45under45: Waiting on My Folks

After months and months of spouting off why my parents didn't want to come to the Bahamas this year...

Too hot.
Too much sun.
Too much trouble.
Too tired of traveling in general.
Too busy with their condo issues.
Too scary with no doctors on the islands.

All of which broke my heart a little bit. I get it. I understand that my folks are getting older and with that comes the inetivitable attitude shift. Now, their tolerance and adventuresomeness has been swapped with caution and trepidation...probably rightfully so. But, I want to dip back into that parent/child relationship, share these happy times and places, and have my kids hang with my parents and see that they still are "kinda" cool.

The Abaco gods took over my dad's capacity for logical speech and in a fleeting moment of weakness, the once familiar vim and vigor peeked its head out of the Vero Beach sand! Less than a month before we were to fly over here, my dad spoke these words out loud, "Don't be surprised if we just show up for a few days one weekend." 👀 With that utterance, it was done. It was said aloud for the universe to embrace. They WANTED to come! I knew it! And come they did. They stayed for six days! (We had so much fun that I'm writing this after they left because I didn't have any time to sit while they were here.)

As I said in an earlier blog entry, we've been coming to the Bahamas since 1996 (with a few lapses here and there). A little back history may be necessary to fully grasp the deep roots of these memorable times.

We came when the kids were little. Nicholas even took his first steps in a rental house on Marsh Harbor. My sister came here, her presence is palpable, and she is ever bubbling up in our minds as we share stories of times spent here. Friends and family have been a part of these experiences. We've mourned loved ones and marriages here. Many moments in my life have been marked in these islands.

The year my dad turned 70, he didn't come because he was having issues with his heart and atrial fibrillation. I remember calling him from Eleuthera to wish him a happy birthday that year. The year after that, he turned 71 and we celebrated his birthday riding out a tropical storm on Great Guana Cay. We didn't have a cake, but got huge cinnamon buns from a local bakery and stuck an emergency candle in the center. Another year my aunt, uncle, cousins, their kids, and mine put on a talent show using a kitchen pass-through/wet bar as their stage. We've had a lot of precious memories built here!

Then, we took some time off from the Bahamas for some other very special reasons. We spent my parents' 50th wedding anniversary visiting the Northwest and on a cruise in Alaska. Another year we took a tour of the Northeast, the town where my dad grew up, and cruised from Montreal to Boston. And there was also the time we drove through all of England and a bit of Scotland in a gigantic counterclockwise circle. Last year, we went back to celebrating a big birthday...my dad's 80th! My mom and Shawn conspired to totally fool my dad when we surprised him with a week's worth of jazz and Broadway shows in New York City!

And yet, here we are in the Bahamas after a four year hiatus...ready for another birthday! My folks were due in to Elbow Cay at about 1:00. (They had to wake up at 5:00 am, drive to Palm Beach, fly to Marsh Harbor and finally take a ferry to our island. Sadly, though, the flight was delayed, they had to take a bus to Ft. Lauderdale, got delayed again, landed in Marsh, and THEN... FINALLY stumbled off the ferry at about 7:00 pm where we met them with cold drinks, excited kids, and hot appetizers from Sea Spray's Gaffers Bar.)

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Not knowing all of the shenanigans with the flight was going to go on, I also woke up early so that I had time to make a birthday cake for my dad's 81st (that was actually a few days earlier), let it cool, and still have time to frost it before their planned arrival at 1:00.

Time to bake birthday cake.

Millie supervised.

The oven at this house runs about 30 degrees hotter than where it is set. I had to do a lot of math due to not having the right size pan and a wonky thermometer, but I made it work out in the end...the sides and bottom were not burned and the insides were fully cooked. Once the cake was out of the oven to cool, it was time to go out for a jog around the "streets" to the south of our house and the northern edge of White Sound. I was grateful that I woke up early and could take advantage of the extra morning shade because there was just about zero breeze! I didn't take a lot of pictures but was kind of surprised to find a basketball half-court and a sign for "Papa Nasty's BBQ" (a now closed take-out joint on this island).

Very cool court with netting to keep the balls from being lost in the jungles.

Someone must have had the sign relocated here since this wasn't the original BBQ place.

After having a decent jog and interesting discovery, it was time to go back home to supervise the frosting of the birthday cake. The LVA grocery had the cake mix and frosting but nothing to use for piping/writing. So, we used regular and peanut butter M&Ms to decorate it.

With time to kill due to the flight delay, I decided to sort through my sea glass finds and pick out the pieces that weren't fully "cooked" yet. The following photos show what I collected on my jogs, beach walks, and yesterday's bounty.

Sea fans, sea urchins, sea glass...and medical waste (the white powdered vial in the top right).

Frosty keepers.

Golden balls are NOT marbles.
One is a plastic "bow knocker" and the other is a roller ball probably from something like deodorant.

Sea bean keepers so far.

Trash glass that I just picked up.

My artfully displayed haul.

Since we learned the flight was further delayed, Summer and I had time to do some more sea glassing at my secret beach that I discovered the day before. We missed the low tide, but still had plenty of beach to comb before the sea glass was lost back into the rise of the surf. (All charts and maps that I have used as reference are from the following book: The Cruising Guide to Abaco AKA "The Dodge Book".)