A Moment Not Frozen in Time!
Trodding down the road barefoot and ready, I anticipated a long promised present to myself. December 25 in Barbados. A day of snorkeling and body surfing on Miami Beach, the South Coast in Oistins’. Woot Woot! Merry Christmas Kelly. I sensed the waves would be prime. A little safer than Brian Talma’s surf club in Silver Sands. It is excellent some days for this purpose, but not this day given the weather. This day at Talma’s was a kite-surfing day.
I almost killed myself there once out of ignorance and negligence. Teaching a boy from Jamaica who wanted to marry me, but couldn’t remember my name, how to body-surf. Oops! On some days you don’t turn your back to the sea here, an errant wave could slam you from behind (buck shot), whip you around like a frog in a blender and not free you until you expect your lungs will burst. It’s true, your life does pass before your eyes. And you are still scraping bits of coral out of your scalp 5 months after you return to Canada.
Plunking my bum on a picnic table that seemed always reserved for me, I teased myself a little further before entering the water. Red flags embedded in the sand up and down the beach, a warning; riptide. Perfect. No falling asleep in the sea this day! I’ve done that before, but that’s another story. A hurricane and hawks bill turtle story.
Elbows on knees I stared out at the azure sea. Lost in thought, contemplating the best place to enter. Sipping on homemade Christmas Sorrel and a little homesick, I’d yet to see Santa. With that thought, my peripheral vision caught movement of color. Red and white miniature Santa’s gleefully screaming their way toward me, seemingly warped by the heat wave that evaporated from the sand, ethereal. Doves forgetting to coo, flitting this way and that to avoid trample. What a vibrant sight to behold. A hodgepodge of colors and sounds. Sea, sand, sun tanned bodies, and a contrast of little blond-haired tourist kids dressed like the man they probably missed too.
At that particular moment, I not only missed my own kids, but my camera! Oh the opportunities that so often escape the lens!
Years before I watched Santa parachute from a plane to land on the beach. That was cool. This was poetic, and the only thing that captured it, was my brain.
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