The Vacation

     The day began much like all the other days this week.  I awoke to sunny skies, cool gentle breezes, a few puffy pink clouds, and the aroma of strong, dark coffee in the air.  Heaven.  Or it was supposed to be.  This is what I had come for, come to this isolated island with no cell service, no Wi-Fi, no TV, only a landline telephone in the manager’s office in the dining hall, several hundred feet away past the other cottages that make up this small resort.  On the other hand, there is sailing, snorkeling, swimming, shelling along the wide beach, and all the sunbathing you could ever want to do.

So what is wrong with me?   

The first day I was in love with the place.  Likewise, Day 2 and 3.  By Day 4 the novelty was beginning to wear off.  I’d been sailing, snorkeling, shelling, swimming, and as I’m not a sunbather, I’d skipped that part and located myself in a hammock with one of the several books I’d brought along.  On Day 5 I did little more than read all day in the hammock.  Day 6, yesterday, was Saturday, and we guests made an excursion into the nearby small town to buy souvenirs or stock up on provisions.  I bought some dark chocolate, several mangos and limes, club soda, and “still” water, as they call bottled water.  There were a few ladies with crafts to sell, sitting on blankets on the wide porches of the small stores.  But I had enough knick-knacks in my apartment back at home so I looked for some used books to fill out my tiny reading library.  Unfortunately, none of the books were in English and my mastery of the local language was not good enough to plow through anything more difficult than newspaper headlines.

Day 7, today, is Sunday, and I suppose all the year-round inhabitants of this lovely spot go to church, or at least they don’t go to work, so nothing is open, not even our dining hall.  Perhaps I should have read the fine print in the brochure advertising this “Vacation for the Tired Overworked City Dweller.”  Then I might have more in my larder than the fixing for a vodka tonic….minus the vodka….and a bar of chocolate and some mangoes. This may force me to make the acquaintance of my neighbors, whom I’ve only waved at on the way to the dining hall.  

They seem to be a family that cooks its own food.  I’ve smelled meat grilling from their place on a couple of evenings.  I wonder if they’d be up to a barter—dark chocolate for a sandwich, say, or a couple of mangoes for a muffin and a cup of coffee.  Dang it, though, this is the very thing I came here to get away from.  The constant rubbing up against other people.  The “making nice” when you’d really like to ask them to lower the volume in their apartment from which sounds emanate that could only be created by a birthday party of 3-year-old squealers overridden by someone’s uncle practicing the clarinet.  God, I don’t miss that.  Nor do I miss the rush, rush, rush to the subway, waiting for the elevator at work, listening to cell phones and their individual songs/tunes/sounds that go off all day.  Why couldn’t we have stuck to Ma Bell’s universal ring tone?  OK, I am such a grump.  But this vacation is supposed to cure that.  So why couldn’t I have known to have some food in the cottage for Sunday? 

 

OK, here goes.  I’ll just go over and politely ask about trading some food and get through this day.

Oh, a guy’s outside at the grill.  “Hello, there.  I’m your neighbor next door.” 

  “I know,” he says to me. “We see you walking by here to dining hall.  You no have food with you?  You should tell us.  We have plenty.  Here, come here, have a seat.” He calls inside “Honey, lady is here.”   

His wife comes to the porch.  “Hello” she says to me. Her husband says (in his limited English, for my benefit, I know) “lady no has food in house.  Make her plate, OK?”  His wife disappears inside. 

“Would you like some of my dark chocolate and some mangoes?” I ask.  

 “No, no, no, you keep,” he replies.  “You need food.  You too small, you know? Not fat.” 

His wife appears again with a large platter laden with all manner of things, covered with plastic wrap.  It looks like fruit salad and some rolls, a fried chicken breast, something mysterious with onions in it, and a large piece of some kind of berry pie.  “This is too much,” I protest.  

 “No, no” he says again.  “You be here next week? Come eat with us.  It just Mama and me and we get lonesome. You by your own self?  No husband? No man?”

“No man,” I say.  “Just me. I like it that way. Well, thanks for everything.  You’re too kind.  I’ll bring the dishes back tomorrow.”  I walk back the short distance to my cottage, carefully balancing the platter so that nothing spills.  Just me, I like it that way, I think to myself.  Maybe I’ve been a little inflexible about that.  Maybe a vacation isn’t for getting away from everything.  Perhaps there’s something to be said for meeting new people. 

Well, now, next week may go a lot better.