Dispatch From The Islands

Sunset from our lodgings

For the second year in the row, the great festival of Thanksgiving is to be celebrated at a beach house in the Bahamas, as the younger of our two girls lives and works here among this most irresponsible group of people who fail to also celebrate. It is day four of our sojourn and there is much to report.

As detailed elsewhere in this compendium, my behavior last year was considered by many to be substandard, in that I made it clear that I was going to check out and do nothing but relax—a position that was agreed upon by all participating—and then did just exactly that to the great consternation of those who would have had me climb into a rattling death-box to drive on the wrong side of cratered roads to yet another beach or yet another place to consume yet another tasteless version of “conch”. I probably could have gotten away with it, but the three or four Hallmark Christmas Movies a day created considerable unnecessary red-ink in the behavior blotter.

This year, I endeavored to find a way to say “yes” to everything that didn’t involve getting into a car. “Would you like to go in the ocean?” Why, yes. “Would you like to go for a walk?” Absolutely. “Would you like to play a game?” Heck yeah. This approach was tested just now by a request to accompany the group to lunch some 25 minutes away by auto, but THIS TIME the trip was in the day and so would not carry risk of death around every corner. I meagerly answered “yes”, but my yes was apparently insufficiently enthusiastic, and my additional explanation of “if you want to know if I’d prefer to stay here at this beautiful beach house and cook a perfectly suitable lunch for myself in the company of ONLY myself, the answer is yes. But in order to be consistent, I agree to go.” As sometimes happens, the plan is in flux and it appears that I am off the hook.

We are two families here, my little group of four and Catherine’s brother and his two children, a group of three recently denied their wife/mother by a particularly aggressive form of cancer. We have two houses, a properly tricked-out four bedroom joint with pool and hot tub, and the two-bedroom cottage next door. Most of the activity happens here at the big house (where I am writing at a massive picnic table), with Cat and I hopping over to the cottage in the evening through morning coffee. This arrangement ends on Thanksgiving day when the lease of the cottage ends, and so the seven of us will be here for a few days until young adults in grad school and college begin to trickle away.

Among the seven adults cohabitating here, several approaches to diet exist. There are what I’d call “the normal people” (Catherine, her brother, his son) who seem to be down with just about anything. And then there are the “abnormal people”, which include my two daughters (generally vegetarian with occasional seafood and with one, a lot of sugary crap), the brother’s daughter (strict vegetarian), and me, who for two months has been on what is often referred to as “The Carnivore Diet” with the zeal of a Jesuit.

There are two basic lines of conversation that irrespective of the detail, cannot help but be boring. The first is “why I eat like I do” (vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, etc) and the second is “what it is like to be in a lesbian relationship”. I have little desire to bore you, so I will definitely avoid the latter and only tangentially address the former.

The issue of dietary choices becomes ultimately an issue of logistics, and those logistics play out mainly in victualing and meal planning. All considerations are further complicated by the fact that where we are is essentially a third-world nation with beach houses, and so the selection available at the local bodegas is not terribly well suited to the diets of the “abnormal people”, cut off as they/we are from the splendors of the American supply chain.

My particular supply chain issue revolves around the availability of eggs. I eat two meals a day, chock full of animal protein and fat. At home this plays out to six jumbo eggs a day, which plays out to 9 or ten a day here. I am consuming a LOT of eggs, and this wouldn’t normally be a problem, because eggs are something the local stores seem to carry. The problem comes from the fact that eggs are one of the bridging foods that six of seven of us eat, and hearty breakfasts are the norm here. I find myself jealously eyeing my cohabitator’s breakfast plates as whittle down our stores, knowing that I am dependent on their trips to the market to replenish our stores, as I am not keen to die in a fiery island automobile accident.

On day one, I purchased a box of frozen beef patties, the kind that ultimately wind up being sources of widespread food poisoning death. They are reportedly beef, but they are without taste. My inamorata was good enough to pick up some ground beef and a flank steak, so there are some options to dying from ptomaine. I am very pleased with the path I’m on, as my weight, energy, and joint pain have all shown improvement.

The only downside to this whole arrangement has been the scarcity of solitude. As I age, two things are becoming apparent to me, and they are directly opposed. The first, is that I increasingly crave solitude. An empty nest and a mancave provide me with PLENTY of solitude back home, but here it is in short supply. The other trend increasing as I age is the importance I place on friendships with other men. My college and Navy buddies are precious to me, and the network of stout friends I’ve acquired in Talbot County are a joy. Somewhat cut off from them here in the tropics and unable to find much in the way of solitude, I muddle through with a happy face.

One final thing. I am writing this on my Android Tablet, and the Substack function does not have a spell-check feature. I am unaware how to access a native form of spell check, and so you will perhaps be exposed to my ignorance.