Episode 19
20/20 Vision...Part 1
Forty five years young, that's what she reminds herself daily. And she believes it. "Age is in the mind." It may be a cliche, and yes, degeneration does come eventually, but she knew, hell, she was living proof, that the media bullshit about age was a bald-faced lie. It serves one purpose, to keep us buying, to make The Powers That Be wealthier . . . and wealthier . . . (it's never enough is it?). But she wasn't buying, not the media hype about aging, at least. She felt and lived younger, yet wiser. But at 45 her eyes were getting weaker. She wondered if the eyes of her soul were as well.
Glory days, aaah, how she loved thinking about them. She was determined to never rest on her laurels though; and she is too hyperactive; too easily bored to sit around listening to herself and others shoot the breeze wistfully about the good ole days. Her life was in motion, always, like a river carving a new course. She was a moving target that was forever trying new things, living new places, traveling, and learning. A woman in motion.
But as Bob Marley sang, you can't run away from yourself. Or your past. Eventually you have to face your fears and regrets, stand up to the ghosts of the past; even those residing in other nations. She believed to find peace of mind, 20/20 vision was a must. So she decided to face her demons, and stare those bad boys down.
Another trip to the west coast of Jamaica filled her with both dread and fear, yet anticipation and butterflies. Her glory days Westmoreland was gone, long gone; she knew that well from her last trip down and hundreds of reports by friends and acquaintances, many of them Jamaican. She had told herself for two years that if she ever went West again, she must carry with her, 20/20 vision. No rose colored glasses. No agendas, no excuses. No apologism for what she saw in Paradise Lost. Yet, no baggage of regret, remorse, or hate either, leftover from her years of residence there or her previous trip down, which had nearly cost her life and indeed, did cost her daughter's father his. With his life snuffed out before the time, she had spent the years since newly aware of her own mortality, as if the shadow of the Reaper followed behind her some distance, but ever present.
Solidifying this Presence was her own Mother's terminal illness, a lingering agony that nearly ended her long laid plans to visit Yard, but in her own helplessness to change the inevitable or ease any suffering, and after months of stress and insomnia, wrestling with guilt and regret, she went ahead with her visit, if for no other reason than to LIVE, defying the inevitable we ALL face.
Perhaps choices like these are a sign of the times. Perhaps the baby boomers, having formed their view of life while hiding under their desks at school during nuclear annihilation drills, are inable to cope with reality and are too selfish and apathetic to try.
Nursing homes emerged as a national standard in the baby boomer era, after all. Boomers live for today, believing life is too short and battling the constant fear that none of it has any real purpose, so we hide away in our suburbs and place the visions of our own mortality in nursing homes. We've become a nation of Scarlett O'Haras; we push away reality and we will "Think about that tomorrow."
But tomorrow never comes, until angry inhabitants of nations where they face off with death every day decide to give us a wake up call. To share their agony they dramatically shove loss and grief right up in our face as has always been done everywhere else in the world. Yet we deal with the grief by turning it to anger, vengeance, and racism, still avoiding reality and all its sharp, uncomfortable prongs. We spend billions to keep reality on the other side of the planet, and we remain still and relaxed in suburbia.
But reality is in her face every day, and relaxation is a luxury she had not enjoyed of late. Whether she tried to run from pain or not, it walked with her, because one she loves, a daughter to her, walks with the Reaper in the suburbs of Al Khut, and the thin veneer of "self defence" The Powers That Be have constructed for the girl are weak armor against reality in the deserts of Iraq. Facing pain and fear every day from the generation that came before and the generation that follows, was wearing her thin.
Swaying palms, branches brushing each other give even the very breeze a snare drum rhythm, and waves lap at her heels as the tide comes in. A bird coos and twitters, and from far off in the distance the breeze carries with it the sound of Abingdon's peacock calls. Her eyes closed she soaks up the warmth of the sun through her eyelids, and the golden glow spreads through her body. From twelve miles away the faint rhythms of the reggae blasting down in Negril softens to a soothing hum as it carries across the water. Without sitting or opening her eyes, she sips the fresh squeezed orange juice she brought from a thermos with a ninja turtle on the outside. In this cove, laying on the sugar sand just yards from an old smuggling landing strip in Hanover, she is at peace with the world and her own soul, with no questions, and no regrets. The breeze whips up and the fragrance of flowers and spices growing wild nearby drift into her headspace. God is in His heaven and all is right with the world.
Suddenly the peace is shattered by a cacaphony of hammering, drilling, the sounds of bulldozers and men shouting, jackhammers and machinery. She lays frozen still, her eyes squeezed shut, steadfastly refusing to open them. The sand beneath her turns hard and cold, like concrete. Then she feels hands on her hair, her shoulders, grabbing her hands firmly, a dozen hands, and voices, lilting, melodic voices, saying ugly things, all at once. She cannot make out their words and does not try to, refuses to. She knows in her heart what they are saying, and she does not want to hear it; has heard it too often, the well-rehearsed script of the horde of whores.
Abruptly she is jolted upright by forces outside herself, and her eyes open wide. The sea is gone, covered over with a huge parking lot. The trees have been ripped from the ground and lay in a pile like old skeletons. In their place are walls of concrete. The beach is gone, the sand turned to boardwalks and cement paths, with concrete-walled souvenier shops hawking plastic goods made in Japan and stamped in cheap ink with pictures of palm trees and dreadlocked "Rastas" playing bongo drums, just one racial stereotype away from the Mexican snoozing on the ground under a huge sombrero. It is so much easier to box up what is foreign than to make the effort to find out what the hell is going on.
She awoke with a start as the alarm went off the day of her flight in the white bird taking her to face her black ghosts. Tears wet her cheeks. Fuck! She was so sick of this nightmare. For five years she'd woken up from it in tears at least once a month. There were many variations of the pattern but they all ended up with concrete and helplessness, anger, and a lousy mood for the entire day once awake. What had happened to her Mazatlan, her Key West, her San Francisco, and her Negril...what had happened to her world? Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.
As she checked her bag and added the last essentials for her trip, she fought the feeling that the dream, just hours before her flight, was a bad omen. She told herself it meant no more than the manifestation of her own fears about her plans for this trip, to move forward yet only doing so by taking a few steps back, way back, into the past. Anger and regret are a cancer and forgiveness and restoration are the cure. It was too late to make peace with her baby fadda, but she damn well intended to tie up the rest of her loose ends, or die trying (figuratively only).
Yet this trip was about far more than time travel. Although the past, and its resolution and closure was a key element, the majority of her plans revolved around forward motion. At 45 she intended to fulfill a 20 year dream of learning to scuba. With a mild case of claustrophobia she had finally subdued with years of traipsing around Colorado, exploring ghost town mines and numerous caves, she felt she could finally handle being more than a few feet under the surface of the sea. With so many years paddling around and under the waves with a tube in her mouth, she'd never been to that mysterious place beyong reach to her; that deep place where the pressure closes in on you like a box, and the light fades with every foot of depth. But her nearly manic love of the sea and all its creatures could never be sated with snorkeling. She knew that in her heart, with years of snorkeling hundreds of spots in a half dozen countries.
Her claustrophobia was representative of her entire personality, and it manifested itself in more destructive ways than tenseness on elevators and elevated vitals in tunnels and caves. She told herself if she could conquer scuba, go down deep without panic, she might acquire the ability to accept and even enjoy commitment in a relationship. As much as she dreaded growing old alone, being trapped in a long term relationship with the same man year after year had always been, on a subconscious level, equivalent to San Quentin's Death Row. But she was taking her phobic cures one day at a time like any good AA devotee. Today scuba, tomorrow, marriage. Today Negril, tomorrow the world!
So she tapped on her daughter's door to wake her, then peeped her head in. A heavy sleeper, her younger daughter stirred but did not respond. "It's time honey. I need my lift to the airport."
"Uhhhh!" The girl groaned and sighed, like the martyr every teenage girl was when asked to do anything but shop or rent videos. "Okaaaaay! Okaaay! I'm up." Another sigh from the oppressed and Mommie Dearest backed out of the room, pulling the door shut. At least she wouldn't have to listen to that crap for ten days.
'Yessss!' she thought gleefully, doing a mental baby dance that rivalled Ally MacBeal's. 'That's was worth the trip in itself.'
Two hours later the car was packed with too many suitcases, too many gadgets she would end up giving away, more swimsuits than days to wear them, and a rainbow of sarongs to go with the dozen she'd inevitably buy while there. One of the few quality items actually made in Jamaica by Jamaicans that could be purchased in Negril was batik fabric. Even still, it was necessary to read the label on the corner to make sure you weren't supporting a Malaysian child sweat shop. What a world!
The three hour ride to the Miami International Airport was filled with music. Breezing along the Sawgrass Expressway through the Everglades, cruise control set at 90, she enjoyed the sun and breeze while Eek A Mouse sang to her of Sunday morning ganja smuggling and virgin girls, one issue she could identify with, another too distant a memory. She flicked the cd front open and injected some Diamonds. 'Screw that virgin shit' she thought, then glanced over at her 19 year old daughter. 'No offense.' Her daughter looked at her quizically, but knew better than to ask what might be going through her mother's demented mind.
She smiled to herself. 'Nuttin bettah dan de ripe fruit. De good mon dem nuh wa fe see nuh virgin gyal.'
Already her mind was slipping into patois, like some uncontrollable bodily function no deodorant can control. Once landed in Yard, before she left St. James Parish she and the minivan driver would be chattin like cousins, she knew that. That's the way it always played out.
The Miami airport was a walk down memory lane for her, and after hugging her daughter for dear life, promising to get her some really unique jewelry in Jamaica, then managing to convince her to leave her alone there, she took a trip to the exit doors outside customs. This excursion was not so much to kill time as to relive all those exciting, dreadful, euphoric moments, exiting those doors a free woman, having beat the system (and made a shitload of money) once again. She stood there a moment looking in, remembering that fully alive feeling, wistfully remembering the money, and smiling to herself in ultimate satisfaction, reminding herself The Man is not The Son of Man.
Then her reminiscing was brought abruptly to an end as someone behind her answered his cohort's question, "It's 10:15." 'Shit!' she turned, then lifted her wrist and confirmed his reply. 'I gotta move my ass.'
She went through the heightened security Americans were now accustomed to in this modern police state where Big Brother was always watching, and got on the bird that would carry her beyond Big Brother's reach. As the plane lifted off she had a stronger than usual case of butterfly stomach, and knew it was in no way caused by motion sickness.
to be continued . . .
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