Monday, September 30, 2019

Gymnastics Routines

Elise recently attended a PE performance at the kids' school where they performed gymnastics routines the kids choreographed themselves.

First up, Clementine!


Next up, Peter!

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Saturday Matinee

Elise and I woke to the screech of masking tape early Saturday morning, earlier than either of us hoped to wake.

I found this taped up outside our room.


And this at the top of the stairs on the third level where the TV room is.


Movie posters.

Earlier in the week, I had promised Peter we would watch a Godzilla movie this weekend. I had also promised Sam I would take him to get his haircut and promised Clementine I would take her to Brew Bar for a bubble waffle sundae. I had a busy Saturday ahead of me. 

Sam and I went to get our haircuts first. After Elise took Peter and Clementine to the toy store to buy a gift for the birthday party he was invited to on Sunday, Sam refused to leave the house. Like a bomb squad defusing a IED Sam and I talked, me frightfully aware to not let the blue wire cross the green wire lest I unleash the maelstrom of tween emotions twirling feverishly in his head loose. 

We returned to the house after haircuts to find Peter and Clementine back from their own outing. Which meant only one thing: Movie time!


Clementine in the ticket booth.



Saturday matinee.

After the movie, it was straight to Brew Bar for a bubble waffle cone ice cream sundae.  At some point, I think I may have said, "Let's go before it rains."



The shop was crowded and service slow. By the time the kids had gotten their dessert and eaten it, the storm had rolled in. We waited almost an hour in the lobby of the hotel where the ice cream shop is located, waiting out the storm as lightning bolts cracked overhead.

The following day, Peter attended a classmate's birthday party at the Taj in downtown Colombo. The boys first ate lunch at the hotel buffet. There was a carving station, ice sculpture, raw bar, and fresh sushi!




Peter with his new friend, Ryan.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Crisis for Birds

At the end of a long week, the weekend can almost seem like an oasis in the desert, teasingly refreshing only to dissolve into hallucination as you approach it.  Saturday was a lot like this.

As mentioned, the weeks are grueling and long.  Mornings begin before the sun rises, breakfast made, coffee brewed by the light of a single fluorescent bulb in the kitchen; often rain falling outside, heavy pattering on the palm fronds outside the kitchen window in the courtyard. Even after the kids are home from the hour-long bus ride, homework begins in earnest; Elise orchestrating a symphony of activities, worksheets, flash cards, and forms to sign while trying to put dinner on the table.  I usually don't arrive home until six or later, and we sit down to dinner, tie on, sleeves unbuttoned and rolled, trying to unravel and decipher tales from the day.

The busy schedules holds the kids' emotions back like a dam. On Saturdays, when they have time to sit and just be, cracks in the pavement form, and water comes spitting through, of course there is always the possibility, the threat -- as happened this Saturday -- of cataclysmic failure.

The kids completely melted down no less than four separate times on Saturday alone, like the Batman villain Clayface melting into a pile of amorphous goo. By the end of the day, after reconstructing each of them, there wasn't enough gin, tonic, or limes to overcome the emotional exhaustion.

Peter, again, cried for his friend Faisal in Jordan and could only be brought back to life by a long talk about Godzilla movies, and Clementine's torso was too long.

It's day like this school does seem especially cruel.  The traffic in Colombo didn't seem bad when we first arrived in mid-August, but local schools started a week later, and the city became clogged with every parent in the city dropping off or picking up their school-aged child.  It feels like every denizen of Colombo has a kid in the second, third, or forth grade. 

The civil war in Sri Lanka lasted 25 years. It ended only 10 years ago. Memory is long.  Habits are stubborn once formed. And the country, naturally is still guarded. Trains and buses, mass transit, in general, were the targets of suicide bombers, and those with the means to avoid this mode of transportation still do.  School buses as we know them do not exist in Sri Lanka.  Kids are brought individually by parents to school, dropped off, and picked up the same way, by foot, by tuk-tuk, or by Audi Q7, creating endless queues of small girls with pig tails and white skirts with starch shields; they don't touch the pleats for fear of fraying the tips of their fingers.

You see the looks on the faces of the guards outside the schools -- the baby-faced young men in khaki uniforms with machine guns who were schoolchildren themselves when the war ended -- and you get the sense, perhaps, the entire country is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Especially after the Easter bombings in April.

Every generation has a societal angst it can own. The mistake is thinking we are passive and the fear - -whatever it is -- is something that happens to us. In 1979, cars lined up for blocks when Jimmy Carter embargoed oil from post-revolutionary Iran.  Today, three billion birds die in 50 years in North America.  In neither case, did these events just happen to us. They were caused by the avoidable actions of man. Nor will the pall hanging over Sri Lanka, invisible on most days, yet somewhere still in the eyes of the traffic police in marrow white sleeves, flicking their wrists and waving their gloved hands fearlessly at oncoming traffic, dissipate on its own.

I don't know if birds can be recreated or what it would take to make three billion birds sing again. Likely, it would be more difficult than putting our children back together after an emotional meltdown on a Saturday afternoon, but it was hairdresser and television personality Jonathan Van Ness that said, "You're never too broken to be fixed." 

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Weligama

And on the third week, we went surfing.

Though our shipment of household goods arrived earlier in the week, and we could have very easily spent the weekend putting away and organizing the house, we decided it was time to get out of Colombo and start seeing a little bit more of Sri Lanka. 

We had a three day weekend to play with. In the Buddhist religion, every full moon is a holiday, or poya in Sinhala. Unfortunately, we don't get a day off for every poya, but the kids do get many of them off from school, including the September, or Binara poya

Though we did spend part of  Friday unpacking, we decided to head down to the beaches in the south of Sri Lanka and spend the night on Saturday. 

Thanks to the E01 superhighway, the beaches in the south of Sri Lanka are a short, two hour drive away. It evens has an American-style rest area with an American-style food court with Subway and Pizza Hut, along with several more local options. On the way back from the beach, Elise and I tried the fish bun, a Sri Lankan pastry which is basically a dinner roll with room temperature minced fished filling. I liked it. Elise emphatically did not.

The kids had Subway which has been one of the few constants in a life growing up abroad. There is Subway in every country we have lived in overseas. The kids are automatically drawn to it, ironically, not because it reminds them of the States, even though it is an American chain, yet it is still familiar because it reminds them of being overseas. Six inch turkey on white Italian for all. 

Getting on the E01 in Colombo and off in Weligama was the true test of my driving ability. I'm glad we didn't buy anything larger than a Ford Ecosport, because navigating the narrow streets of Sri Lanka around bicycles and tuk-tuks was challenging enough as it was. 

We stayed at Weligama Bay Resort. I accidentally booked a room on line for Wednesday night instead of Saturday night, not realizing mistake until Saturday morning when I received an email from the resort asking me to rate my stay. I immediately called them in a panic. Fortunately, they were able to change the reservation to Saturday without charging us for two nights (I hope). 


We sat down at the restaurant for a quick lunch of fish fingers and fried calamari before hitting the beach. 


It didn't take long before we found a surf school and both Peter and Sam leaped at the chance to take their first surf lesson. 






It wasn't long before they were out in the waves and up on the board. 

Peter:


Then Sam:


And both boys together: 



As the boys were taking their lesson, Clementine played in the surf, and Elise and I looked on.  Meanwhile, a fishing boat glided up on shore next to us. 


After the surf lesson, the boys were understandably wiped out.  


We had a lobster dinner that night by the ocean, chatting with new friends by candlelight, still pinching ourselves we were actually here.  


Sri Lanka is a heartbreakingly beautiful country. We drove back on the E01 following our weekend in Weligama surrounded by the lush jungle and mountains that opened up to flatland rice paddies and cinnamon farms.  black-skinned water buffalo waded in the fields, white egrets perched on their backs. The peaks of bone-white Buddhist temples peeked from between the palms.  I am already thinking about how difficult it will be to leave, but I have to put those thoughts aside for now and make the most of every minute we have here. 

"What Does Muto Do?"

We have lived in Sri Lanka for nearly a month.  It's hard to believe it has been that long.  It seems as though we just got here and have been living here forever.

We built our new home quickly, pouring the foundation before we even landed in Colombo. As such we were on our feet quickly and anxious to explore our new home.  In a few short weeks, we started a new job, a new school, joined two new swim teams (Elise and Sam), bought an orange car (I never pictured myself owning an orange car; it's actually closer to a rust color), hired two people who whose lives would become intrinsically interwove into our own, ordered take-out Taco Bell, went surfing, ate dosas, and drove on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road going the wrong way down a one-way street. 

Peter has a healthy obsession with Godzilla.  I remember having the same obsession when I was about his age.  He wants to know everything about kaiju, Japanese for monster, but meant to refer to larger-than-life, rubber suit-wearing, megalopolis-stomping super-monsters.  Unfortunately, his brother and sister do not share his affinity for wanton destruction and became quickly annoyed when Peter spent the entire morning on our recent trip to the beach asking, "What does Muto do?"

How the hell am I supposed to know, I thought.  I don't even know what a muto is. 

Thing is...I'd given Peter every reason to believe I knew exactly what muto did. 

This is the dad who raises the kids on a healthy diet of Star Wars, who knows the history of the Marvel and DC universes better than I know the history of our own universe, and who plays Dungeons & Dragons with them on rainy Saturday or Sunday mornings.  I should know exactly what muto does.  But I didn't.

So, we Googled it.

Muto stands for Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism and first appeared in 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which would easily be Peter's favorite movie if he was allowed to watch PG-13 movies or hadn't been terrified by the first five minutes of the original 1950's Godzilla movie when we tried watching it together.

There is actually a male Muto which has wings and kind of looks like a stealth bomber with legs and a female Muto which has eight limbs.  Both Mutos are capable of generating electromagnetic interference, or EMP bursts, which in spy movies can be used to take down the power grids of entire cities which may or may not be entirely fiction.

Anyway, we now know what Muto does.

Sam started swim team last night.  I still remember moving up from the B-team to the A-team at the North Palm Beach Swim Club.  This meant moving from an hour and a half practice with Coach Diechert to a two hours practice with Coach Cavanah.  But considering we spent a lot of time goofing off (and every Thursday doing relays) on the B-team, the commensurate jump in yardage was much higher.

I was exhausted.

I knew Sam could handle it, but I was worried he'd come home wiped out, unable to do his homework, sit at the table for dinner, or much of anything else, for that matter. 

I remember telling my mom I wanted to quit.  It was too hard.  I wanted to go back to the B-team.  I wasn't ready for the A-team.  But she talked me into sticking with it, and eventually my endurance grew and my arms ached a little bit less after each practice.  I hope Sam sticks with it, too. He has three practices a week for now, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday morning. I think he will stick with it, but I am just so proud that he went out for the team at all and see that as an achievement, in and of itself.  He said even the kid who did not qualify to participate in the October meet in Nepal are still practicing, so I hope he sees that as a sign he can benefit from swimming without ever racing.

Clementine has been good for about one complete melt down a day.  I have no idea what to attribute this to. Maybe it is the age she is at, exhaustion from the early mornings and long days, or influence of friends at school. 

Last night, she started spiraling right after she brushed her teeth. (It may have been precipitated by Peter asking her what Muto does.) But as she kicked and screamed, I -- as gently as possible when one kicks and screams -- guided her to her bed, slid back the mosquito netting, and crawled in with her.  She wanted to read.  I had turned off the lights. Instead, I told her a story.

Inspired by our recent trip south to the beach at Weligama, I told her the story of Jojo who lives in Weligama in a one-room grass hut with his mother and older brother and older sister.  The hut has a thatch roof and a floor of packed dirt and they all four sleep in the one room on grass mats. Jojo's father is a truck driver.  During the week, he drives a gas truck around Sri Lanka, coming home on the weekends.  On the weekends, all five of them sleep in the one-room grass hut.

As the youngest, Jojo was often teased by his older brother and sister.  When he tried to play with the local boys and girls in the town, they often picked on his, as well.  They said his father had other girlfriends all over Sri Lanka; it was likely Jojo didn't even know who is real mother was.

Frustrated and upset, Jojo set out to prove himself. He pointed to the sole island far offshore in the bay and boasted, "I will swim out to the island."

The kids all laughed at Jojo, because, of course, they all knew no one could swim out to the island.  The island was too far, the currents were too strong, the waves were too high, and the rocks to sharp and jagged. But Jojo was eager to prove himself, so he striped down to his briefs and waded out into the surf. The water lapped over his ankles, then rose to his shins, and lapped at his chin before the sea floor fell out beneath the soles of his feet. He stretched his long, skinny brown arms and stroked, pulling himself further away from land.

The waves were, indeed high, and the currents tugged at his body.  The rocks scrapped and poked at him, but after many long hours swimming in the surf, he arrived at the island, tired and cold.

He stepped onto the island, feeling the cold sand between his toes and looked back at the shore and the town where his family was longingly.

"Hello?" came a voice from the bushes and trees.

"Hello?" Jojo replied. "Who's there?"

"It is I," came the voice, ragged and pitched. "The old man of the island."

"But no one has ever swum to the island before," insisted Jojo.

"I have," said the man. "And now that you are here to replace me, I can leave."

But Jojo didn't want to stay on the island until he was an old man.  He had only come to the island to prove to the other boys and girls in Weligama he was strong and brave.

"I don't want to stay here," he told the old man.

"You must," he said, "That is what happens when you come to the island with something to prove. That's how I came here as a young boy, too."

The old man had waddled to the edge of the sea, squinting back toward Weligama and shore, licking his lips, seemingly, in anticipation of rejoining civilization. He swung his arms as one does before a long swim, the darkly tanned and weathered skin flapping from his chest and arms. 

"Wait!" yelled Jojo.

The old man glanced at Jojo skeptically.

"You've proven you are brave enough to swim to the island. But what if I told you there was another island, even further away?  Imagine what your friends would think of you if you told them you had swum out to this island." Jojo pointed in the opposite direction of shore, out to sea.

"I don't see another island," protested the old man.

"It is so far away you can't see it.  It is past the horizon. It is where the long boats go to fish. No one has ever swum there before. You're friends will be so impressed!"

The old man scratched his chin as he pondered this. He circled the island and put his hand to his deep blue eyes, shielding them from the harsh rays of the sun. "They would be very impressed," he agreed. " I would be the most famous man in the town." And as he said these last words, the old man waded out into the water, past the white water of the surf breaking, and started swimming further out to sea.

Jojo watched him go, then turned to shore. He stepped over the jagged rocks on the beach, into the water, and swam back to the town.

When he reached the beach, the whole town was there. His mother and father and older brother and sister and all the kids from the town who had teased him before had gathered at the beach. They were all worried and all had feared he had surely drowned.

When Jojo emerged from the waves, they wrapped up his cold, wet body and brought him grilled mackerels and toddy. 

"Jojo," his mother said, "You didn't have to prove anything to us. We love you just the way you are." Everyone in the town agreed, though couldn't explain why they had been so mean to Jojo before.

And everyone in Weligama lived happily ever after. 

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Four of Six

Our shipment of household effects from Jordan arrived at our home the same day as our unaccompanied air freight from Ballston. I took the day off from work. They originally told us the shipment would arrive at 9:00 a.m. then very late the night before, they informed my office that the sea shipment actually hadn't cleared customs yet and would be delayed until the afternoon. The fact 40 foot containers are not allowed to drive into central Colombo added a couple of hours. So the truck didn't actually arrive until 3:00, the same time as the air shipment. When it rains it pours.

I shouldn't complain though. We've never received our shipments this quickly. For example, in Brazil it was ten weeks before our air shipment arrived and three months before our household effects! 

Because of the afternoon arrival they were only able to deliver four of six lift van's which ended up being a welcome relief. Still it felt like a storm surge of cardboard. Elise and I were already feeling overwhelmed. We looked at the pile of boxes having no idea where to even begin putting things. Especially since our house -- as big as it is -- has no closets. 



In the photo above (in which Clem is included to provide scale) you can see the three story atrium wall I want to build a rock wall on. Elise hasn't totally nixed the idea. Though she has admitted she's not entirely comfortable installing a top rope in our house. 

We spent the entirety of Saturday putting things away. I've never climbed as many stairs as I did yesterday. 


Forgotten treasures discovered in boxes.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Where Pelicans Go to Seek Shelter from the Rain

"When you were a kid, did you ever just not know?"

Clementine looked up at me from her pillow in the dark. 

"All the time."

She was tired. But even being tired this line of questioning was not normal, and maybe a little more inward looking than she usually was.

"I just don't have the words."

"When you get older, you'll have the words, then you'll know."

She rolled over and faced the wall. 

Days in Sri Lanka are long. The school is far from our house and traffic in Colombo is bad. Worse since the local schools are back in session; there is one on our road, a large all girl's school, and cars queue for blocks to drop their children off at the front doors guarded by dark-skinned boys in khaki uniforms with machine guns. 

Initial impressions of Colombo have been slow to form. It is a lot like India in many ways, but not all ways. Tuks-tuks sputter by on the street outside. Maimed dogs limp from gutter to gutter. Giant, ebony ravens perch on the corners of buildings, living gargoyles or sentinels watching over their purview. Clouds open and close, releasing rain, splattering it everywhere like a housekeeper throwing out the mop water.

Before schools opened, the city didn't seem as crowded and traffic seemed thinner. That notion has been dispelled by the opening of the schools.

Yet, there still doesn't seem to be the density of humanity you felt in India, with people all around you, pressing in. Though we live in the city, we feel there is space. Space to breathe, to move, to operate, to function, and live, and thrive. It is less constricting, not claustrophobic at all, as India could sometimes become. We have a big house which undoubtedly helps, a refuge from the bustling, busy city.

The multiethnicity of the country is more apparent here than in India. Though the majority of Sri Lankan are Buddhist, within a couple of blocks close to my office, a Hindu temple, mosque, and Catholic church all stand. Though Sinhalese ethnic pride is a force to be reckoned with, I can pick out words of Tamil hear and there, spoken almost surreptitiously, quietly, like a secret code. We have twice visited a South Indian breakfast spot for idly, sambar, and dosa, an early favorite in our short two weeks in Colombo, Salthan Palace, one of the only places I have been able to dust off my Tamil. 

In other ways, the city reminds me a lot of Brazil. The streets seem constantly wet with rain, steaming in beams of sunshine filtered through the trees. Enormous banyan trees like fortresses guard the roads and shade the city speckled with bougainvillea and other tropical flowers I don't know the names of that look more like living organisms than plants, sentient if not wholly conscious. 

The sky is high, if not wide for the tall buildings.  Towering cumulonimbus clouds, traveling miles into the stratosphere, piling up on top of one another, reflect the violet rays of the sunrise or sunset and become a source of light themselves. 

There is a large park near our house, Viharamahadevi Park. It is a mile in circumference and makes a good running path. It is less than a mile to the park or back. 

Closer to my office, sits Gangaramaya Park with a famous Buddhist temple in the middle of a lake in the shadow of Colombo City Centre, residential skyscrapers, and banyan trees where odd-shaped, off-color pelicans (though, unmistakeably, pelicans) roost, perhaps seeking shelter from the rain beneath the canopies of leaves in the sky.

Margaret, our new housekeeper, asked Elise if all the kids keep "clothes", their blankets. Elise replied, yes, explaining the those were the same blankets we wrapped them in when they were babies, to which Margaret told her, "That's okay, Madam. My son keeps a cloth, too. He is twenty."

Prem, our new driver, tells us he was a sailor on the Aegean Sea when he as a young man in the 70's. He painted the hulls of ships and now he is painting our living room.


Truth is, Clementine, I am older now and have more words, but, sometimes, I still don't know. You just go with it.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

The Long Monsoon

"I can't sleep."

The words come as a whisper in my dreams. I reach my hand out into the darkness, searching for a tangible body. I touch pajamas or a wisp of hair, a dark body orbiting the black night like a dying star or black hole absorbing all light. The silhouette may be framed by a flash of lightning. Our house has touches of British Colonial Ceylon, rich wood beams and ceilings; there are the tops of palm fronds outside our bedroom window that reach out like fingers lit up in the storm. My kids believe the antidote to insomnia is to instill insomnia in others, to pass it on -- if you will -- like a baton in a relay race, so they wake up one of their parents. Usually, me. I don't yet understand why they think it is a good idea to wake me up when they can't sleep. I can't suck the sleeplessness from them like I could venom from a snake bite. Now, we're both awake. But I remind myself when they say they can't sleep is really code for something else they can't or aren't willing to articulate, and that's fine. I'd rather they didn't. I don't press them to share their bad dreams with me. They're only dreams, after all. Better forgotten. 

I usually guide them back to their beds and lay with them just long enough they drift back to sleep but I am awake enough to sneak back to my own bed. Sometimes, more often than not, I fall asleep, too. 

There are two, three, or four monsoon seasons in Sri Lanka, depending on who you ask. The rainfall pattern is influenced by the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The first monsoon is from mid-May to October, give or take six months, half a year, depending on how you count. Winds originate in the southwest, bringing moisture from the Indian Ocean. When these winds encounter the slopes of the Central Highlands, they unload heavy rains on the mountain slopes and the southwest of the island. 

The second monsoon season begins as soon as the first one ends, begging the question why it is two distinct seasons. The intermonsoonal months of October and November bring periodic squalls and sometimes tropical cyclones, overcast skies, and rains to the southwest, northeast, and eastern parts of the island (sounds like most of Sri Lanka to me). 

During the third monsoon season, December to March, winds come from the northeast, bringing moisture from the Bay of Bengal. 
Lastly, a second intermonsoonal period occurs from March until mid-May, with light, variable winds and evening thundershowers.

In short, it rains all year long all over Sri Lanka.

And yet, I love it. I asked Elise why the grey skies and torrential rains didn't bring the same blue feeling grey skies and winter brought in Jordan. I don't know the exact answer. Maybe it's all the jungle green, pockets of golden sunshine in between the showers, and the fact the rain is warm. 

This past weekend, we accepted an invitation to attend a Back to School brunch at Water's Edge, a country club near the kids' school. It sits beside a lake. On the way out to the school one day, Elise saw a 10-foot crocodile waiting along the shore of the same lake ringing the Parliament building; we didn't let the kids wander too far. 

They swam in the rain while the adults huddled under a patio umbrella. We've found ourselves too often unwitting participants in a game of expat one-upmanship, who is more expat. We have to be careful not to wear our badges of expatriotism too proudly as we compare our lists of all the countries we've lived in with one another. 

The kids had fun and that's what really matters. They had face painting and bounce houses, and only Sam is becoming too old to enjoy the innocent, simple joy of having a dragon painted on your cheek.

Peter came he from school today and told Elise and he found a friend. It was welcome news as he had been the one fighting the move the hardest. He also told us the PE teacher told him he had to wear his hair up in a man bun at PE or tie it back. He decided maybe to was time to get a haircut after all, so I walked him to Toni & Guys, sneaking in right before they closed.


Yes, that is Van Halen you hear playing in the background.  A-Ha's "Take on Me" would soon follow. Sometimes, I do feel trapped in time when we live overseas.

We have also discovered there is a Taco Bell here, and though it is not like any Taco Bell you may have ever been to, it is still very good.  They have fried chicken! Which is actually amazing and you can get fried chicken tacos which ... hello! 

Monday, September 2, 2019

Islands in the Stream

I've been following the path of Category 5 Hurricane Dorian for several days now as it inexorably swims through the West Indies toward my hometown of Jupiter where my dad, his wife, my aunt and uncle, and brother, sister-in-law, and nephew all live.

The hurricane is -- for now -- forecast to turn north and then northeast, barely missing them and, perhaps, the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States, though the forecasted turn has yet to come and rather then continue a westward march, the storm has stalled completely over the Abaco islands of the Bahamas, creeping a measly one mph, slower than a crawl.

In doing so, it continues to ravage catastrophic destruction on these vulnerable islands. In tracking the storm, I was more focused on if and when it would strike Florida and didn't give much thought to what impact it may have on exposed, low-lying homes a mere fifty miles east of the Florida mainland. Stories making its way out of the small island country are not good. Houses reduced to match sticks. Roads flooded. And the rain is still falling. 

As small boys growing up in South Florida and having a boatsman and fisherman for a father, trips to the Bahamas by boat were a not uncommon feature of our youth. Kids in other parts of the country may have gone hiking or camping. My dad took his twin outboard sport fisherman fifty miles east with a friend or two and his three sons for several days spent constantly covered in salty sea spray. To say the trips were memorable would be an understatement.

There is no one specific trip that stands out. Rather, all of the trips have melded into one amalgamated memory of running barefoot on wooden docks, falling asleep on the fibreglass deck of the boat, shirtless, thin, youthful arm hairs coated with salt water and fish scales, shorts stained with chum and blood, exploring dark island hotels, thin, industrial-grade carpeting underfoot, power off or flickering in long, hot, air conditionerless halls, as a diesel generator struggled to stay on somewhere outside, and yet there was always cold drinks and beer for the adults behind tiki bars with a sole television set turned to the Weather Channel. 

We didn't stay in hotels often or eat at restaurants frequently. Usually, we slept and ate on the boat, anchored in a protected harbor. We literally ate what we caught. We would spend hours trolling through grassy flats 10 to 15 feet deep in search of conch. My dad would throw two ropes off the back of the boat and pull two of his son's behind him. When we saw a conch, we would let go of the rope, swim to the bottom, pick it up, and swim it to him waiting for us in the aft. If the lip of the conch was too thick, as though the conch had been punched in the mouth, the conch was inedible. We would learn to identify these conch before bothering to bring them back to the boat and just leave them at the bottom of the sea. Though you couldn't know if a conch had a thin or thick lip until you turned it over. They slept at the bottom of the ocean with their openings down, toward the sandy bottom. 

We would bring the conch back to the marina where a local Bahamian boy would crack them open for us with a knife, chiseling a hole in the conch shell, then inserting the point of the knife into the hole to cut the conch foot from the shell. The conch once pulled from the shell was a long white slimy, shapeless sea snail. The conch then needed to be "cracked", or turned from animal to meat. This involved placing the conch under plastic wrap and beating it with a mallet to tenderize it. This was a good job with someone who had a lot of pent up aggression and usually fell to me. Not because I had a lot of angst to expel, just because I was the strongest of the three boys at that age. The conch would eventually become conch fritters if we we're lucky, cracked conch -- fried whole like a chicken fried steak, my favorite -- or made into a conch salad with diced tomato, green peppers, and onion. 

We also speared for lobster. My dad would drop us off around a coral head. We would drive to the bottom, looking for a pair of spiny antennae. The lobster lived at the bottom of the coral, hidden in crevices in the rock. In the Bahamas, you can fish for lobster with a pole spear, a long slingshot with a hook at the end like a harpoon. In Florida, you can only catch lobster with a net and a tickle stick which is much more challenging. You have to position the net behind the lobster, then tickle him into it with the metal stick like a collapsible car antenna by tapping him on the antennae. Easier said then done. Spearing then was more efficient and satisfying. A successful hunt was the boy, spear held high above the water, swimming back to the boat with a lobster flapping its tale, impaled on the end of his spear. 

And, of course, we fished. On one occasion I clearly remember we caught enough yellowtail snapper to fill a plastic garage can, bringing them over the gunwale as far as we could lower the bait into the water and reel one up. 

We slept on the boat, too, on inflatable rafts under the stars, or, if it rained, in the cabin below. On one of our last trips to the Bahamas with just us three boys we spent one night in a protected cove near Marsh Harbor. The next day the seas had picked up, stranding us in the cove behind a prison of rocks. We tried to make a run for it in the afternoon when the seas laid down slightly, but we couldn't navigate the narrow passage for the waves and turned back. We spent a second night, all four of us crammed into the cabin below. I wouldn't hear the end of that night for a long time. Evidently, I sprawled out in the middle and slept that way all night without stirring. 

Days were long and the seas were wide and endless. Perhaps, a good respite for a young mind learning to be still. I imagined a life on those islands, very simple, in a cottage or shack along the sea. My daydreams were very Hemingwayan. I don't know if I could have been happy with a life that slow when I have consciously chosen a life so much faster. 

Sadly, now, it would be some time before I could go back there or take my own kids on such an adventure, if we wanted. Though this disappointment, too, is selfish. For a greater loss is the lives and homes washed away in the storm, never to be brought back. 

It's a Small World After All

Every morning, right after the kids get on the bus at 6:30, we hear the faint twinkling song come from the streets. The bread tuk-tuk, a small three-wheel autorickshaw has been converted to a rolling, sputtering bakery. It goes up and down the street playing the song from the "Small World" ride at Disney as it travels the streets of Colombo, pedaling bread and other assorted baked goods, cakes, cookies, and savory, handheld breakfast pies. Back home, in the States, the song may have come from an ice cream truck, in Brazil from one of the many propane vendors, selling refills of cylinders of cooking gas. Here, in Sri Lanka, it's bread. The "Small World" ride at Disney World is itself polarizing. Kids love it's simple, colorful cheer. Adults find it mindnumbingly irritating, for the song's insipid repetitiveness as much as anything else. Everyday in Sri Lanka begins this way, like taking a ride on "It's a Small World".
We've been in Sri Lanka for two weeks now, and of course there are worse ways to start the day. It has rained every day we have been here. I remember looking at the weather before we arrived and seeing thunderstorms forecast every single day in a 10-day forecast a wondering what that would be like. I remember looking at a weather radar with my dad  once when I was younger. We were looking at the paths hurricanes take as they march across the Atlantic, beginning the race off the west coast of Africa as an amorphous, ominous blob. That blob is often red or purple, the darkest colors on a spectrum of rain where a drizzle is light green. I asked my dad what it was like there, in a place where the skies on weather radar were always covered beneath a blob of red or purple. "It's always a hard rain," he said practically. So, naturally, a place where thunderstorms were forecast every day would be rainy, and yet somehow I couldn't believe it until I saw it for myself, and...yes...there are thunderstorms everyday here, and, as far as I can tell, they can come at any time of day, out of nowhere, or mass along the horizon, or, often, in the middle of the night. Bright flashes and crashes of thunder have brought all three children into our room at least once at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning in the past two weeks. 

We traveled halfway around the world to get here. Jet lag was inevitable. Though, thankfully, it wasn't as bad this time as it had been in the past. We landed at Bandarnaike International Airport at 4:30 in the morning, before sunrise. The sun never came up. The world only lightened slightly, very, very slowly, remaining a deep blue. Even after we had been processed through immigration and collected our bags, the sky had only brightened ever so slightly, and we drove from the airport not being able to see much of our new home at first, merely glimpses of green trees or flowers captured in the narrow beam of the van's headlights. 

The drive from the airport is long. Deep indigo blue landscape, jungle, lined both sides of an unnaturally straight highway connecting the airport to the city. We drove in silence, stalled by exhaustion, forced to make small talk with the nice gentleman who picked us up from the airport. 

A few days after we arrived, my office hosted a scotch tasting. Elise asked me if planned to go. I demurred. Peter interjected; he didn't understand the importance of tasting tape. 

Peter has been the slowest to take to his new surroundings. He was also the most reluctant to leave Jordan. He may still be fighting the move hard. He came home last Friday in tears, exhausted by his first full week of school. He is keeping touch with his best friend from third grade, Faisal, as best as he is able over text message and FaceTime, going so far as to hold virtual playdates with him where they talk about the newest Avengers movie and play Transformers together. 

The bus picks the kids up at 6:30 for the long haul to the school far outside of central Colombo where we live. I rouse at 5:00 to get breakfast on the table, then wake the rest of the house at 5:30 to have enough time to wake up, cry, break down, brush teeth, get dressed, and make a half-assed attempt at eating the breakfast I had painstakingly made in a fog coffee had yet penetrated. I have only once relied on the alarm. Often waking at 3:30 (or earlier) ready to tackle the day. In fact, this morning was the first time I woke to the alarm clock. My eyes first opened at 3:30, then inadvertently I fell back to sleep, only to dream about an Olympic sport that was half basketball-half wrestling and actually a front for a child smuggling ring. Dreaming has been strange in Sri Lanka.

This is our fourth overseas move, and it is true it does get easier. But as we adjust more quickly to our new environment, we are also hungrier to explore and be settled. We've hired a housekeeper, Margaret, and a driver, Prem, who is immensely overqualified to be driving the orange Ford I bought, though we are not certain he can see. He most recently came to us from the Swiss Embassy after spending a decade as the official driver for the ambassador of Myanmar. I made it abundantly clear I was not an ambassador, nor did I own a Volvo or BMW, yet he still seemed to want to drive us anyway, so we hired him after he regailed us with tales of the Lost Country in the interior of Sri Lanka and a narrow, winding road and a cliff -- if from which you were so unfortunate to fall over -- three days would pass before you would hit the bottom. 

Oh, and lastly, at least for tonight, there are parrots here.