Reading list

I trudge up a sandy drift and note the step-suck-release motion of each foot, not unlike a walk in the snow.  Stop, I tell my brain, stop that now.  My ears are itching and Dave has fallen in with a group of scalawags from Wisconsin and they are buzzing about me, this solitary woman who walks the beach.
 "Doesn't your wife drink?" asks Mark who has yet to take off his Green Bay Packer t-shirt. I don't drink during the day, not a good fit,  my body doesn't know how to metabolize alcohol until nighttime hours.  Look me up later, I am thinking. The island does not recognize Kessler's whisky, but  Jack Daniels is a worthy substitute.

 Mark is trying to stay awake.  Yesterday he passed out midday on a beach chair and his comrades painted his toenails coral pink and draped a lacy teddy on his large sunburned torso. Pictures were taken and  I was told it hit the Internet by three o'clock.  "I'm swimming in a lagoon tonight," belches Mark, "I want to remember that," and he sticks to light beer all day.

You can't beat a Land's End bathing suit, ladies.  There is none of that endless tugging of fabric over the buttocks or the repositioning of boobs. My head is definitely on vacation mode as that is the most  important thought I plan to have all day.

The fruit of Jamaica can levitate one's self to a most sensual state.  Lush, firm yet yielding, plump and vibrant with color, heady with scent. And I want to put my face in the paw-paw. Every trip to Jamaica I bring along David Palladini's easy half-day read, A Year, More or Less, in Jamaica.  He writes,"When I first arrived in Jamaica I saw locals eating fruit in a most remarkable manner. . .  Whole fruits were shoved into the mouth the skin spit out while walking along the road. One morning the gardener ate a fat ripe papaya from our tree.   After twisting it from its stem, he slit it open and brushed out the black fish-egg-like seeds with his finger.  Then he put his face in the paw-paw.  I watched him munch away while a big smile came over his face, covered in chunks of ripe papaya. He looked so happy and satisfied.  Suddenly I understood.  There was only one way to eat fruit in Jamaica."




So, at breakfast I try the technique.  I did not have a whole fruit but I selected a rather large slice of papaya and I push my face in the paw-paw feeling the  slushy pulp move past my teeth and gush out on my lips and cheeks, cool and soothing. I feel ridiculous. I smile at Cowboy Dave and a strip of peel shows, a regular Cheshire grin.