Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Club

The second Tuesday of the month.  That's the day they remember or try to anyway.  It's the day of their monthly meeting.  They come for 9:30 to sit and sip tea or coffee and have a small bite to eat.  They chat and catch up.  "my granddaughter has decided to come and live with me" one of the ladies said.  another had just returned from a trip "back home".  Back home is actually where many of them have come to in their waning years.  They moved from this place when they were young.  They lived their lives, been married, had children, buried mothers and fathers and some their husbands and children.  And for reasons they each had made separately, they returned "back home" to the land of their birth.

They use the club as a gathering spot, each having their own lives to live during the rest of the month.  But that second Tuesday brought them back together.  It makes them feel "alive" and "needed".  Keeps them busy and helps them feel useful in their older age.    It's not about the building they are in, it's about the friendships they have formed, about the one bond they all have, having lived abroad from the land they come from.

The meeting begins.  She sits in the corner, when ever she can attend, and she watches, listens and takes in all around her.  She is not as old as many of these women, but she enjoy's being their.  Her husband calls some of them "backstabbers".. "Don't do or say, or commit to anything cause they might stab you in the back if you don't do it their way".  But she still goes.  She enjoys being the "young chick" among the older hens.  She enjoys taking direction, but also leading when need be.  She doesn't like that not all participate or even seem to enjoy being their, but she still attends, and still takes part.
QB6FBTSNCHHDOne day, when she is their age, she will be a full fledged member, as they are, in the club.  The one where they sit and enjoy each others company for a couple of hours on the second Tuesday of every month. 

Crescent Stretch of Beach

Cream sand dotted with prickle berries and straw from the nearby Casuarina tree lined the gentle crescent stretch of beach.  She sat and watched her family floating on boogie-boards in the blue green shades of sea as the hot Caribbean sun ripped behind high wispy white cloudss.  She could tell by the tenderness with which her husband had entered the water that it was cold.  Well, as cold as it could be when the air temperature hoovered in the mid 80's during the day.

Her young son kicked away from his father as if something had happened and he wanted to get away.  Most liely an argument over not enough waves to surf but he soon found happiness in the waves on the beach break that could carry him in, if only for a short few yards, to the shore.

She watched again as her husband coaxed her son and older daughter along some in shore waved and then he himself too a ride on a slightly bigger verson. The sea was too calm today to boogie board, but they all tried anyway.

She thought of the middle child, a girl, who was spending the afternoon at her best friends house.  The were born 6 months apart (could have been around the same time if the mother hadn't miscarried early in the pregnancy, but then things may have been different).  This daughter worried her, as she didn't always listen, and many times didn't do as she was told.  But over all was a good girl.

Life, ingeneral, worried her with things she couldn't explain or understand.  She had grown up in a family of 6 children with worldly parents for whom she would be eternally grateful.  If not for them, who knows where she would have ended up.   She fears it would not have been on this lovely crescent shaped stretch of cream colored sand on this beach in the Caribbean.