Bringing in the new year in Jamaica

I'm missing this view. It was where we took breakfast every morning at Chillin, near Ocho Rios. The entire wedding party and assorted relatives stayed in the villas there, we took over the whole place, and it made me fantasize about our extended family living together permanently on such a compound. Everyone had their own house, but interaction was easy and casual as we gathered in one villa for an impromptu karoke night, or met and chatted in passing on the lawn, or swam and played dominoes by the pool, or went from house to house at mealtimes, sampling each other's fare, or engaged in raucous rum and tequila fueled kalooki tournaments in the groomsmen's quarters come evening.

In our four-bedroom villa, there was the man and me, our two grown children, and their loves. My cousin from Trinidad and our niece Dani took the fourth room. A housekeeper prepared delicious meals. The first morning, my cousin, my husband and son went with her to the market to shop for provisions. My son loved it, picking out fresh fruits and vegetables from baskets on blankets at the open air stalls, with the breadfruit seller who told him she didn't have any breadfruit today because "the tree get too tall" and she could no longer climb it.

"I waited 28 years for this authentic Jamaica experience," he said when he got home. "If I lived here, I would be at that market every week."

His fiancée had a tummy bug the first day, but my brother the doctor prescribed her something, and she rallied and made it to the wedding. The day after the nuptials everyone who was staying at Chillin, plus some family members and friends who drove up from Kingston, had a beach day. This was the bride and groom's wish, to just relax and decompress with everyone in the turquoise waters. We drove into Kingston the next day, where we checked into a hotel, as there were too many of us to descend on anyone's home. At first, it felt strange and wrong, to be in the place where I grew up yet staying in a hotel. But it turned out to be a very cool vibe, having various adventures during the day, then coming back together for dinner as a massive group, some sixteen of us, pushing three tables together poolside.

We brought in the new year together in a luxurious presidential suite that my cousin who lives in Trinidad rented, with balconies overlooking the fireworks in the harbor. My cousin travels for work, and often stays at that hotel, so she "knew a guy," who upgraded her to that penthouse suite for the same price she'd have paid for two rooms. It had a kitchen, an elegant dining room, comfortable living room, and two bedrooms. Our niece Dani and a friend of hers from college, who'd flown in from New York on the day after the wedding, stayed in the second room.

We dispersed soon after midnight as the younger folks, plus my brother and my Trini cousin, planned to head out at 6 A.M. for the annual New Years Day breakfast party, while the rest of us were heading to lunch up at Strawberry Hill in the Blue Mountains, one of my favorite places on earth. My son's fiancée still had an iffy tummy, so a daybreak party with blaring music and street food and crowds of revelers drinking alcohol in the hot sun didn't sound like the thing. So she came with us to Strawberry Hill, which she loved.

I didn't read the news at all while I was away. But my man did. "Australia is burning," he told me one morning as I ate ackee and saltfish and coconut-milk soaked bammies. "We're on the brink of war with Iran," he told me the next morning, as I sipped Blue Mountain coffee made with condensed milk the Jamaican way by my son. It seemed as if the tragedy and mayhem were happening in another universe. But now, I'm back in New York. Everything unfolding is all too real. Outside, it just started snowing.

The photos above are lifted from my daughter's Instagram story. They were all having a fine time at the breakfast party. The photos below were taken at Strawberry Hill, where we had a far more peaceful time, eating a sumptuous lunch, wandering the grounds, nourished by spectacular Blue Mountain views.

 

 

 

Happy 2020 my dear friends who read here. May this be the year we start turning everything back around to the good. And may we gently embrace all the insights that come to us as we do.