I’ve watched the flamboyant poinciana trees burst from orange-blossomed brilliance laced in green leaves, to brown-limbed skeletons, to green-seed-pod-strung, like giant beans, and delight in the new knowing.
At the same time, I miss picking blueberries on a cricket-themed evening when the reindeer moss crunches and imprints my bended knee. Standing in a woods so quiet, when a pine warbler calls, it’s like the voice of the forest itself.
Here, on Isla, the sun is hot against the back of my neck, sweat drips. Perspective competes with every picked-blueberry-remembrance.
Moped rides weave poems in my head–make me eloquent. Thoughts, lines, and lyrics a winding narrative that disappears when I put pen to paper.
What to say about this life, this island of Islenos, Mexicans, expats, tourists–boozed, coked, sexed, sunned up one side and down the other?
Expats balanced between here and there.
Indoctrinated ideas of “normal” and “Ok” dogging us here amongst the flowing tequila and a life more complicated than those looking in from the outside can know.
***
There’s a surreal element to living on Isla–living on a tropical island in the Caribbean, sun-baked by close-to-equator rays.
A hazy, heat-dazed reality disrupted by hurricane waves, tight budgets, and news of the mainland.
Heat creates a tranquility and slowness I craved in Michigan’s cold weather, but now learn to both celebrate and tolerate. I never napped before coming here, but heat and humidity often make me feel like I’m wading through too-thick air, and my natural energy is tempered, slowed. Day sleep comes easier, and I now understand the siesta.
I turn to day to day activities for grounding. Each morning is a list: walk Bea, shake dog hair off sheets, sweep dog hair and sand, make bed, tidy, do dishes, etc. I’ve always found simple satisfaction in daily chores.
Then it’s off to any number of activities related to my writing work and/or island-living: white sand beach time spent melting beneath palm trees and swimming in ocean so warm the temperature doesn’t change between air and water; snorkeling along reefs undulating with silver-bodied barracuda, rainbow-scaled parrot fish, and sergeant majors dress-scaled in official black and yellow stripes; a bike cruise around the south end to drink a cold Dos XX and lose ourselves in impossible blue Caribbean waters.
As struggles with money, the past, and the recent death of a friend creep in, making both waking and sleeping a 24 hour hamster wheel of anxious thoughts, I remind myself to look around and appreciate the every-night-perfect-in-its-unique-way sunsets; my sweet home life with Ryan and dogs; the turquoise waters others spend thousands of dollars and hours of time to visit for just a week.
At this time last year, I was plucking the last tomatoes before frost; buying, hauling, stacking firewood; making arrangements for snow-removal; fighting a deep and stubborn battle with loneliness in my backwoods, solitary cabin life; and preparing for my December trip to Mexico that was only supposed to last two months.
The contrast between these two lives is many things at different moments.
Part of me cannot imagine selling the cabin, despite the Remax sign in the driveway.
I’ve memorized the topography. Mapped the acre lawn and all its stones, stumps, and wild strawberry patches. I know where the old road and rock wall undulate, disappear, and reappear, in the thick, swampy woods. I know where the lady slippers appear in spring.
Where the otters have their den; where the deer cross; and which side of the woods the Barred Owl calls “Whoo coooks for youu?” Night after night.
In spring, I became accustomed to falling asleep to the woodcock’s lonely cheeping, soon joined by a cacophony of spring peepers. Changing seasons quickly replaced the peeping choir with a cricket orchestra carried along by coyote howls.
I like walking Bea at night here on Isla, because our sidewalk is adjacent to a salty Salina swamp where frogs make night sounds and sleepy herons croak.
Sometimes I’m lucky, and for just a moment the streets are empty of mopeds, taxis, golf carts, and it’s just me, my panting dog, and night noises.
Mosquitoes, like in Michigan, swarm at sundown.
I’m fascinated by comparisons between Northern mosquitoes and those found on the island. Michigan’s seem enormous in comparison, attacking in clouds even in daytime, but slow and easy to swat with a tell-tale whine that gives them away.
Isla’s mosquitos not only potentially carry tropical illnesses, but are tiny, silent, and fast moving.
Bug spray is an important accessory, in both homes.
It seems to be, that in the comparisons, I find a sense of self. Day by day.
***
9-25-17
The death of my dear friend Kay, who’s memoirs I’ve been writing for the past two months, has made me especially contemplative.
She lived on the island for the last twelve years, moving here from her Texas home because:
“I can be myself here. Nobody gives a damn how I act, what I wear, what I say.”
One of the things that made me want to move to Isla is the island’s sense of community, especially a community of gutsy women. I’ve had the honor of knowing many strong, amazing individual women in my 32 years living in Upper Michigan, but Isla Mujeres–Island of Women–has gathered a community of women to her bosom that I’m blessed to be a part of and ponder often with delight and wonder. I’m not unrealistic about the day to day dramas that play out amongst our group, but I’m constantly awed by these women who made their way to Isla’s shores.
Women who, like me, washed up from all sorts of pasts and pull it together to live here, which isn’t easy.
Women like Kay.
She died suddenly on September 13th of a heart attack, but her life and story changed me forever.
Today, for the first time since her death, I picked up her writings again. I read through a Christmas letter she wrote in 2002, and wept for the loss of this strong, sassy, wonderful woman who ended her letter with: “My wish for 2003 is peace–on earth, in our nation in our families, and homes.”
