Jamaica, 1988

June 11th, 2008

I always loved my morning routine—especially if my Dad was home from a trip. My first alarm was the clanks of pots and pans and the opening and closing of cupboards in the kitchen. Then, there’d be a loud thumping of knocks on the door as it opened.

Sometimes Dad would randomly speak to me in German the entire morning. This was especially ridiculous since I was 11 years old and knew nothing of the language. But Dad loved to toy with us kids in the most educational way possible.

“Rise and shine, Tweedums, breakfast is ready.”

Nobody appreciates time with family like my father. The new airline he was flying for put him on reserve down in San Jose, CA, so he was almost never home, and I could always tell it hurt him, more than anybody else, to be away. He made our mornings together top priority. Cereal, eggs or oatmeal, accompanied by cantaloupe or honeydew.

“What are you working on in school these days, Naomes?”

“Not much. Still working on my long division and we just got some stupid assignment for a book report yesterday.”

I chewed on a piece of cantaloupe that was entirely too big for my mouth, “Oh, and yesterday, in music, Ms. Wallace was teaching us this song and she said there is a word in it that she doesn’t know. She can speak in like a hundred languages but she can’t find out the meaning of this one word in this Jamaican song.” I looked over at him, just to make sure he was paying attention. I knew it was a long shot to repeat this part and I wanted it to come across as non-challantly as possible, “heh, she said ‘we’ll have to send Naomi down to Jamaica to find out!’”

There was a long pause and I could tell the seed had been successfully planted. Our school was so small that everyone knew what everyone’s parents did for a living. Ms. Wallace and the class all knew my dad was a pilot and thought she made a funny joke but I secretly took what she said very seriously. The smirk on my dad’s face started to grow like a sunrise and when it spread to his eyes his early crow’s feet were exposed.

“Well, let’s go.” he said with a wink.

Within a few weeks, we were on a plane to Jamaica. Just Dad and I. My sister was too old to be skipping out on a week of school at such short notice and my mom had to work. To this day I can say that I learned loads more on the trips I took with my family than what I would have learned had I not missed the few almost useless days in public grade school. And I was completely fine with my mom and sister not being able to make it at the time. My sister was at the annoying age of 13. She acted too cool for school in regards to just about everything and my mother seemed to feed off her negativity. So, to me, they were always complaining or whining about something–and that always makes for the worst travel companion.

The hotel was cheap and a little dirty but the island was beautiful. As far as I was concerned, if the hotel had a pool, I was happy. And we had no intention of staying in the hotel much anyway, so any extra amenities seemed unnecessary.

The next day, we did some swimming, some exploring and asked a few locals where the grade schools where. By that very afternoon, I was standing in a fourth grade classroom asking the teacher if she knew the meaning of the word “numbaleven.”

“Oh yes, of course! That is a type of mango!” She replied, happy to help. The open room was filled with about 40 or 50 students, all the same age as I, but so completely different. Sure, there were a few black people on the small island I grew up on, but none of them had skin as dark as all of these kids. They stared at me like I was an alien too, but in a warm and curious way.

They happened to be preparing a performance of some sort and, when we got there, they were rehearsing a song. The teacher made a deal with me: if I sang the song for them from my school–the song that had “numbaleven” in the lyrics, they would perform the song they were working on for me.

My dad later told me that I was pretty nervous. Granted, it is surely harder for one person to perform for 40 people than for 40 people to perform for one, but it’s still surprising that anything was intimidating for me at that age. I do remember quite vividly how fascinating I thought they were. So happy and open and beautiful. I wanted badly to impress them.

My time at the school was surprisingly brief. Before I knew it, we were walking away on a busted up alley street. The sun was beating down on us as we dodged craters and potholes in the road. Every time a bougainvillea cascaded over a fence, an exotic bird flew by or a ruby-throated hibiscus crossed our path my father would gasp with delight. “Oh Naomes! Look! A Wild Pine Sergeant! *sigh* Isn’t it magniferous?” Even if I had no idea what he was talking about, he’d get me so pumped up that I would enthusiastically agree.

I wondered what else we could do with our time now that we’d done what we’d come to do? We still had a few days left before we headed home. Little did I know that what was in store would be one of the great highlights of my childhood. A moment that I would remember ever so fondly for the rest of my life.

The next day started in the pool. Dad taught me this new trick to be able to hold my breath longer under water. If I took 4 deep breaths all the way and all the way out before I took in that final gulp of air to hold it, I could swim all the way to the other side of the pool without coming up for water! With that new discovery, I could have stayed in the pool the rest of the trip. But soon it was time to go up to the hotel room and get ready.

Dad had something planned. I had no idea what that was, and though I trusted his judgment for the most part, I was a little uneasy when he said, “Com’on, let’s humpshy and giggi! We’re going to see the bird lady and the bus leaves in 7 minutes and 14 seconds.”

I barely finished tying my shoes and we were out the door. We walked out the front of the hotel lobby over to the curb and waited to cross the street to the bus stop. I felt my clothes begin to cling to me. I couldn’t help but wonder how this humidity doesn’t bother the locals. When the street was clear my dad grabbed my hand and tugged me across the street as I blatantly stared at two women, walking with giant baskets of fresh fruit on their heads. Their bodies were loose and they were walking easily, as if they hardly knew or cared that there was 15 pounds of fruit on their heads! I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. I wanted so badly to try it, to see what it felt like and if it was as easy as they made it look. But by the time we’d crossed the street they were off in the distance walking away from us.

We walked under the roof of the bus stop to stand in the shade. I listened carefully to the conversations of the locals surrounding me. Men with dreads as big as ropes giggled like school girls when I’d repeat what they’d ask me to say.

“Say, ‘ya man, Jamaica, nice!”

I tried to act it out and say it as laid-back as they did, my eyes half closed, “Ya man, Jamaica, nice!” They seemed to find something about an eleven year old playing them extremely entertaining. Just as I echoed, “Me go back Jamaica next year and eat Acki and Salfish,” the bus came into view. My father finished up his conversation with the guy he was chatting with, declined his offer for some stuff called Gonga, and the two of us hopped on the bus.

The first thing I noticed was the sign posted at the front of the bus above the door: “Watch For Tipping” What does that mean? We need to watch out in case this bus tips over? Why would it tip over? The bus turned left off the main road and headed inland. Just as I figured out that we were driving passed a field of pineapples, we made a sharp right and started climbing. Switchback after switchback, we made our way up what appeared to be a mountain. The scenery was stunning but it was hardly a relaxing ride. We were taking the corners of the switchbacks at 40mph and staring at a sign that might be warning us about how this bus tends to tip over.

My Dad signaled that it was our stop next. Thank God. We paid the bus driver some change and barely stepped down before it peeled out in the gravel and sped off. There was nothing around us but a single lane dirt road and stucco wall on one side with bougainvillea trying successfully to consume the entire thing. The one place where the wall was clear of the gorgeous, yet vicious vine, there was a door. My Dad located the buzzer and pressed it a time or two and an ancient woman came to the door. She and my dad spoke but I wasn’t listening to what they were saying. I was trying to figure out what exactly we were doing. We were walking through what looked like this old lady’s house, following her to her back patio where there were some chairs and a canopy for shade. We sat down and she started asking me questions. All the usual ones old people ask kids. “How old are you?”

“What grade are you in?”

I noticed that she kept checking her wristwatch and wondered what she could possibly need to tell time for in a place like this? She walked slightly hunched over to one side of the patio and grabbed two handfuls of seeds.

“Here sweetie, sprinkle this on your lap. Cup some in the palm of your hands too.”

I looked at my Dad and got the nod I needed to proceed. Spilling a lot, I scattered the seeds on my thighs and cupped the rest in my hands. The old woman looked at her watch one last time, looked up at us and said, “Okay.”

Instantly, more birds than I could count swooshed under the canopy! They landed on my arms and legs and hopped about all over the patio eating up the bird seed. There were giant tropical birds, teeny tiny finches and birds of every size and color in between. I could feel my eyes open as wide as saucers. I felt like a character in a Disney movie! Hanging out with every bird in the jungle for afternoon tea.

The old lady was the caretaker of this bird sanctuary and fed them every day at 3pm sharp. Turns out birds are an extremely punctual species. In fact, she said they show up at the exact same time every day. I held my arms out as still as I could with about 5 birds perched on each of them. My dad chuckled in his chair across the patio. A cute little finch sat herself right on the top of my head while she munched on a seed and puffed out her feathers.

It wasn’t long before their little tummies were full and it was time for the birds to get on with their day. Little by little, they started flying away until the last finch took off from my lap. I sat in my chair charged with so much excitement and energy I thought I might burst. Our biggest mistake of the entire trip was that we didn’t pack our camera that day. I soaked up the past few moments the best I could, taking detailed mental photographs of my surroundings while my dad paid the nice old lady.

The three of us moseyed out to the road where the bus dropped us off. I trailed behind watched the birds around us fly from tree to tree, thinking about how that very bird might have been on my lap just five minutes ago. We could hear an engine making it’s way up the mountain and the bird lady identified that sound as a bus on the way. I gave her the most grateful and appreciative hug I had in me, my dad thanked her and we got back on the bus.

As we tore down the mountain on the single lane road, I felt so at peace. At eleven years old I knew I just had an experience that I would always remember. In what felt like the blink of an eye, we were back home in Seattle. I stood in front of my music class and told them about my trip.

“Yeah, yeah, there was this school, and we went to it and they told me that ‘numbaleven’ is a kind of mango or something—BUT! Then, we went and saw this bird lady and, Oh my gosh, it was soooo cool. These birds landed on me and hung out with me and…….”

I could see a confused look sweep over the faces of my classmates. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to tell this story in its entirety. The pictures were so big and bright in my head that my vocabulary wasn’t big enough to explain them yet.

I was just thinking back on it and thought maybe, 19 years later, I can take another stab at it=)

Entry Filed under: Words