the Caymans are grand

So let's say you are burnt out. Let's say that after the snowiest winter on record where you were trapped inside with your baby who took eighteen months to learn to walk, which means no cute walks in the snowy wonderland because the stroller can't fit through the snowbanks and the kid weighs over twenty-five pounds so you aren't going to wear her while scaling the soot tinged Everests at every crosswalk. (Those Everests, by the way, were built on the bones of weeks worth of frozen garbage and the caracases of christmas trees.) This means that you have been home in your small apartment which faces North, with one baby and too many animals, for months. Your doctor is mystified by your constant vitamin D deficency, a void no supplement can seem to fill.  Your derealict house guest has moved back to Indonesia so you don't even have her around to talk to (read: make her cry and question her life goals). What can be done, you ask? First you call your dad and get yourself invited on his insurance conference trip to the Cayman Islands. Your sister, who is worse off then you because she is going through everything that you are, except she has two kids and more snow(being in upstate New York), has already beaten you to the punch and booked tickets. You rendezvous with her at the Owen Roberts International Airport, you do not check luggage because you are traveling without your husband and child. You pack three bathing suits and two dresses and three bottles of sunscreen and one book that you've been trying to read for the last year and a half. When you step off the plane, directly onto the tarmac because that is how they do it in the tropics, you are welcomed by live calypso music and a brief rain shower, which feels so good because it is not frozen. After a twenty minute van ride you find yourself here:

This is the view from your balcony at Villas of the Galleon. You immediately slather yourself in SPF 70, put on one of the nine swim suits that you have brought, and hit Seven Mile Beach like it's 1995 and you've never heard of analgesic spray or Colace or Music Together or Dr. Ferber or Overnights or Miralax or Sophie the giraffe or Bugaboo or Mum Mums or mirroring. You simply lie on your beach chair until you can't take the ridiculous heat and then get in to that ocean which is just a hair colder than you expect and then you bob around like the fattest old lady because the salt content is so high you don't even have to bother doing strokes.  So this is what is looks like on your little patch of beach.















You must focus on this, on the quiet and on the fact that you're actually reading hundreds of pages of ficiton, like a regular grown up would. You must try to ignore the other side of the beach, the front yard of the Ritz, which looks like this:

Then in the evenings you put on one of your two dresses and actual mascara and lip stain, not just your glasses and lip balm, and you go to a cocktail party populated almost exclusively by bald men in glasses wearing pink or yellow ties with pineapples on them. Head directly for the bar, ask for anything Cayman, Cayman sunset, Cayman Lemonade, Cayman Punch. Try not to leave your sister stranded with a woman who talks incessantly about her King Charles Spaniels' intestinal issues. If you can avoid it, don't let the waitstaff watch you spit a slimy mushroom stuffed with cream cheese into the garbage. Proceed to get almost drunk. This is fine, you are on vacation. Then move on to dinner, a different restaurant each night, yes, also populated by the bald insurance men. Notice that the best thing on the menu at all of these restaurants are the cocktails. The Grand Old House is part of the five percent of  buildings not wiped off the face of the island in 2004. Order the pina colada, it is light and frothy and tastes of real pineapple and coconut, it may be the best rendition of the drink on the planet. Next, go to Pappagallo, the very best restaurant in the middle of a swamp that you've every been to. Stand up wind of the tiki torches. Order the berry mojito, like a fruit salad with ice and mint and rum. Notice the giant tortoise shell on the wall by the ladies room, wonder if you had fewer mojitos you might find it more disturbing. Say goodnight to the disaffected parrot mascot, before riding in a bus through the more authentic parts of the island--kids on rope swings, chickens in front yards, satalite dishes next to decaying boats--back to the tourist center that is Seven Mile Beach. Wish you could see more of that other part of the island. The next day eat lunch on the beach at Calico Jack's with your sister and Dad, while he has a break from presentations in overly air-conditioned conference rooms. Meet Calico Jack himself, who is feasting on platter after platter of sliced melon with a few other boisterous gentlemen. You'll know it's him by the mustache, the kind that connects to the side burns.

Watch some young girl attempt to walk on water while inside a clear plastic inflatable ball, it doesn't look at all fun. It looks hot and anxiety-producing, though she spends most of the time lying in it watching the fish. (when you get home you will discover that those things are considered horribly dangerous because of the risk of suffocation and drowning). You wonder why people bother with glass bottom boats and inflatable balls when the water is so clear you can see down a hundred feet while you are swimming. No mask required. And there are no sharks in the Cayman Islands. So you can float on your back in the ocean with no Jaws flashbacks. You can just be. You can find some strange hidden pocket within yourself where you are unchanged by the tiny universe that you fostered in your womb, by its sole resident who was the goddess of that world and now is a helpless seedling at your feet as she says things like, "airplane, clouds." Meaning she heard an airplane go by but it was hidden by the clouds. And that secret place, where you are still the you from before, is availible to you any time. Any time you can get on a plane yourself, fly over the clouds, leave your husband to watch your daughter, ride on the coattails of your ever-generous and hardworking father, lean on the far stronger and more patient shoulder of your sister, and hide in a crowd of insurance dudes. Spring 2012 baby, start the count down.