Nevis is Nice

Nevis from the car ferry

Before grad school and cancer, there was my mother and I. We were in Nevis and we were roughing it.

"No mom, I'm sorry. I feel really silly right now but I cannot, absolutely cannot move my body an inch closer to that water heater! There is a frog sitting on the heater and it nearly jumped on me when I pulled the cover off of it!"

 The poor frog was just a frightened as I was.

And so, with my head hung low, I climb off my precarious perch and allowed my mother to take my place.

She succeeds where I do not.

 Yes, the frog scared her some but she was not paralysed as I had been.

Oh the shame!

To back up some, we are in Nevis. Mom and I have come down for a two week vacation in paradise. You know, to do the normal things that people do when in paradise: lounging by the pool, drinking rum punch, enjoying beautiful sunsets.

We did enjoy beautiful sunsets but the rum punch was replaced by stagnant cistern water full of frog faeces and the lounging, well there were just too many bats and bees to get out of the house to bother with the lounging. 

And so to bring you back to my predicament with the frog. I had climbed out onto the thin frame that my father had ingeniously built around the love shack (the guest house) and I had climbed out there to turn on the water heater so that we would at least have hot water to bathe in. That is, once we had rid the shower of pregnant scorpions.

As you can now tell, my fear of frogs led me to scurry off the little frame and make my mother do the women's work in my stead.

Our trip to Nevis was one based primarily on checking up on the house, but also to give her and I some time to be together before grad school started. Little did we know that our time of "living the good life" was going to be so precious.

After we had rid the Monkey house of bees and cleansed the love shack of its bats, we returned to the U.S. -me to start school which would throw me under the bus as soon as I started and mom, well she would later find out that she had to keep it together for all of us.

Dad was diagnosed with cancer not long after mom's return and all of a sudden life seemed to spiral out of control. Yet, somehow we kept it together and locked arms to become a true fighting unit, capable of anything.

Beautiful Caribbean Sky

Mom and I escaped Nevis without much injury. We had a great time together and we saw in each other a strength that gives us comfort now, when such strength is needed.

So our Nevis trip was one filled with good times as well as a lot of hard work. We most likely won't experience Nevis together for awhile, but as the days grow shorter and darker, As Mom and Dad are looking at a winter that is forecast to be extremely cold, I know that her and I will be able to pick and choose memories from that crazy two weeks in Nevis, and that those memories will warm us and make us realise that seasons and feelings are transient.

That we will be happy and warm once again, on an island, surrounded by bugs and rodents.....

..... and that we will be laughing.