Changing Tides

Changing Tides

The sun’s in my eyes as I write. The evening’s first mosquitoes, which will soon chase me indoors from my porch bench, begin to whine.
Guaya leaves rustle, branches weighed heavy with ripening, round green fruits I love to eat by the handful. I call them “road fruit” because I like to take them on the moto with me. Their orange, juicy insides taste like a sweet tart. We called them genips when we were kids eating them on vacation in The Bahamas.
Our son kicks in my belly as I sip tea from a brown ceramic mug.
Momma sent me a photo of trillium blooming in a white-petaled carpet that I know blankets much of Upper Michigan right now.

I ache for Michigan, but first have to get this Michigan/California/Mexico boy baby born before I can return.
Then, I will swim in fresh water—cold tears from a glacier long melted.
I will forage for asparagus by the roadside and precious morels hiding beneath last fall’s leaves.
I will bury my fingers in garden dirt, the same that dirtied my childhood knees.

I never thought I’d have a child away from Michigan. For that matter, I really wasn’t sure I was ever going to have a child.
After my marriage ended, I focused on things like how we have a serious over-population problem I didn’t want to contribute to. I told myself that, as a teacher, I had opportunities to help shape and influence many humans, as opposed to focusing my energy on just one. I searched myself and while I like babies and children, I didn’t feel the pull to be a mother that so many feel. I didn’t feel any genetic imperative to create another little human.

When Ryan and I first started dating he said to me, “This might be too much too fast, but I’m 32 years old and I want a family before I get much older. I think if we’re going to date we should have these things out in the open right away…and I think you’d look so beautiful pregnant.”
I laughed, a bit uncomfortable at his honest revelations, but also flattered and intrigued. His candidness was refreshing. But I was glorying in my independence, had just moved to Mexico after 31 years in Michigan, and wasn’t sure yet that I was ready to commit my heart, let alone my life, to anyone but myself.
We carried on like semi-responsible adults living on an island in the Caribbean: working hard, playing hard, drinking tequila and laughing with friends late into the night.
It was a life I couldn’t have imagined for myself on lonely nights in my Michigan cabin with only a fuzzy cat and Bea puppy for company.
There were nights in the cabin where I gloried in my independence, and many others when I stared at the phone, door, window, computer screen, and longed for the company and distractions of a world “out there.” Nights when all the freedom and space of 40 acres and the surrounding wilderness pressed in on me and made me ache for something more.
Life in the cabin was everything I wanted. And everything I wanted to escape from.
Those nights, if you’d whispered in my ear that two years later I’d be living on Isla with my handsome musician, soon-to-be husband, six months pregnant, I wouldn’t have believed a word.

Because of many aspects of our life, I’ve had several people ask in hushed voices, “Was this planned, or…” their voices trailing off in insinuation. Smart blond professor leaves her job at the university, seduced into living an alternative lifestyle on an island in Mexico and then carelessly gets pregnant.
Makes me giggle every time, considering I’m 33 years old and have managed to avoid getting pregnant thus far.
Week by week, one conversation after another, this future that I’m living coalesced. Flights to visit family in California and Michigan. Walking hand in hand down a familiar gravel lane and feeding Ryan his first wild blackberry. Slowly, out of whatever ether they’re born, a shared dream coalesced.

A future I’d never fathomed for myself formed from salty turquoise waters, two people’s hard work, shared ideas, and a love I’d once convinced myself didn’t exist for me.
“Yes.” I said with my throat and lips; my head and heart; every inch of my body.
Yes to a life and future with this good man. Yes to leaving behind the known, loved, and familiar for new loves and new adventures. Yes to making life, a human, a little man. All those thoughts not caring about carrying on my genes shifted, and I learned what it is to want to make a person with someone I love.

Baby Callan kicks once, and then again. It makes me smile every time.

The community on Isla is supportive beyond anything I could’ve hoped for, and eagerly awaits his birth almost as much as we do.
My sister and I were raised in a community of “Aunts and Uncles,” “Grandparents,” and dear family friends who loved us fiercely, and valued us as people. In a world where adults and children are too often separated, Laurel and I grew up surrounded in a diverse group of people from all ages, who taught, nurtured, and mentored us. It’s what I want for my own child, and I’ve found it here.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, always going on about how much I miss Michigan. I think we often mythologize a place once we’re not living there anymore. I try to remind myself of the loneliness, bugs, cold, limitations. Those are there too, in the mix of golden evenings on clear lake shores, waiting for the moon to rise so we could dive, naked and free—swimming for hours beneath a night sky broken open with stars, planets, and spinning satellites.
I miss fresh field-grass aromas—green swathes dotted with purple Lupine and Queen Anne’s Lace. It’s like each of these details is inside a kaleidoscope I hold to my eye, and if I’m not careful, could lose myself to. I give it a turn and the images and colors shift: my father’s garden, corn tassels flutter in an August breeze; the flavor of a fresh, ripe wild blueberry, losing myself in a bonfire’s dancing flames.
Dream and reality waver like a mirage on my horizon. Thank

Being pregnant on Isla has many dynamics, many of them more difficult than if I were back in Michigan. It’s a Caribbean Island where people vacation and most people drink like they are. You don’t realize how much a part of life and culture the consumption of alcohol is until you can’t do it anymore.
Overnight not only did I have to quit something I genuinely enjoy, but also became separate from the people around me. Of course I can still participate in social activities with friends, but not being able to have a drink sets me apart and in a different mindset from the people around me. I understand why it’s difficult for former alcoholics to be in public and around people drinking—it’s not just wanting a drink yourself, it’s also feeling like you’re in a bubble, separate from everyone around.
On the other hand, the community here are genuinely delighted by children. I love watching the joy of local men when they see my protruding belly bump—a warm, soft smile spreads across their faces, beneath it memories of tiny siblings, nieces, nephews, sons and daughters. No matter the circumstances for better or worse, children are a blessing here.

Ryan and I walk Bea and OG to a tiny beach near our house. It’s a cove, so Bea can run and frolic without danger of her chasing an iguana into the road. The four of us laugh and run into the surf. OG hits it with his giant Labrador chest, then turns and body surfs the wave into shore. Bea darts into the churning water and out again, up and down the shoreline. The sun’s hot, but the waves breaking across my body and growing belly are cool and salty. I lick my lips once, and then again, loving the briny taste. When I was little and swam in the ocean, I remember air-drying on the beach and taking a tentative tongue lick off my own shoulder, intrigued and delighted by this foreign flavor on my skin. Fresh water didn’t do that.
Ryan comes up behind me and I brace my body against his as the waves churn in. His arms encircle my waist, palms flat against my stomach where our growing son kicks and bumps, as if responding to his father’s touch. I lean into him and turn my face to the sun, tasting salt, and this new way of joy.

 

Thank you Kate Bessette of Kate Bee Photography for the beautiful photos!