Today is so warm I can smell summer coming. 

Just now I was sitting outside in the blazing sun, drinking a steaming hot cup of coffee. For the first time in months, I felt warm enough to remove my scarf. 

I took (and originally posted) this photo about a year ago. I was in Connecticut, but had only recently moved back to the United States from the Caribbean, and the islands were very much my mind.

Pictured are gold flip-flops, headband my mother made me and earrings made in Grenada based on an AmerIndian swirl of life design. (Appropriation of native cultures something something, but I really like them in spite of myself. Besides, they were a gift, and unlike that piece of Arawak pottery some guy gave me, I felt comfortable leaving the island with the earrings.) 

[Click through the photo for a larger version, or here for my Grenada Flickr set.]

Some might look at this and see a mess.

I see towering feat of civil engineering.

The interior of the same structure.

Hurricane Ivan hit Grenada in 2004. 90% of the buildings on the island lost their roofs. By 2008 most had been repaired or rebuilt, but some, like this one, were abandoned.

Standing here I was struck by the absolute stillness and silence, as well as the sense that the house was slowly but surely being reclaimed by the wilderness.

(large)

One might decide to focus on the damage, which would lead one to the conclusion that this house failed to weather the storm.

I choose to focus on the fact that it’s still standing. Unconquered.

(large)

I don’t really use folders to organize my photos, but I do burn CD backups. This is the fourth photo on the fourth archive disc.

A few months after Bean was born, the four of us traveled to the States so the family could meet its newest member. “The four of us” means me, Bean, my mother and her mother. We all lived in Grenada together.

Here we are at my aunt’s house in Indianapolis. Grandma took Mirapex for her Parkinson’s and one of the many side effects was eyes so dry they were more prone to infection. So eyedrops were part of her daily routine, but she was unable to do them by herself.

Also, wow my hair was short.

(I’ve written here many times about my grandmother and her literally graceful life in Grenada, most recently in the lengthy caption of this “A Sense of Place” photo. I’ve also posted photos from the flight to the States here and here. It was Bean’s first time on an airplane and also his first time wearing pants, and he tolerated both of those indignities admirably.)

I remember thinking to myself as I took this, I’m never ever going to capture the way the sky actually looks. Or how bright the sun is.

And I didn’t.

But the photo is useful in spite of its limitations, because it helps me remember.

(Click here for a much larger version.)

Behold the spice market in Saint George’s, Grenada. Click here for a much larger version of the photo. You’ll see that the background is simply drowning in wonderful detail. Just looking at those shelves makes me crave nutmeg, pepper, curry and cocoa. Though not simultaneously (ew) and not necessarily in that order.

Although I have no way of knowing for certain, in my heart I believe that bringing my grandmother to Grenada prolonged her life by a year or two.

For a long while we took her to the beach regularly. She’d sit at the edge of the ocean, rubbing the sand on her legs. My mom or I would carry her out deeper, where she’d get to feel literally buoyant.

“Now, don’t you drop me,” she’d say.

“I’ll only drop you if you want me to, old lady,” I’d say, and she’d laugh and laugh.

I took this photograph on Bean’s second birthday. We had a little party at Grand Anse beach. You see how my mother has her arm around Grandma? That’s because she was no longer strong enough to sit up by herself. It was one of the very last times we took her to the beach. The trip down the stairs and into the taxi had become simply too much for her.

I love this photograph because my son is naked, as he almost always was in Grenada, unless I forced him to put on clothes, which I rarely bothered to do. Nudity notwithstanding, he’s also guarding them, unwilling to move too far away from his two grandmothers, lest they need his assistance. (He was quite the skilled foot-lifter.)

I love this photograph because my mom is wearing that hideously gorgeous bathing suit she had custom made for her in Trinidad. She’s sixty years old here, but chilling on the beach with the insouciance of a teenager, unconcerned with what passersby may or may not think of her pale, ample thighs.

I love this photograph because Grandma is wearing her straw hat. Her “church hat”, she called it, because it made her feel “fancy”. She’s well past eighty, and smiling like a beauty queen as she digs her toes into the sand.

Minutes later, a storm came up and Bean’s father ran out, picked her up like a baby and carried her to her reclining chair under the flamboyant tree. I folded and arranged towels behind her back, getting her comfortable. As we sat and watched the rain she turned to me.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I’m Maria, Grandma. Your oldest daughter’s oldest daughter.” I am unfazed by this question, because I’ve heard it many times before.

“Is that baby yours?”

“Yes. His name is Jack. He’s your great-grandson.”

“Oh. He looks like a good baby. I had eight of them you know.”

“Yes. I know.”

“We’re not in Indiana, are we?”

“No, Grandma. We’re most certainly not in Indiana.”

Then she said she was thirsty, so I got her juice out of the cooler and held the straw in her mouth while she drank, propping her up with my other arm so she wouldn’t choke. And like that, the two of us sat there, under a flamboyant tree, watching the rain.

(A Sense of Place)

This thing you’re doing? Where your sense of place is rooted entirely in Grenada? You need to stop that. Or at least temper it. Because dammit, self, that’s the past.

His grandmother would use a knife and fork, but Bean ate his mango like a real Grenadian. He sucked it.

You’re supposed to get messy when you eat a mango. It means you’re doing it right.

(A Sense of Place, Week Two)

This building is located in Saint David’s, Grenada and it’s called Natural Works. It’s kind of a restaurant and kind of a museum. On September 7, 2004, Hurricane Ivan passed through as a Category 5 storm and about 90% of the structures on the island lost their roofs in the wind. Natural Works was no exception. It has since been rebuilt.

While I was living in Grenada, there were, to my knowledge, five other expats who kept websites. Most of them had something to do with the American medical school as Saint George’s University. But not the guy who calls himself Modern Day Gilligan. His right name is Joshua Yetman, and he’s from Minnesota, but married to a lovely lady from Trinidad and so ended up living in Grenada. His work is earthshatteringly beautiful. All the more so for me, I’m sure, because of my emotional connection. I mean, empirically speaking the images are simply stunning. But they probably won’t make YOU cry. It’s all so familiar, yet so remote, and while I certainly did not for a second expect that life would stop once I left… It’s kind of like when I went back to Cornell five years after graduation and discovered that the house I’d lived in junior and senior year had been razed and replaced with a ten-story apartment complex.

I’ve been aware of his photoblog for ages but I hadn’t looked at it recently. Then this morning I stumbled across his Flickr. I wept when I saw the shots he got of this year’s Spicemas (Carnival) festivities. This one, of the Shortknee characters, is my favorite, but the entire set is lovely.

Anyhoo. The reason for this overlong caption is that I really wanted to post his photo here, but I did not want to do so without contacting him first, but I also couldn’t bear to wait. So click the link. Go and look. Do it.

I try to speak carefully about this. I’ve been spoiled. Most people never walk through this kind of beauty. This degree of color, the kind of color that always looks wet, that makes “vibrant” sound like a pale, hollow word. So please don’t think for a second that I’m complaining. I’m still pretty young and I’ve already gotten to enjoy the kind of life that most people only reach in their retirement fantasies.

I know that. That I’m lucky. But I also know that the thousands of photos I took are not enough for me. I want more. And I will always want more. A million would not be enough.

This fountain is in my aunt’s backyard in Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s a very serene place. My whimsy imagines that wood elves call it home.

When I was living in Grenada, my aunt’s house was a sort of home base. Even though I never officially lived there, I know precisely where the diet Coke aisle is in Shaw’s.

(A Sense of Place, Week I)