Flashback: Isla Grande, a speck of an island off Colon, in Panama. Standing waist deep off the rock-walled beach in the warm Caribbean waters, I’m drinking from a coconut that has been hacked in two; a grinning, dark barman has poured a strong local rum into the cool sweet milk. Sailboats from Australia lean against the horizon as they make their way into the calm harbor, just in from crossing the Canal. Music spills from the cantina speakers. My son plays on shore with his Panamanian nanny watching closely. The breeze, always the sweet breeze lifting the heat from our necks.
My life, at this moment, is vast and beautiful, my days here line up for my future like the wisp of inconstant dreams. At night the generators are turned off and the skies darken to ink, stars glisten and wink across the expanse of space, brighter than I have ever seen, undisturbed by man-made lights of earth. The nanny sits with her sister on the steps of our rough cabin, a candle between them as they listen out for my son asleep behind them.
We perch on the deck rails of a rough cantina and watch the young men play their drums in their shack’s doorways. Plates of steaming rice flecked with fish and chicken are being served to us by girls with white talcum dusted between their breasts, we drink cold Panamanian beer, the water beside us soft as it rolls into the stone walls, lovers stroll along the palm-strewn path holding hands, the girls shy, hiding their blushes with their hair, the boys wide grins, unabashedly proud. The freedom here, the isolation from the world, the contentment with the simplest of house, food, drink.
Everything is deconstructed down to the bones of elegant and easy human needs. A beach. A fishing boat. A hammock just inside the doors of the window-less block houses, the perfect, cool and salty air whispering through the sand alleyways that form the island’s highways. There is nothing missing. Accoutrements of the outside world are unnecessary. Clothing need only be a sarong and a t-shirt. Shoes not required. Jewelry of shells and mother-of-pearl and feathers. Everywhere there are drum beats, like sacred hearts day and night. The sandy earth beneath my bare feet has never felt so cool, clean, so solid.
I leave this place with a heavy heart, I put the memories in a tiny box in my head to take out later, during the Great Sorrows. I run them through my fingers like prayer beads when I am sick and despair has lain itself in my life’s path, knowing that this place still vibrates with its drumbeats, waiting on my return. Isla Grande, stay in perfect stasis for me, I am coming soon and I will pack my lotions and perfumes again to give to the girls who powder themselves between their breasts to stay cool. I am coming back to heal, to the place that looks straight into my heart and sees stars there.
