another. The northerly wind is bringing squalls and clouds. Wayne is glad for the chance to read and nap, having played tennis and volleyball all day yesterday. I am antsy as heck, didn’t get any exercise yesterday. I want to run on the ocean-side beach. By ten AM he decides he does not want to go, and I get what I wanted – a solo run on the beach. I take the dinghy the short ride to Stocking Island’s lee side and tie it up to a baby Casuarina. The trail over to the big beach meanders gently through the Bahamian vegetation, the occasional lizard scattering before my feet as my thundering footsteps announce my invasion. The terrain is alternately rocky and sandy. In the most thickly wooded areas, a canopy of palm leaves shades me from what little sun there is. It feels like going through a tunnel. The trail bursts onto a ridge of sand with a crashing of sound and sights. The waves are huge! The roar of the surf compounds the wail of the wind and there is nothing but beach to behold. You can forget everything else. I am standing on a beach for which privilege people pay $300 a night at the crappy little cabins closeby. All I have to do is endure some swinging on the anchor and a two-month trip down the ICW and I get to do this for free. I am free. I am alone. It is magnificent. I am so happy the weather has given me this time to be alone. I move down to the area closest to the water where the sand is most firm. It’s low tide. I have timed it just right. I think about Susan. I think about home. I think about my theory that artists are people who see things a bit better, recognize patterns, see through things, see truths, and are wounded by the ugliness of the world. I am no artist, but I live with one. I am also wounded by the ugliness of the world. I am running on one of the most gorgeous beaches in the world, and healing. The yoga is healing. The running is letting my mind blank. The yoga works on concentrating the breath and the body into the all, letting the mind go blank. But it’s not blank, it’s on overdrive. Stop. Stop the thoughts. Be quiet. No luck. But I’m getting there. All the petty ugliness I have encountered, all the conflict, controversy, arguing over kids-money-politics-religion-education-you name it. No gossip. All new. New people. New experiences. I am Susan, I am becoming, I am recreating, I am phoenix. Little rain pellets knife into me, but it’s all fresh and good and I’m running next to the pounding waves and running into the roaring wind and wishing this wall all I ever had to do. The squall moves on. I’m almost done with my run. My knees want no more of it. I have to respect the knees. It’s over. The autohelm is on as I walk back through the trail, oblivious. Stretch. Get in the dinghy. Back to the boat. The boat is like sensory deprivation – I’ve been living within it’s eight-by-ten confines for 8 months now. It’s ok. I wash up a little with a bit of fresh water in a dish basin and a washcloth, thinking about how much I hated this as a child. My mother would make me stand naked in the bathroom while she scrubbed me up with a washcloth. I was to stand still and submit silently. I was appalled at this undignified procedure, but powerless to stop her. Now it feels wonderful, fresh, cool and clean. Reinvention. A new person. Creating new schema, new memories, a new set of experiences with which to interpret the world. I am an adventurer, in the Women of the Sea sisterhood. I am a new bride again. I am brown. I am a sailor. I am.
