Montego Bay

That jetty in the distance on the left is right next to where I almost drowned when I was nine. It is not a unique memory. My brother, my cousins, and I each recalled almost drowning as children at this beach, and we marveled that our normally careful parents thought nothing of dropping us off there on summer mornings when we were only six, seven, no more than ten years old. They imagined they were leaving us in the care of our older cousins, who were fourteen and fifteen and far more interested in the teenage friends who came to meet them on the sand than they were in supervising little cousins rambling about. The last time I almost drowned, beside that jetty in the picture, my brother noticed me struggling and dragged me in from the deep. That was the day I decided I needed to know how to swim and so I taught myself by dog paddling in the shallows until I could put together a good distance without touching the sand. And then I asked my brother and one of my cousins who could swim to flank me as I swam out to the raft in the deep part of the sea. How I silently exulted when I made it there and back without flailing. That night I was so excited I couldn't sleep. I could hardly wait to get back to the beach the next day to assure myself that indeed, I was now a swimmer!

Some vacation pics:

This lovely man was my view at breakfast.

My much-loved sister cousin was also on the trip, with her husband and two sons. They live in Virginia but we met up in Newark and flew down together. Her former high school compatriots flocked to visit her each day. She, like my mother, has never lost a friend.

The dudes abide: They are two of my nephews, one from Fairfax,Virginia, the other from Kingston, Jamaica.

Late afternoon on Doctor's Cave Beach.

My brother and two of his kids drove from Kingston to spend the weekend with us at the hotel. Saturday night nine of us played rollicking games of dominoes around the pool while a steel band serenaded us. My brother’s daughter grew up in Jamaica as I did, but she lives and works in Brooklyn now. We usually see her in New York these days, but she was home for the holidays, and it was fun to spend time together in Jamaica. 

My cousin and her husband and their boys were our nightly dinner companions. One day their family did an excursion to Nine Mile, the country village in the mountains where Bob Marley was born and is now buried. For my nephew the musician, it was a pilgrimage. At dinner that evening, he was all lit up recounting all he had seen and thought and felt standing at the birthplace and graveside of a legend. I’d chosen not to join them. There was a steep narrow path and many steps carved into the mountainside, and I knew I could not manage them.

I caught up with my brother over lunch. He was searching on his phone for a picture of someone that he wanted to show me.

My man captured sunsets and the movement of stars from the balcony of our room.

My nephew's hair drew much attention from fellow guests at the hotel.

I went home to Jamaica and now I am back home in New York. Twas a good trip all around.