Into the blue again, into the silent water

At the time that I am starting this post, we have been back home for less than 72 hours. Before I describe our last couple of days in French Polynesia, I want to thank you all for reading my words and for your kind and generous feedback. It’s been a pleasure keeping notes and writing these and quickly realizing that I have an audience – your interest buoyed me and gave a different kind of shape to this vacation than I’d expected. Keeping my creative muscles flexed is such an important part of the process, part of keeping my writer’s identity intact. I’m grateful that I had a project and that you all encouraged me to keep going.

Speaking of projects, we’ve come up with an idea for a story/animated short about a black-tipped reef shark, so if you are or know an illustrator/animator, please send me a message!

I keep forgetting to mention an important shark distinction that we learned during our travels. The reason we can snorkel and interact with the black-tipped sharks without fear is that they are scavengers, not hunters, and thus are not aggressive. Your great whites and tiger sharks, on the other hand, are hunters. Snorkeling with them is a very different experience.

Last Monday we went back to the main island and town of Bora Bora under the pretense of buying a bag with which to cart home some of the many items we acquired. What I didn’t realize then was that Mr. S had an ulterior motive …

Remember those carved wooden sculptures from the Marquesas Islands? When we first saw them, the mister fell hard for the whale, a totem of the gorgeous humpback whales we snorkeled with in Mo’orea. It is a stunning piece of art but is large and quite fragile, and I suggested that we get something smaller. So we picked up this equally beautiful and much more travel-friendly ray, in honor of the sting rays we cavorted with and the manta ray over which we swam:

While I was back at La Galerie, the boutique we’d visited on our first trip to town, Bryan went to the grocery store to get some bottles of water. On his way to meet me, he detoured … and bought the whale. They were packing it up and so we’d return to get it before taking the boat back to the resort.

I didn’t say anything about this until now because I was SO nervous about getting it home in one piece. In fact, when we went to pick it up, the gallery owner said, “In the decades I’ve been buying art and sculpture from across these islands, I have never sold anything as fragile as this. Please be extremely careful getting it home.”

I, in turn, have never flown with something this fragile – much less on three different flights over so many hours – and it felt like traveling with a live animal—a super breakable one. We wanted to buy a seat for it but we refrained.

We were SO protective of it – had to be – and when we finally got it home, and it was in one piece, I was able to deeply appreciate its beauty.

The gallery owner was happy to hear that it would be living in New York City, a place he said it is his dream to visit one day, and so we sent him this photo:

But, before we would make our triumphant return to NYC, whale in tow, we had a few adventures left in Bora Bora.

At the store where we bought the bag we also bought a couple of gifts, including a chapeau for my mom. When I was showing it to B I said, “What do you think? For Maggie?” and the shop owner said, “Mag-GIE! I love this name1”

While she was ringing us up, she said, “Deux t-shirts, un sac, le chapeau pour Mag-GIE!” and again said, “I hope Mag-GIE loves her hat!”

We flagged down a taxi to drive us back to the boat, and once we were on our way, the driver took a phone call from his wife, who needed a ride. So he pulled to the side of the road and she joined us. They talked and laughed and held hands the entire time.

Because we were not taking the regularly scheduled guest shuttle, we rode from Bora Bora to the resort on the staff commuter boat.

At lunch we chatted with Hereiti, whom we worked with throughout most of our stay on planning excursions, dinner reservations, and so on. Hereiti means “Little love” and is, she told us, a common name in French Polynesia. Our Hereiti comes from Bora Bora and still lives here, though her husband, who is from France, is currently working in Singapore as a chef. In October she will go spend the month with him. She explained that in their line of work, when a good opportunity comes up they take it, hard as it may be to be apart from one another for so long. Their hope is that he will soon work in Bora Bora again and they can be together.

After lunch we went to the beach where Bryan was determined to master the outrigger canoe we had attempted on our first day. He went out by himself while I stayed on shore with the small cheering squad that had amassed—one couple from Long Beach, California, another from the upper west side (who were also on their honeymoon, and who we’d noticed that morning as they canoed past our bungalow in Grateful Dead t-shirts … they’d attended some of the same Dead & Company shows that we did over the summer), and a couple of the guys who work there. To us, Bryan did very well—he says he still wound up tracing figure eights on the water’s surface, but all we saw was his progress.

After he paddle boarded, while I made more conversation with the newlywed Deadheads, we went back to the lagoonarium for a final swim. As I mentioned in the post before this one, this was a truly incomparable experience. It had stopped raining and the fish were out in force.

As soon as we got into the water, we found Moana, the napoleon fish, and we decided to follow him. He led us on a tour of the lagoon, in yet another adventure that defies words. We swam with him for about thirty minutes, from one end of the lagoon to the other, then back again where, about halfway through, he pulled over to the side and appeared to be taking a rest. We continued on, stopping now and then to see if he would find us, but he stayed where he was.

This is what the napoleon fish, AKA the humphead wrasse, looks like (photo from Wikipedia).

The males, which Moana is, can reach up to two meters and 180 kg. This is a lot of fish, and as you can kind of see in this photo, his eyeball moves around so that as we swam together, he seemed to be constantly aware of us. I was concerned that we were making him nervous, but he is apparently very comfortable with all of the attention that he receives.

It was one of several perfect, natural sendoffs we got before leaving French Polynesia.

We had a lovely dinner that night at the resort’s Asian restaurant.

The next day it poured rain. At breakfast, Hereiti told us that the island was crying because we were leaving. We told everyone we saw that we are planning to return next summer, and we are … of course plans can change but the only way, really, that we could leave the paradise that was this vacation is by pledging to return.

We went back to our room to pack, and decided to release our gifts from Joe (the tour guide from Raiatea who stopped frequently at the side of the road to demonstrate how Polynesians create objects from the coconut palms and other leaves on the islands) into the water. We said thank you and good bye and dropped in the plate and fan that he’d made us and the crowns that we’d worn that day.

About twenty minutes later, Bryan noticed that our crowns had stayed together – the other objects had drifted, but our crowns traveled across the water together for as long as we could see them.

When it was time to go, a golf cart came to take us and our luggage to the boat that would take us to the airport. We were in bungalow 231, and as we pulled away, the driver called, “Bye, 231!” so we did too. As we were driving, we passed by several of the staff members, all of whom called good bye and waved—we got emotional, and again pledged our return. Hereiti came to the dock to say goodbye,

And then our boat arrived.

On checking out, you’re gifted necklaces of shells, which we wore on the first part of our trip home. Now they sit on the same display as our Marquesan wood sculptures.

If you’re a particularly nervous flyer, I would not recommend flying from Bora Bora to Tahiti during a rainstorm. As with so many of the experiences on this trip, I took comfort in the fact that the people in charge of this one know what they’re doing and do so often. The view on the way back was not quite as clear as the one we flew in to, but it was equally magical. As we approached the Tahiti airport, we could see the resort we’d stayed in on the first two nights of our trip.

And despite the length, the flight home was perfectly manageable.

The lyric above is from “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, which we listened to on Thursday in the car on the way to pick up Pago.

Without a doubt this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and even if we do return (we will) and we again snorkel with whales and sharks and rays and meet wonderful people and eat traditional lunch on a private motu and hike in the jungle and visit sacred ancestral lands and all the rest, this was our first visit to French Polynesia and it was our honeymoon. And it was perfect, mosquitoes, stomach bug, jet lag, forgotten cocktails, rainstorms and all.

Māuruuru, merci, thank you, to the beautiful people we met and the adventures we had.

Onward.

The sun is breaking through the clouds

Lyric is from “Little Trip to Heaven” by Tom Waits, one of the first songs I learned when I started taking voice lessons.

Day Fifteen

I am writing this early in the morning on the final day of our honeymoon. We leave this evening and arrive back in New York tomorrow (Wednesday) evening, after three flights and a six-hour time change. This was a lot easier than it sounds coming here; going back might be a little harder as it can be when the time change works in the other direction, but it will all have been worth it. The photo below is what I am seeing from my writing desk at 6AM.

We had rain and overcast skies on our last days of vacation, but this place is beautiful regardless. The last two days, the sun eventually came out for at least a little while. I have a lot of catching up to do here and will try my best to piece it all together.

After our day with Patrick and Marama, we returned to the resort where we had a dinner reservation in the most elegant of the four restaurants here. This one offers various chef’s tasting menus; we love this sort of thing, though it can admittedly be time-consuming. Before dinner we went to the lagoon-front bar where people go to watch the sunset over an aperitif. We arrived thirty minutes before our reservation and were given prime seats with a view. A server delivered the drink menus and said he’d be right back.

A few minutes later, a couple I’d noticed earlier walked to the edge of the dock, and the man got on his knee. The woman (these people were probably about ten years older than us) made a joke to the crowd which, by now, was watching. She got a laugh and so she continued, saying things like, “I don’t know, should I push him in?” [laughter] “I mean, it’d be pretty easy, right?” [laughter] “Hey—what are you doing on your knee?!” [laughter]

Finally, she said yes, and the poor guy slipped the ring on her finger, hoisted himself up, and requested a bag of ice (just kidding).

At this point about fifteen minutes had passed since the untimely disappearance of our server. The newly engaged couple settled down and were holding hands, watching the sunset. A woman came over to them and spoke for a while and Bryan and I figured they were friends who were all traveling together. Otherwise, why would you interrupt a couple who’d JUST gotten engaged and were enjoying a quiet moment? Then we heard her tell them she was from Denver. Her husband/partner/traveling companion came over and the two of them talked and talked and talked and the just-betrothed listened and nodded and listened and nodded and we waited and waited and waited in vain for the triumphant return of our server.

This resort has a tradition, we would soon learn, in which they “christen” the sunset by popping the cork of a bottle of champagne with a saber. Lo and behold, our long-lost server stood in the middle of the deck explaining to the crowd in French and English the origin of this tradition; Napoleon would open a bottle of champagne with a saber whether celebrating victory or acknowledging defeat. Our guy popped the cork over the thatched roof of the restaurant to a cascade of applause and raised glasses, by those who had something to raise.

It was now the hour of our reservation, and the prodigal son returned to take our order. When we explained that we’d hoped for a sunset aperitif before dinner and that it was now time for us to sit, the staff was fiercely apologetic. The restaurant manager came over and said this was unacceptable—we understood, we are on island time, this was not a travesty—but he gave us a free round anyway, which he invited us to enjoy on the (now dark) deck for as long as we wanted to.

We went instead to our table, where our server, Camille, explained the menu to us. Camille was the third young woman in a row we’d met that day who was newly arrived in Bora Bora from France – one from Nice, one from Paris, and Camille from Bordeaux. When the manager came back to check in on us he told us that he is new here from Bretagne (Brittany), and that his girlfriend is the restaurant’s sous-chef. We ordered the “Discovery Menu,” which is a daily tasting menu according to the chef’s whims. We had it that night and again Sunday night and it was completely different each time—an amuse bouche, an appetizer, two main courses, a pre-dessert palate-cleanser, a dessert, and a post-dessert confection. These are manageable portions, unlike other tastings we’ve encountered, and so we got to enjoy and appreciate each bite.

One could opt for wine pairings, and Camille told us that one of the top sommeliers in Paris, Xavier Thuizat, had visited the restaurant two weeks earlier and reinvented their wine program. He’d offered up some unexpected, “perfect” pairings, including a rosé from Provence served with grilled octopus.

The chef at this restaurant is Nicolas Nguyen. He is Vietnamese-French, and his food reflects both of these cultures with nods to Polynesian cuisine. This first night one of the dishes was his version of chicken Fafa, the chicken-and-spinach dish we’ve had a few times (including at our lunch on Patrick’s motu). The “spinach” is actually the leaf of the taro, and the dish is sublime. Chef’s version was in a light broth flavored with lemongrass. Sunday night we had his version of poisson cru, which traditionally is served in coconut milk and citrus. In this variation, we had small glasses of thick, sweetened coconut milk which we were to sip before each bite of tuna sashimi, over which the server had poured fresh cucumber water. Dinner starts with bread, French baguette, rye baguette, or another daily offering, and three kinds of butter: plain, red curry, and truffle.

During dinner service there was a singer who sang jazz standards, Frank Sinatra, “Imagine,” and chanteuse versions of pop songs like Toto’s “Africa” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” She was talented, singing along to pre-recorded tracks at a perfect, understated volume. We would hear her again last night when she performed at Burger Night, which we didn’t attend, but whose sounds and aromas wafted toward our table at a different restaurant.

While I am sitting here writing, a beautiful spotted ray just swam by.

At breakfast on Saturday we met Chloe, one of the resorts “butlers” (this is what Kenny who gave us the tour and Nicolas who hails from Belgium are as well). Their job is to coordinate activities and special requests and to generally check in on guests and make sure that tout va bien. Chloe comes from Sinaloa, Mexico, which she acknowledged upfront is “famous for the wrong reasons,” but said that she never felt unsafe there and she recognizes that this is a privilege not everybody shares. She introduced us to the resort’s resident cats, Tuna and Salmon; Bryan had seen a guest feeding sashimi to one of them a few days earlier.

Our plan for the first part of the day was to take the resort’s 10:30 boat to the main island of Bora Bora, where we would then take a shuttle the 25 minutes or so to the downtown, a small strip of shops, galleries, a couple of restaurants, and some practical storefronts—the bank, pharmacy, Avis, supermarket. While we waited for the boat Chloe gave us and the other guests venturing into town maps with her recommendations circled. With regard to the many pearl shops we’d encounter, she said, “They all have beautiful things. If you see a pearl or a piece of jewelry you like, get it. You can’t go wrong.”

The boat trip is very short, not ten minutes, and the taxi driver narrated our trip into town. He pointed out a service station and told us that gas prices are exactly the same all across French Polynesia. We passed houses with zinc roofs:

Many had surf boards out front, brightly colored clothing drying on lines, dogs … so many dogs …which we now have been told mostly belong to people, they just have free rein of the islands and many don’t wear collars. This is comforting and makes sense, as most of the dogs we’ve seen look to be content and cared for.

Do you recall the young man, Temaiana, who had just lost his grandfather and slept by his grave? We have better context for this now; our driver explained that there are no cemeteries on Bora Bora, people are buried in their family gardens. Indeed, many of these homes have land and are surrounded by lush trees and beautiful flowers.

We also passed some of the roof-like structures with coconut husks drying like we saw in Raiatea, and we know now that they will be exported to Tahiti to be turned into oil.

In town, we went to a few stores that were recommended: Bora Originals and La Galerie, both of which have clothing and accessories designed in-house and with local artists, and one we found on our own: Bora Home Galerie, which is part art gallery and part jewelry shop with one small rack of dresses.

Coincidentally, we’d met this designer – she has a studio and shop, Ma Robe à Moi, at her home in Mo’orea that we happened upon while driving around the island. She hand-paints the clothing and bags that she sells. We told this to Virginie, the proprietor of Bora Home Galerie, and she said how much she loves her designs.

Among the art that Virgine and her partner sell are these intricately carved wooden sculptures, of manta rays, sharks, a whale … created by Pierre Kaiha, a master carver from the Marquesas. One or two of these may be coming home with us …

There is a church whose stained glass windows look out onto Mount Otemanu.

We like checking out supermarkets in other countries, and so we stopped into the Chin Lee market (also to get lip balm for Monsieur S and hair pins for moi – to attach the flowers I’ve gotten every time I’ve seen them, in markets, gas stations, boutiques). Most of the supplies here are flown in from Tahiti, and if not local products, are flown to Tahiti from points much further away. They have many of the same brands that we find in France – the cold cuts, snack foods, packaged coffees, and so on — and a surprising number of gluten-free and vegan options. They also have a steady supply of fresh-baked baguettes; people here take their daily bread seriously. I felt a bit like a fumbling tourist as I maneuvered past people doing their errands, but everyone we encountered was friendly and gracious. A little ‘ia orana and mauru’uru go a long way. Really, I think this is universally true – when traveling to another country, at the very least learning “hello” and “thank you” will greatly help you.

After lunch at the Aloe Café (where we had the tuna burger that was reminiscent of a Big Mac with a far fresher and healthier protein), we took a quick trip down an alley to find some Love City

And then made a final stop at the studio of Jean-Pierre Frey, a local painter whom Bryan had read about in the Air Tahiti magazine on the flight over. Here we met his assistant, Charlotte, who lives in Bora Bora and comes from near Saint Tropez (the Mo’orea of France). What Charlotte told us which we hadn’t known is that Jean-Pierre passed away unexpectedly in June. She will keep the studio open for as long as she can and will continue to sell his lithographs. We bought a small one called Vahine Collages – vahine is Tahitian for “woman”.

Charlotte told us that the real meaning of ia orana (spelled many different ways, it seems, depending on what sign you read/site you visit) is more than a greeting, that it is actually akin to, “I give my heart to you so that you may have a beautiful life.” As we left she said, “Prenez soin de vous” — take care of yourselves.

We took the shuttle back to the boat and the boat back to the resort and decided to snorkel in the lagoonarium – the portmanteau given to the private, enclosed lagoon Kenny pointed out to us on our first day, with over 100 species of tropical fish and Moana, the sole Napoleon fish who resides there.

Presumably because it was late in an overcast day, the waters were a bit cloudy, yet we saw many species including the local celebrity – he was sticking close to the dock-side, like an observer, the lagoonarium mayor, watching the others. There were very big blue fish that someone told me are jacks, as well as smaller fish of every color. Swimming over the coral we saw more of the green- and blue-lipped clams, and I spotted one of the three moray eels, which was quite a bit larger than I’d expected. As you swim through this lagoon you hit areas that are very warm and very cold. It was all quite beautiful and an excellent place to practice snorkeling as it is safely contained – but we would have an even more incredible experience there the second time we went, on Monday (yesterday).

When we got back to our bungalow, before dinner, we released our leis (from both the resort and from our boat ride to Raiatea) into the water.

On Sunday it rained and while I stayed in the bungalow and wrote and read, Bryan took a Jeep tour of the main island. Much of this island’s infrastructure was developed by the U.S. Army and Navy during the Second World War. This includes the airport, the first one in all of French Polynesia, as well as the introduction of a desalinization plant to create drinking water. On his tour he visited bunkers and cannons, like the one pictured below; there are a few still on the island overlooking the lagoon and motu that we are on.

The jeep tour traveled on Circle Island Road, which our military built. Allegedly at this time there were 1000 residents of Bora Bora to 5000 troops; our boat captain, Teiva, told us that this is why today you see many Polynesians on Bora Bora with dark hair and light eyes.

Bryan’s tour guide told him that there are now 10,000 people on Bora Bora—and 9,000 dogs. He says that the dogs belong to everyone. When Bryan told him about our day with Patrick (a local legend, whom everyone we spoke with seems to know), and how incredible it was to watch him in the water interacting with the rays, the tour guide said, “He has those rays on his payroll.”

When he returned in the afternoon we had our second Polynesian massage—and it was every bit as relaxing and therapeutic as the one we had in Mo’orea. In the evening we had a reservation once again at the restaurant with the tasting menus. It was raining now, and so no one was on the deck for sunset aperitifs—we went instead to the bar area, where we were the only patrons. The bartender, Damian, explained that he gets very few customers in the rain, that people cancel dinner reservations and order room service. (Photo below is from two nights later, when it was not raining and so people were out). We were happy to venture out in the rain, and have also been happy to walk the grounds rather than get rides in the golf carts the staff drives. We’ve been surprised by how few people we’ve encountered doing the same. Walking to and from dinner along the moonlit water has been an integral part of this whole experience.

Damian is from the south of France and has been with the resort for a year. He is an expert mixologist, the hostess, Julie, told us, and one of the special aperitifs is called, Your Bartender and You. This is where you tell him the elements you like – sweet, spicy, bitter – the spirit you would like to drink – white rum, vodka, gin, etcetera – and other pertinent details, and he creates a specialty cocktail for you and writes down the recipe. He learned mixology in Australia seven years ago, lived there for a while before traveling through South and Central America, back to France to see family, and then to Switzerland, where he and a partner opened a cocktail bar just before Covid. When they had to shut down, he decided to move to Bora Bora, as one does. Julie, our cruise director, said that Damian is a treasure for the resort, that there are a lot of jobs one can do here even if their heart is not in it, but that his is not one of them.

It is clear that he loves what he does, and in fact the vast majority of the people we’ve met seem to feel the same.

Perhaps because of the snafu a few days earlier with the sundown aperitif, we were asked to wait a few minutes until the right table was ready, and when we were seated it was a perfect table. The room has glass panels on the floors overlooking the lagoon, and our table was a corner one facing the water. There was a bouquet of ginger flowers

and again we had Camille as our server.

I still have a day and a half of vacation to describe, but right now I am going to sit outside because the sun is peeking through the clouds. I shall return.

Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns

The lyric above is from “Across the Universe,” a song that keeps coming to mind as we straddle the line between past and present in this magical land, the furthest from home we’ve ever been. This has been a spiritual experience in ways that I, unfamiliar with discussing such matters, have yet to quantify.

Day Thirteen

I am starting this post on day twelve of our trip. It’s a little more than two weeks since our wedding, and I have to say that, so far, the biggest surprise of married life is how many sharks one encounters.

Yesterday (though I’m not sure when I’ll post this so let’s call it Friday) we partook of an excursion called The Polynesian Experience. When I told the gentleman who brought us coffee that that was our plan for the day, he said that it was his favorite of all the adventures this resort offers. One very cool thing about this place is that the staff gets to participate in all of the activities during their days off. They have housing for those who are not from Bora Bora and a designated staff beach. LGBTQIA+ inclusion-wise, this resort and other places we’ve visited in French Polynesia have much to teach the rest of the world. Of course I don’t know that this is true of all the 100+ islands, but it has been lovely to encounter here.

The coffee-bringing gentleman is Nicolas, and he is from Belgium. Before coming to Bora Bora he worked in Paris for the Georges V hotel, where he was a personal shopper for the guests. He had relationships with Hermès, Louis Vuitton, and all the other high-end shops there, so his recommendation today for a pearl shop on the main island of Bora Bora was one we took seriously. The price points reflected that he’d been a personal shopper at the Georges V who worked with Hermès, etcetera, and so we mostly browsed.

I am writing this on our deck at ten to seven in the evening, and this is when the flying fish start coming out in full force. It is like listening to someone skip very large stones across the water.

Anyway, Belgian, high-end Nicolas praised the trip we took yesterday, and we concur – it was incredible, and we have recommended it to others we’ve met here.

The boat that picked us up was the Maohi Nui II

And the trip was led by Patrick and Marama.

As it turns out, this was Marama’s first day, though we wouldn’t learn this until near the end of our Polynesian Experience. He is from the island of Maupiti, forty miles west of Bora Bora, and he had come to Patrick last week looking for a job. When our excursion popped up Patrick called him, and Marama worried because he’s never led a tour, he doesn’t speak English … Patrick told us that he’d assured Marama that he would teach him the ropes, that he is invested in training younger generations to do what he does so that they can take over one day. He is 59 years old and wants to stop working in a couple of years, though he acknowledges that his “office” is paradise and he will likely never fully retire.

Patrick comes from Bora Bora and has deep roots here. The motu (reef island) that our resort is on was not developed when he was a kid and, he says, used to be his playground. As I’ll describe later, his family owns a nice sized part of this motu and has no plans to sell. He acknowledges that the development of the two resorts here is a mixed blessing, and that he is determined to keep his family property despite the very appealing offer one of them made to him. We spent time there, and it cannot be monetized.

So … Patrick from Bora Bora and Marama from Maupiti picked us up in the Maohi Nui II and we set out for a day of snorkeling in three spots,

followed by traditional Polynesian lunch on the family motu. The trip would take us all the way around the island, and we would stay in the lagoon. Our first stop was the deepest, and this is where Patrick led us on a quest to find manta rays. The rays we saw off of Mo’orea were stingrays, it turns out; manta rays are much larger. The one we saw was, Patrick estimates, nine feet across; this is average-sized, they can get much larger. It was an elegant, graceful, undulating creature that, like the whales we saw off of Mo’orea, was further beneath us than we could begin to estimate. Not at all as deep as the whales, but deep enough that we knew we were once again floating in the presence of indescribable greatness. The currents were strong yesterday, and so once we surfaced from seeing our nine-foot manta ray, Patrick said, “Let’s go see some tropical fish.”

And so we moved inland, to an area where several other boats were stopped. Here there is a lot of coral and so a lot of fish, and this time Marama swam with us. When we got into the water he gave us handfuls of soggy bread, which immediately drew the fish to us. We were surrounded, swimming in schools of these beautiful striped and colorful fish, over coral that provides homes for giant blue- and green-lipped clams that face up to the water’s surface like abandoned jewels. We spent some time here, and every time we surfaced, strains of Patrick’s ukulele and singing drifted through the wind.

As we were getting back onto the boat Bryan motioned to Marama and me—there was a single sting ray gliding along the ocean floor.

From here we went even further inland to see our friends the black-tipped sharks. There were many more than we saw in Moorea, both the sharks and the rays, and they seemed to behave differently. In part perhaps it was because the water was choppy, it was slightly overcast, or maybe that has nothing to do with it—but these sharks were acting very shark-like, swimming with their dorsal fins above the water. There were so many of them, at one point I counted sixteen in my field of vision.

There was another boat parked nearby and a woman shrieked, “Oh my God it’s a shark!”—and I was reminded of my very first time swimming with sharks … four days earlier.

Bryan and I both said later that we felt much more at ease this time around but that we still had our defenses up. Independently we’d both noticed that one shark seemed to be swimming directly toward him, and we wondered how that would turn out. It was fine.

The most fascinating aspect of this part of the trip, though, was the behavior of the rays, particularly how they interacted with Patrick. While he stood in the water, they came to him with what looked to be genuine affection. They were like pets, clamoring for his attention, “hugging” him while he stroked them. He explained that they respond to vibration, and he would make this whistling noise to draw them to him, then say, “Yes, I love you too.” We were in awe, and he explained, “This is natural for us. This is normal. We respect nature, and they know it, so they respect us too.” Bryan and I got to pet them as well; they range in texture from rough, sandpaper-like to smooth and spongey, and they are very sweet animals. When it was time to get back onto the boat, they swarmed Patrick and he promised that he’d be back.

The pretty yellow fish you can see in that photo are butterfly fish—I found my ichthyologist.

As we rode toward the motu where we would have lunch, Patrick and Marama sang songs about Bora Bora.

Patrick pointed out one of the mountains on the main island, how the top of it looks like a giant Tiki head gazing up at the sky.

These, he explained, are so similar to the giant statues on Rapanui (Easter Island), that common lore has it that the people who built them had first visited the island of Bora Bora.

We arrived to the motu that has been in his family since Patrick’s grandparents acquired it many years ago. Here, his sister and brother-in-law prepared for us a traditional Polynesian feast in the ahima’a, the oven that is dug into the ground, then covered with leaves while the food cooks. He showed us how this works –

we’d seen the same in the Tiki Village in Mo’orea, but here we had a closer look.

Once everything was ready, they served a buffet of food cooked both in the ahima’a and on the grill.

The lunch menu:

Two kinds of plantain

Breadfruit

Taro root

Tapioca root

Pumpkin poi

Coconut bread (which has the consistency of a pudding)

The national dish of raw tuna in coconut milk

Chicken cooked in spinach

Suckling pig

Fresh pineapple,

and from the grill, tuna steaks and spiny lobster

We were given plates made from coconut palm leaves just like the ones Joe made for us in Raiatea.

It seems that each day that we are here, we expand upon the knowledge we’d gained the previous.

Patrick encouraged us to try a little bit of everything, which we did, and to eat the traditional way with our hands, which we also did. This is one of the great meals of our lives thus far.

When we were done, Patrick took us on a walking tour to the ocean side of the motu, where the beaches are covered in dried coral from when the waters receded one million years ago.

We talked about travel, which Patrick has done extensively, all over the States, throughout Canada, where his ex-wife lives, throughout Europe—France, Italy, Spain, Germany—to Cuba, Australia, New Zealand, all over French Polynesia. He has a daughter in Montreal who wants to move to New York City to get into fashion, and a son who lives in the French Alps and wants to come to the States to play soccer.

In talking about his investment in training Marama and others to one day take over his tours, he said, “It is my job to help people.” We agreed with the importance of this sentiment, and he went on to say, “My philosophy is simple. I aim to be a better person tomorrow than I am today.”

Walking along these coral-covered shores and seeing evidence of eras long past was a primal, emotional experience.

This trip has been a dream of Bryan’s since he was a little boy, and as with any profound life experience, in real time we can merely skim the surface of how this will settle into our consciousness. What we are seeing, doing, tasting, and most of all, the people we are meeting, are changing our lives for the better in ways that will impact us for years to come..

I have never seen as many shades of blue as I have on this trip.

I am pretty good at meeting people, at making small talk and connections and finding common ground. But Mr. S excels at meeting people and making big talk … making connections based on his wide-ranging knowledge of matters practical, factual, and esoteric.

He’ll say, “How big is that, about three meters?” and they’ll say, “Close – two and three quarters”. Or “that’s the only motu on which they grow grapes and make wine, right?” and they’ll say, “Yes, it was trial and error and took ten years for them to produce.” He knows what sport and pastime are popular in which hemisphere, what historic influences may play into any given situation, and really how to connect with people on a deeper level than most. It has been awe-inspiring to witness on this trip, the way people from cultures he’s only read about take to him.

At breakfast on our last morning in Mo’orea, I passed him at the omelette station and he was saying to the chef, “Yes, but he’s a young man, a lot can change.” When he sat down I asked him what they were talking about and he said, “Oh, Chef’s brother’s in some trouble because of a girl who broke his heart, so he’s really got to look after him.” This came to light in the time it took Chef to prepare a vegetable omelette. Remember Temaiana, the young man with the name tattoo who greeted Bryan so effusively on our first day here? Bryan told me two days ago that his grandfather had just passed away, and so he was heading home early. Yesterday Temaiana called out to him and they had a quick chat. He came back to tell me that Temaiana had slept outside by his grandfather’s grave and been woken at 2AM by some dogs.

And, as with the phenomenon I mentioned earlier about each experience we have building upon knowledge from the previous day, this relates to something we learned yesterday when we went into the main town on Bora Bora. I will write about that later – right now I will head out to enjoy our second-to-last full day of this beautiful vacation.

À la prochaine …

You understand now why you came this way

The lyric above is from Southern Cross, which references the constellation visible only in the southern hemisphere. Last night, we saw it for the first time.

Day Eleven

Bryan and I meditate – Transcendental Meditation, which one can allegedly practice anywhere, regardless of location or outside distraction. I’ve meditated under lots of different circumstances, in cars, on trains, airplanes. Yesterday I meditated on a boat motoring across the Pacific toward Bora Bora over 2.5-meter swells. These aren’t great swells, not like what they are expecting today, but you definitely feel them.

Mr. S, with his impeccable research and planning skills, arranged for us to take a private tour of Raiatea, the island considered the birthplace of Polynesian culture. Indeed, our concierge Hiro told us, Raiatea (roughly pronounced RAY-a TAY-a, though correctly it comprises five syllables) is called the Sacred Island, and it houses a vast UNESCO site called Taputapuātea.

On this excursion we would also visit the neighboring island of Taha’a, which is the Vanilla Island. This area is where the best and most pure vanilla in the world is grown.

We got there by boat, the O’hanalei, piloted by Teiva, with Ben, his first mate, and Teranji, our hostess. When we got on board we were given big, beautiful leis made from tiaré Tahiti, a type of gardenia that is exclusive to this part of the world.

Teranji is from Tahiti but lives now on Raiatea (which is the second largest of these islands). She told us that for years she’d only gone back to Tahiti when strictly necessary, to do errands, doctors’ appointments, paperwork, and so on, but that finally she had reason to stay for two weeks and she fell back in love with it. She drove to the mountains, looked down on the island and cried, realizing the beauty she’d taken for granted for so long. She equated Mo’orea with Saint Tropez, said that many wealthy Tahitians have second homes there, and everyone we spoke with yesterday spoke of that island with reverence. Bora Bora, she said, has its own laws. Indeed, a famous restaurant, Bloody Mary’s, which has been around almost 45 years, is under new ownership and will close this Sunday while the land around it is developed and turned into a hotel and villas. This would not happen in many other parts of these Leeward Islands. In fact, Teranji told us the story of the day she was there two years ago and saw some men sitting at the bar with an iPad showing mock-ups of different buildings – she learned that these were the new owners and developers making the plans that they will start implementing next week.

We spent most of the 90-minute ride up top where Teiva runs his boat with a combination of steering and automatic navigation. Teiva grew up in Raiatea; his father came here from Paris in 1969, met his mother, who is from here, and stayed. Teiva married a woman of Swiss descent whose family arrived when she was six months old. The refrain we keep hearing from people whose parents or grandparents (or who, themselves) came here from elsewhere is that once they arrived, they never looked back. Now Teiva owns and runs this boat which is named for his two daughters, O’hana and Analei.

This was a beautiful ride unlike any I’ve taken – I’ve not spent a lot of time on the water, and on this trip I’ve realized that I really love being on boats of all kinds – ferry, canoe, smallish whale-watching boat, and this one, which I guess is technically a yacht. We rode over swells much smaller than the ones on which I would later meditate, and in the distance we could see the basic outlines of the two islands we’d be visiting. I kept thinking about the snake that swallowed the elephant and then resembled a hat in The Little Prince. 

As we drew closer, the texture and color and nuance of these islands came into view. Teiva told us that everyone he brings on this trip is astonished by how green these islands are and it’s true – they are incredibly lush, vibrant islands that have a lot of water within in rivers and streams, as well as significant rainfall.

Taha’a and Raiatea are five miles apart and share a lagoon. Raiatea is the metropolis, where the hospitals and colleges are, where people from Taha’a go to file their paperwork and run their errands. We arrived to Taha’a where we were greeted by Maeva, who would take us on a tour of her family’s pearl farm. Maeva’s (her name means Welcome in Tahitian) parents are from France and came to French Polynesia on a sailing excursion forty years ago—you know the rest. Now the family owns and operates a small pearl farm out of their home and property, the Champon Pearl Farm. The whole family is involved; Maeva’s brother is a diver and grafter, which are the people responsible for readying the oyster to produce the pearls.

I won’t go into extensive detail about the pearl cultivating process, but we learned some fascinating things. The Tahitian pearls are also called “black pearls,” though in fact their colors can vary greatly from black to these rich, jewel-tones greens and blues, to silvery pinks. The color varieties are the work of the black-lipped oysters native to this area. It takes 1.5 years from the time they start working with a single oyster until that oyster produces a pearl, and they can work with the same oyster up to five times, over a span of ten years. The life span of these oysters is thirty years. That merits an exclamation point. Thirty years!

After Maeva gave us a tour and we watched the grafter work (she works on up to 500 oysters a day, which is a lot but is very little compared to what the larger, more commercial oyster farms produce), we went into the house where they sell their jewelry. The pearls range in color, as I said, as well as shape and size, and the jewelry they create is beautiful.

Maeva drove us back to the boat and we traveled across the lagoon to Raiatea. This time we sat downstairs in the kitchen/dining area where Teranji had prepared us a snack – open-faced tea sandwiches of smoked trout and smoked tuna. As we pulled into the marina she went outside to help Ben, and Bryan and I collected our things. We went to open the door … and couldn’t. We gestured to the others but they were talking and laughing and didn’t notice us. We tried a few more times, turning the locks, pushing the door, pulling the door, sliding the door, nothing. By this point the gentleman who would be our tour guide for the afternoon had arrived and now they were all talking and laughing, the crew with their backs to us, our tour guide not yet having noticed us, and Bryan and I were in hysterics, trapped in the galley of this yacht. We had visions of their forgetting we were there and heading off to lunch and I wondered where the rest of the bread and smoked fish were. Finally our tour guide, Joe, spotted us and pointed. Teranji apologized for locking us in, and we were on our way.

Joe’s real name is Heinue, which means big crown, and he was wearing one made of ferns.

He explained that he wears one every day and that it symbolizes joy and being one with nature, and while he drove us around he pulled over several times to gather more ferns with which he made crowns for Bryan and me to wear.

On the seat next to him was a ukulele, which he played for us and insisted that we try, though neither of us play ukulele.

He is a treasure, has lived on the island his entire life and has vast knowledge of its history and deep appreciation for his ancestry. He spoke to us in fluent franglais, much of which I translated for Bryan, though the is getting very good at understanding French. I will tell you some of what we learned, some which we’d already had basic ideas about, other points on which we’d been misinformed. Know that, while he talked to us, he drove us around the island toward our lunch destination, pointing out the things that we passed—a taro plantation, trees of none (NO-nay) fruit, grapefruit, lemon, avocadoes, pineapple, bamboo, ginger, and these structures where they cultivate vanilla beans.

His tour was a combination of history lesson, agricultural insight, and personal anecdotes, with his stopping frequently at the side of the road to demonstrate how his ancestors used different plants and leaves, particularly the coconut palm, to make baskets, fans, plates, clothing, rope – he’d jump out with his scissors or his knife and hack away at a plant, deftly weaving the leaves and producing objects for us to take home.

He, like so many of the people we are meeting here, takes tremendous pride in his home and his ancestry. He would tell us later that Polynesians and the French that colonized their islands in the late 19^th century have “a good relationship,” but that Polynesians do not consider themselves French – they speak the language, but they also speak their own and they have their very old tradition and history and culture, which is quite different, of course, from the French. “We just want to keep our own identities,” he said, then, “Look at me. Do I look French? I’m not.” This wasn’t said with anger or bitterness, it was said with fact. It was said after he’d shown us the sacred space, after we’d taken our shoes off and walked on his ancestral land, after he’d imparted so much wisdom to us that it will take a long time for all this knowledge to settle into our bones.

A few posts ago I mentioned that our tour guide in Mo’orea said that the original Polynesians came from South America. This seemed apocryphal then from a logistic point of view as well as one based on physical features. Joe told us that this is a theory started by a Norwegian historian in the mid-twentieth century, and that he believes it to be false. For one thing, he said, theirs is not a sailing culture, and so the odds of their reaching these lands in the era that they were first settled are slim.

We’ve learned of the Polynesian triangle, at the center of which lie these islands. The three points of the triangle are: Hawaii, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

This is where Maori culture was born, and this is where migration began toward these islands. As further evidence that Polynesian culture shares its DNA with these places, Joe pointed out the similarities in the relationship between man and nature, how the knowledge of his Polynesian ancestors came to be. His ancestors learned, he said, by sitting still, not chasing time, but observing the ocean, the horizon, the stars. Polynesian wisdom is a combination of astronomy, cosmology, meteorology. They learned by studying the power and direction of the wind, the trees, animal behavior.

The national sport here is paddling. Surfing was invented in Tahiti by a woman. Joe likes watching football (the global kind, not the American) and rugby, and he plays bass in a band. Marlon Brando’s Tahitian wife, Tarita, was his first cousin.

For lunch Joe drove us to Opoa Beach Hotel, where we had one of the best meals we’ve had on this trip: a salad of pineapple, tomato, and warm herbed goat cheese, then pistachio-crusted Mahi with coconut rice so decadent it was like risotto, and hibiscus-lychee iced tea.

Bryan and I are running out of adjectives. One the boat ride over I said that I was “stoked” to go snorkeling in the lagoon. He described the fish we had for lunch as “bonkers”. Also, he owns three pairs of Pago socks and wore one yesterday, so that our pup could be with us in spirit.

Joe picked us up after lunch to drive us to the sacred space. En route we passed a spot where they dry the shells of older coconuts (the brown ones), which they then export to Tahiti to make the oil that is used around the world.

We passed flowers that included hibiscus, bougainvillea, and the tiaré Tahiti, whose scent is in most of the lotions and hair products we find at the resorts. It’s a beautiful delicate floral.

We arrived at Taputapuātea, a protected seaside expanse described on Wikipedia as such: Marae Taputapuatea is a large marae complex at Opoa in Taputapuatea, on the south eastern coast of Raiatea. The site features a number of marae and other stone structures and was once considered the central temple and religious center of Eastern Polynesia.

This was built sometime around 1000 AD, then expanded upon, Joe estimates, around 1300.

He showed us the different marae, which are like the sacred platform we saw in the jungle of Mo’orea, but much larger. We saw the structure that was once the school, where the aforementioned astrology, cosmology, meteorology, and so on were taught.

We saw those used for ritual; here was where Polynesians would gather before sailing to pray to the gods for a safe and successful voyage, to pray for good navigation. These places were considered so profoundly sacred that every tree and plant that grows within these grounds and every animal that walked or flew past were considered sacred as well.

The stones that make up these structures are coral, from the sea, and basalt, from the mountains, emblematic of the melding of the different elements that Polynesians honor.

We saw the marae that contains the tall white rock on which the king would sit during ceremonies and political meetings.

We walked around the grounds, which were filled with holes created by the little crabs that populate the area. Joe pulled leaves from the trees and placed them near the holes, and we watched crabs emerge tentatively, grab the leaves, and scuttle back below ground. Before we left, he gave us a final, illustrated history/geography lesson about Polynesian migration, drawing upside down in the dirt with a stick.

He showed us his elaborate and beautiful tattoos that tell the story of his people’s past, and explained the origin of the word.

On our way back to the boat, he played us some of his music, Tahitian rap. At 4PM, we said goodbye, boarded the O’hanalei, and headed back across the ocean toward Bora Bora.

We arrived in time for sunset,

And then had dinner with the moon.

It would be impossible to adequately describe all that we learned and experienced yesterday, and so I will leave this as is and relish the memories.

At dinner, our server, Virginia, pointed out the Southern Cross.

She took a liking to Bryan and me, and told me to come find her today as she has a necklace for me. After a little while she explained it is a necklace she doesn’t like but she wants me to have. How do you say “regifting” in Tahitian?

Fly the ocean in a silver plane

Day Nine

Ia orana from Bora Bora … we took a 50-minute flight here today, landing a little after 11:30. Bora Bora is actually a group of islets (motus), part of the Society Islands, one of the five main archipelagos of French Polynesia.

This may not be the most fascinating tale from our time here, but tomorrow is a very big day that will merit its own post.

Our last night in Mo’orea (for this trip; we optimistically said our goodbyes with à la prochaine: until next time) was beautiful, drinks and dinner while a local musical duo played islandy versions of songs we knew – Amy Winehouse, The White Stripes. Bill Withers, Dr. Dre – “No diggity” sounds different in a French accent with a calypso rhythm behind it. (I know it’s not technically calypso.)

This morning after breakfast, at which there was dim sum, we were driven two minutes to the Mo’orea airport, where we paid a small surcharge because our luggage was over the weight limit. That would be my doing. There is no assigned seating and we’d been told to sit on the left side of the airplane for its stunning views. As we flew off, we could see all of Mo’orea, the lagoons, the overwater bungalows, the tiny island we visited after our whale-watching excursion. We learned the other night that Mo’orea is the birthplace of the overwater bungalow, and that they were first built in the early 1960s.

The expanse of water over which we flew was aquamarine and clear the entire way. In the air we were given cups of fresh pineapple juice, and by the time we finished, we’d begun our descent. On landing, several people applauded, which I’d not heard in decades. Was that an 80s thing, passengers clapping for the pilot? I get it—I say a silent thank you to whomever is in charge of these matters every time I land—but people don’t seem to do this much anymore.

The Bora Bora airport occupies its own island, and once you land and collect your luggage, there are boats waiting to take you to your destination. Ours was called Neptoon IV, and the ride was about 15 minutes long. There were six of us heading to our resort, which shares its island with one other hotel and a handful of private homes. One needs a boat to get to the mainland of Bora Bora; the resort offers free boat service leaving at 10:30 AM and returning at 2:30 PM every day except Sunday because, as our resort guide (Kenny) explained, “Polynesians love their Sundays”.

We needed a resort guide as this place spans 44 acres—much larger than where we stayed on either of the two previous islands. There is a designated lagoon for snorkeling that is contained by large nets suspended from bridges in order to keep sharks from entering. Within this lagoon are over 100 species of fish including one enormous Napoleon fish – look it up, I’ll wait. Seriously.

Have you ever seen anything like that?! There is currently only one in the lagoon and his name is Moana, which means “ocean”. He is apparently very friendly and very curious and by the time we snorkel there, which will either be the end of the day tomorrow or on the weekend, seeing him will feel like a celebrity sighting. There are also three moray eels in the lagoon, which Kenny promised won’t bother us as long as we don’t try to pet them or pick them up. We assured her that we have immense respect for wildlife.

In Bora Bora I am Mrs. Smith. This is how everyone we’ve met who is affiliated with our resort has greeted me, and I’m fine with it. I like being a Mrs. – though I’m aware that married life isn’t all overwater bungalows, whale watching, and Polynesian dancers. Just mostly.

The first person to greet me as Mrs. S was the gentleman at the airport who gave us our leis. Fragrance-wise, these landed somewhere between the just-this-side-of-overwhelming ones we got in Tahiti and the seemingly unscented ones we were given in Mo’orea. We learned, in Tahiti, that one is meant to leave their leis behind (unless you take them home and preserve them, which many do – we couldn’t figure out how to as we are changing resorts several times). If you leave them behind, you’re to hang them from a tree or toss them into the ocean to give them back to the land from which they came. We’re ocean people, and so on our last nights in the two previous places we said goodbye (à la prochaine) to each island and gifted our leis to the Pacific.

Once we’d gotten settled in our beautiful bungalow, we went to lunch at the open-air, poolside restaurant. On our way over, a young man greeted Bryan so enthusiastically that I thought he might have mistaken him for someone else. But he’s just a friendly chap who seems to do a little bit of everything at the resort. His name is Temaiana, which is tattooed in cursive on his chest; he told us he’d gotten that tattoo when he was seven years old, much to his parents’ dismay. It must have taken up an awful lot of real estate when he was a kid. At lunch there was a group of four seasoned travelers – three women and one man —playing some sort of card game over “drinks that keep flowing,” they told us. They were still playing when we left the beach four hours later.

We went down to the beach where one can swim, canoe, kayak, jet ski, paddleboard, sail … and the resort is incredibly trusting with the equipment. Not that you could really go anywhere except for the other resort, but they let you take it out for as long as you want. We took an outrigger canoe, which provides much more stability than the other kind, and there’s a learning curve to this – we made an impressive number of figure eights (or infinity symbols, we decided) in the water before Ruben, who was overseeing water sports today, jumped into our canoe and demonstrated optimal technique.

A couple other things before we head to Polynesian night in one of the restaurants here: it is currently winter in French Polynesia, which means wind but not long rains, and very calm seas. In winter it threatens to drop down to a frigid 75 degrees. The water here is the warmest we’ve encountered thus far. In the waters off of our bungalow, Kenny says we should NOT expect to see the 100+ species we’ll see in the enclosed lagoon; there is not the coral here that lined the floors in Mo’orea, and so there aren’t places for the fish to hang out, eat, live. But, we may see occasional ones as well as rays and sea turtles.

Tonight there will be a blue moon; if you are reading this you’ll have experienced it long before we do. A blue moon on our honeymoon makes perfect sense to me.

As I write this we are sitting on our deck watching the sun set behind Otemanu, the main mountain of Bora Bora.

A flying fish just skipped across the water’s surface. A room key floated by and we realized it might be B’s. Not to worry, it’s made from bamboo.

postscript: I waited to post and now the blue moon is here, and she’s stunning.

post-postscript: B found his room key.

In our little hideaway beneath the waves

Day Eight

Today is the eighth day of our trip, and our final full one on Mo’orea before we head to Bora Bora in the morning. I had not heard of this island before we (Bryan) planned this vacation, and having spent the better part of a week here now, I see why people return to it again and again.

Yesterday was one of the top five exhilarating days of my life thus far and I’m not sure I can do it justice in writing. However, I will try. But first I’ll tell you about the day before. We wound up postponing our whale watching excursion because we both felt a little ill – took Covid tests, read up on Dengue fever, which a friend had warned me about with regard to the robust mosquito population, and decided it was something we ate plus the sheer exhaustion of getting married during a long weekend of family, friends, and celebration, then flying nearly halfway around the world. So we did what The Producer advised us to do and took a Bungalow Day. We napped and read and sat outside and in the mid-to-late afternoon decided to snorkel. Turns out this is the cure for what ails. We’d first snorkeled together in Jamaica in April and loved it so much that Bryan bought us our own masks and snorkels; we borrowed fins from the resort’s activités nautiques department.

Here we can snorkel right off of our deck in the shallow waters of the lagoon on which this property sits. I wish we had a resident ichthyologist to consult because we saw a cornucopia of beautiful fish whose names I don’t know – I know them by color. There were the little bright teal ones; the various striped, yellow and black and white and black; the big black velvety ones that billow like curtains; the plentiful ones that look like reverse black-tip sharks – their side fins have the tips, and the rest of their bodies are a pale gray; these long pearly opaque guys; some white catfish-like creatures; a flat fish that settles into perfect camouflage in the sand; And the dreaded Picasso fish, which apparently bit our tour mates Richard and Dawn/Kit while they snorkeled last week. They’ve left us alone thus far. There are also a couple of Tikis scattered around the lagoon floor. When we weren’t feeling well, Bryan Googled whether touching an underwater Tiki is bad luck; apparently it isn’t. The coral that lines the floor varies in color, some a bright lilac hue. It’s pretty incredible the trust this resort puts into its guests, but everyone we’ve encountered seems to regard this setting and its inhabitants with great respect. Almost everyone.

Forgot about the things we think are sea cucumbers – there are lots of those, too.

So we snorkeled, remarked at how much better it made us feel, had a nice early dinner and went to bed. And then …

Day seven, I slept in while Bryan took an early morning snorkel in the rain – knowing that the fish would be even more abundant because of the weather. Then while he took a short hike across the street the resort phoned to invite us to join yesterday’s whale watching expedition. We were told to bring our snorkeling gear and a change of clothes.

It is an outside company that leads these trips, and so we took a shuttle about ten minutes away where we met our captain, Tama, and expedition leader, Lucas, who resembled a younger, fitter Beard from Ted Lasso. We were five guests—Bryan and me, Dawn from Oxford, UK, who is at the start of her six-week trip through French Polynesia (including the Cook Islands) and New Zealand, and a young couple from Normandie, Marie and Pierre-Louis (who, in introducing himself, explained that his is a “combination name”.) This couple is traveling around French Polynesia and then spending three months in New Zealand; throughout their trip they will stay with host families and in live/work situations. They are 27 years old and were granted leave from their jobs to do this. They suggested we meet in Paris sometime, and told us how much they loved their visit to New York over Thanksgiving some years ago, where they stayed with a family in Greenwich Village and took in the parade.

When we introduced ourselves to our hosts, Tama, who speaks very good English (Lucas less so but we managed in a combination of languages and hand signals), said to Bryan, “Bryan, as in Bryan Adams!” When we told him where we’re from, he and Lucas began to sing “Empire State of Mind” – the Alicia Keys part, not the Jay Z.

As we set out, Tama explained how this would go: we’d look for whales and head in their direction before stopping to snorkel. He asked us whether we could all swim, something I might have assumed a requirement before joining a trip like this. Everyone could, more or less, though Dawn and I both felt we were not very strong swimmers in the deepest parts of the ocean. Tama told us we could hold onto the life preserver that Lucas would be pulling. We were to stay in a group, and give “200%” to this adventure, while not traveling more than 100 meters from the boat. As I’m from one of three countries that does not use the metric system (the other two being Liberia and Myanmar), I have no concept of 100 meters and so was grateful for the first rule, that we stay in a group.

This was a small motorized boat, and so we jetted out to sea, the clouds ringing the peaks of Mo’orea behind us. This part of the Pacific is so incredibly blue, like nothing I’ve seen before. Tama described his home as paradise, and it is. His mother is from Mo’orea and his father from the Marquesas which, we’ve learned, are the islands furthest from any continent in the world – thus among the most remote places one can visit.

We were somewhat guided by other small boats that were on the ocean for the same reason – where they were stopped, we could assume we’d find whales. And we did. A couple of times we saw whales breaching and spraying through their blow holes and we saw mother and baby whales together and it was incredible and, I thought, enough. We were so far out to sea that I didn’t feel compelled to get into the water. I commented to Dawn that I might stay on the boat and she said, “Well we’re here, we ought to give it a go,” which sounds so delightful in an English accent that I agreed to do just that.

At our first stop, we donned the masks and fins that would stay on for much of the remainder of the trip, and we slipped off the boat into the ocean, cobalt blue, warm, and vast. Dawn and I quickly found the preserver Lucas was pulling. Like a merman, he led our group many meters out, looking under the water and then on the surface, trying to locate the whales. When he realized the ones we’d spotted were gone, he signaled to Tama, who pulled the boat around. Getting back onto the boat at these depths was the most cumbersome part of the trip; you hold onto the ladder while slipping your fins off and tossing them on board, then climb the ladder and follow your fins. This happened again, seeing the whales, dropping proverbial anchor, following Lucas, missing the whales, getting back on board. And finally …

I think it was our third or fourth sighting – they were much closer this time – so close you couldn’t miss them when they breached. These are humpback whales, by the way, and are, we learned, many meters longer than the boat we rode on. This time Lucas seemed confident and so our pod of six set out, checking the horizon, looking under the water, checking the horizon – and in what still seems like a dream, or a mirage, we swam right over two of the most enormous and stunning creatures on this planet. They were well below us, though it’s impossible to say just how far, and they almost glowed. It took a moment for me to register what I was seeing – their surfaces looked like the topography of lost cities on the ocean floor. Bryan told me later that they were lying on their sides, looking up at us; they certainly knew we were there. There was this magical hush as we floated above them, these two light colored behemoths shining up from the depths of the Pacific. And as quickly as we saw them, they swam away and we surfaced. Apparently this is different from what one usually sees on these expeditions, because even Lucas was awestruck. We got back onto the boat bewildered and blissful, chattering in English and French about the beauty of what we’d witnessed. Pierre-Louis had a Go-Pro and will be sending us images, which I will share.

If I never saw another whale in the wild that would have been plenty, and I said as much to Bryan, who reminded me that we still had about three hours of tour to go. We played a few more rounds of find the whale, follow the whale, miss the whale, until we encountered our final underwater whale of the day. This time he swam in front of us. It’s hard to put into words what this looks like. You don’t see anything else in waters this deep, and then here comes this incredible creature, literally out of the blue, gliding by and continuing on its way.

By this point it felt like the seven of us were bonded for life, or at least until Pierre-Louis What’s Apps us the photos.

Following our adventures with whales, we rode significantly inland. The waters here are so clear that even before we got to the shallow part we could see straight through to the bottom. Last year I did some research on the clearest waters in the world; while Mo’orea did not come up in that search, other points in French Polynesia did. I have wanted to see water like this for a very long time. We came to an area where several small boats and canoes were parked, people swimming or floating in the water, having drinks, enjoying a leisurely afternoon … among the sharks. The sharks and the manta rays, both of whom I attempted to capture to varying degrees of success.

We had been promised, as I wrote the other day, that these sharks would be harmless to us, and they were. We got out and snorkeled here—no life preserver needed, we could easily reach the bottom—while the manta rays swam beneath and looked up at us with their giant eyes. The sharks, and there were many of them, slowly circled. There was no doubt that these were sharks. They were 100% gill breathing, dorsal fin bearing, glassy, unblinking shark eye-wielding animals. They can grow as long as seven feet, though I don’t think we saw any quite that long. And while we knew it was “safe” our very appropriate OH MY GOD IT’S A SHARK instincts kicked in and we were understandably a bit wary. But it was magnificent and we stayed for a while, an endless parade of sharks so close we could have touched them. As with the whales, you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing and you know that it is a thing of otherworldly, dangerous beauty. And as with the whales there’s this profound hush under the water as they swim by. In comparing notes later, Bryan said, “I kept thinking – what if one of them is just having a bad day?” Thoughts like that crossed my mind as well, and there were probably a few dozen of us in the area, which could have made for a spectacular feast had they decided to indulge.

After this we rode further out to an area nowhere near as deep as the whale waters, we could see all the way down, but far deeper than the shark-infested ones. Here we swam in a group again while Lucas looked for sea turtles. Alas, we only saw one before our hosts realized that the current had grown stronger and decided that it was time to move on. Our last stop was a tiny island with structures that made Gilligan’s look like a metropolis. Here was a makeshift bar where our hosts made us celebratory rum punch and the seven of us toasted our adventures.

Today, our last full day here, it rains on and off. The resort is somewhat quiet since the weekend and it’s lovely. This morning at breakfast, a young mother dined a few tables away with her toddler son, who was attached to the table in some sort of high chair contraption. When she got up to get something else from the buffet, two of the resident chickens jumped onto their table and started eating her croissant while the child stared, slack-jawed and without the language to object. Adults from three nearby tables, including ours, rushed to his aid and the chickens left him alone just as his mom returned with her mango juice.

We had Polynesian massages in the late morning – if ever you have the opportunity to have one, and you’re someone who likes massage, do it. It was lovely and relaxing. When we stopped at reception to ask a question before lunch, the concierge was explaining the layout of the resort to a woman who’d just arrived. She waved her off, said she’d send her daughter over to take all the notes, then said, “The sooner our room is ready the better” before walking away.

PSA: it is no more the concierge’s fault that your room is not ready than it is the gate agent’s fault that your flight is delayed. (thank you for the post about that, SK)

At lunch Bryan said, “You gotta put THAT in your book – a lady chasing a chicken off the patio with a pillow.”

So apparently stray chickens will feature prominently in my next book. I mean, maybe they should.

I keep forgetting to mention: the moon here is white as snow – whiter than I’ve ever seen it. And the constellations are different in this hemisphere.

I do not think it’s possible to adequately capture yesterday in words. When we’d first gotten onto the boat, Tama asked Bryan if he had an underwater camera. He said no, pointed to his head and said, “This will be my camera today,” to which Tama, pointing to his heart, replied, “and this your memory card.”

A beautiful sentiment in which I will bask should Pierre-Louis forget to send photos.

Welcome to the jungle

Day Five

jungle:

1. an area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled vegetation, typically in the tropics. (Oxford languages)

We ventured into the jungle Saturday, but before we get there I’ll tell you about the previous day.

There are 119 islands in French Polynesia. By the end of this trip, we will have visited four. Yesterday morning we took a tour of Mo’orea, led by a woman named Vivi who drove a surprisingly durable Mitsubishi truck without great shock absorption. I took comfort in the fact that she has driven these dirt roads and hills and, as one of my fellow voyagers pointed out, incredibly tiny mountain ridges, many times before.

We were five passengers: Bryan and me, Richard and Dawn AKA Kit, and Robin-April. Richard is a violinist and composer who has played Carnegie Hall as well as on many movie soundtracks: Moana, Beauty and the Beast, Jurassic Park(s), and so on. Dawn AKA Kit is a recovering actress who just stepped out of retirement to perform in a musical version of Pride and Prejudice in the summer theater of Coeur d’Alene, where they now live. She is also an entrepreneur and the inventor of a foldable Christmas display made of high-quality Italian paper. Robin-April is a translator from Derbyshire, England, who’s lived much of her life in southwest Spain, and who speaks more languages than she modestly let on. She mentioned French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, then kind of waved away the rest of the question. She shares my aversion to extreme heights, and so after we made our way up the incredibly tiny mountain ridge in the Mitsubishi and walked up one hill, where we took in magnificent views, she and I stayed put while the others ascended further. We spoke of the importance of knowing thyself, and thus thy limitations, physical and otherwise. This was on Magic Mountain, which sits on private property. The tour guides pay to use it, and it really does have spectacular views.

As do many of the other places where we stopped with Vivi. There were plenty of picturesque photo ops, and to me the most interesting parts of this excursion were when we learned about the island’s culture. We visited a pineapple plantation, where we saw pineapples, bananas, nuts and avocados in the wild, and Vivi explained how Polynesians use each in cooking and how almost no part of the plant is wasted. She picked a fruit none of us knew – trying to find it, it begins with an “s” — and we each sampled some. She pointed out Mount Mouaputa, which resembles the face of a woman whose age changes depending on where on the island you are. In this photo, she is lying on her back staring up at the sky, her chin on the left, her nose with the little hole just beneath it to the right, then her forehead and her long hair cascading down. This is the “young and beautiful” view of her.

The interior of the island, where the tour took place, is basically the crater of an inactive volcano (or several).

One of the cool things happening on this trip: we are running into the same people as we all tour the islands. A young family from our Tahiti hotel is here in our Mo’orea resort. We chatted with the husband/dad while we were checking in. This is their second time here, their first being their honeymoon in 2020. After their 200+ person wedding in Napa Valley was cancelled, they got their money back and splurged on French Polynesia, where they said they had some of the resorts practically to themselves. Now they return with their very young son and his nanny, who gets her own bungalow. Pretty good nanny gig and the toddler seems like a nice guy. B and I have named the husband/dad The Producer. They live in LA and he wears baggy sweaters and harem pants.

Our first day walking the Mo’orea property we also ran into Romar and Matt, a realtor couple from Livermore, California who sat behind us on the plane ride over. Remember how I said that our flight attendant took a vested interest in all of us? Romar was surprised when I addressed him by name (having only seen the back of my seat, he did not recognize me). I didn’t add that I hoped that Matt’s birthday trip was going well, that would have been too much. Very nice guys who we then ran into taking a different but similar tour – and finally again in the spa area of the resort, where Romar said, “Quit following me!” I think he was joking.

Romar and Matt, and Richard and Dawn/Kit, are all leaving today on the Paul Gaugin, which tours various among the 119 French Polynesian islands. Robin-April is taking a different ship today to the Marquesas Islands, which sounds amazing. I didn’t catch the name of her ship. She Was A Soft-Spoken Woman: The Robin-April Story.

After the tour, which concluded with a trip to a distillery where they make wine and liquor and fresh juices from the plantation’s bounty, we returned to the resort, had lunch, and spent the afternoon lounging and snorkeling, snorkeling and lounging until … Part II of Adventures with Strangers.

Bryan is a planner. This is good as I like to have plans, but also at times I like to NOT have plans. However … he had gotten us reservations to something called Tiki Village, which is clear across the island. It is a traditional Polynesian dinner with a show both before and after. Before was all about the food, its preparation, the meaning behind it, its history and about thirty awkward minutes of a young, very fit man demonstrating different ways to tie a pareo. Or, as we said last night, a guy wrapping a souvenir scarf (it had the names of the islands on it) around his loin cloth for half an hour.

When finally we sat for dinner we were seated with Ivana and Jay, who live in Orange County, and Isabella and Marc, young honeymooners from Cologne, Germany. It was a fun table, everyone was very nice, and Ivana and I somehow got to talking about intuition, getting messages from the ether, and ghosts. She told me that the next time I’m in LA she will take me to The Hotel Bar, which is quite haunted. I’m in.

Last night brought an absolute deluge that continued until we got back. It rained so much that Jay of Ivana-and offered to drive our German friends back to their Air BnB rather than sending them off on the mopeds on which they’d arrived. After dinner there was a show, dancing, singing, and fire eating/throwing/twirling, about the history of these islands. What we’d learned earlier from Vivi is that the first settlers here came from South America.

Whenever we experience something amusing here, Bryan says, “You have to put that in your book.” So it seems that my protagonist, Josie, has a trip to French Polynesia in her future. If this means I have to return here for research, so be it.

Two observations: the women here wear flowers in their hair and everyone riding a moped/motorcycle/motorized bike type thing wears a helmet.

What was so remarkable about yesterday was that we met people with whom we connected on certain levels – some more than others – and that there was a sense of shared experience with strangers that I’ve never before encountered on vacation. Perhaps part of this is that we are all SO far away from home – this is a destination with purpose.

Today we rented a car and made our way to Tiki Park where we hiked part of the Ancestral Trail. This is a beautiful walk through the dense rain forest, and a few minutes in, you come upon a 500-year-old ceremonial platform (below) that was once used for council meetings and rituals. You can feel the weight of history here, the spirit of the ancestors of the people we are meeting, and it is profoundly beautiful.

Bryan and I love to travel, obviously, and part of what we love is learning about and honoring the past and present of the cultures we are visiting. I can’t imagine traveling without curiosity, though certainly people do. Throughout our hike we were trailed by roosters and chickens calling to one another – there was something weirdly comforting about this. I was unaware of the preponderance of wild roosters and hens on this island; they are everywhere. And quite vocal.

We had lunch at Snack Mahana, which Bryan had read about. This place has no interior – it’s basically a roof on the beach. When we got there it was full and there are only three tables right on the water; after a short wait we were seated at one of them. We had a great lunch, and there were a couple of lazy, well-fed dogs making the rounds. Lots and lots of dogs roaming this island, and it’s hard to tell which ones belong to people and which belong to the streets – they all seem to hang out together.

Speaking of the streets, the main road that circumnavigates this island is 37 miles long and has not one traffic light.

During lunch we watched a large school of these black-and-white striped fish doing their thing. There was a sudden commotion, though the fish stayed in the area, and then a decent-sized black-tip shark swam by.

Tomorrow we are going on a whale-watching adventure during which we will have a chance to snorkel with sea turtles, rays, and the aforementioned black-tip sharks. They are apparently not all that interested in humans. I would prefer that they were 100% disinterested in humans, but as with the Mitsubishi ride up the tiniest ridge known to man, I take comfort in the fact that the people leading our excursion do this all the time.

I keep forgetting to tell you that we had a lizard in our room the second night in Tahiti.

I relish the fact that while we are experiencing this little bit of French Polynesia, I am writing about it and Bryan is taking his gorgeous, sometimes abstract photos.

We are sitting on the deck and he just said, “This has got to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.” Indeed it is.

The skies are as bright as your eyes, the horizon is open

The lyric above is from “The Honeymoon Song,” sung by The Beatles, and which I only learned because I was looking for a title for this post. I had started keeping an almost-daily journal of this trip and on day four (today), decided to post my entries here. Note that the first two days were written without this intention, and so if they seem a bit quotidian, it’s because I’m trying to keep track of details.

Honeymoon

We left New York at 5:45AM, took an 8AM flight to SFO, got in some steps, had a juice on the outdoor terrace, took a 1:35 flight to Papeete. I slept for an hour. To answer the myriad questions I was asked over the past couple of weeks, I wasn’t “excited” for my wedding or honeymoon because I didn’t know how to be; the stress took its place. And now, I am retroactively excited. Our wedding was beautiful, about which more later. Our honeymoon is beautiful, with much more to come.

We landed in Papeete, the capital of Tahiti, around 6:30PM, descending with the sun and landing in the dark. Our flight staff was the friendliest and most interested in its passengers as any I’ve experienced. Annette, crew leader, learned all of our names and raisons d’etre à Tahiti, then accidentally thanked the plane via intercom for flying Continental.

As Bryan predicted, we were the only plane getting in at that time. Left the plane by way of outdoor staircase, walked across the tarmac and into the terminal where a trio of musicians greeted us and I got teary. A quick trip through immigration and we were greeted with leis so fragrant they would have been cloying in another context – his and hers, hers more ornate, the bower bird or peacock of the bunch.

A ten-minute ride with a French man who’d lived back and forth between Tahiti and Bretagne, and we arrived at the hotel where we checked in and were shown to our over-water bungalow. I changed quickly, Bryan too tired to, and we cashed in our drink voucher at the *real* tiki bar – a cocktail of white rum with passion fruit puree and tapioca pearls. Then a few feet away to dinner where Liliana, our server, guided us toward the catch of the day and the tuna sashimi. A woman at a nearby table coughed like the dog in Seinfeld. All around us was spoken English, French, and smatterings of Tahitian: la Orana (yo-rah-nah) and Maururu (mah-roo-roo).

Early to bed, early to rise, and now we TM and sip coffee on our deck, looking at Moorea in the near distance and hearing the waves all about.

Day 2 was adventure-filled and totally relaxing. A delicious Intercontinental buffet breakfast – fresh fruits, including some we’d never heard of, bacon offered extra crisp, scrambled eggs, French cheeses, cappuccino, tropical juice, “detox” water with cucumber and lime (I think, I wasn’t wearing my glasses). Followed that with a trip into Papeete where we went to the market – souvenirs, the typical fare, and fresh flowers and fruits, black pearls, fishmongers, selling the largest pieces of tuna filet (blanc et rouge) that’d we’ve ever seen – my heartily appetited spouse remarked that one piece could feed a family of six – and these brightly colored iridescent wonders that we learned were perroquet – parrot fish – and they were beautiful, jewel-toned creatures. We bought some things then went further into the centre-ville where we found an excellent t-shirt shop with ethically, ecologically, locally made wares in cool designs, so we bought some more things. There the proprietress encouraged me to speak French par tout, telling me that the locals would appreciate it. We weren’t sure on account of the whole colonization/nuclear testing thing, and the fact that Tahitians have their own language, but I followed her wisdom and have been speaking French since. With a smattering of the two Tahitian words I now sort of know.

Took a taxi back to the hotel, TM’d on the lawn, ate lunch at the casual spot on the water with the 2-starred Michelin chef – smoked monkfish specialty, catch of the day for me (a white fish whose name I didn’t catch over the best coconut rice I’ve had) and Ahi for the Mister. Après ça we went to the beach/pool, kind of one and the same as the pool is infinite and floats into the ocean. We sought the shade and took a bit of sun, watched the Tik Tokers film themselves and the families play, I read, we drank water, we floated at the edge of the pool and watched the creatures on the lava rocks, crabs and these strange tadpole/fish/eel-like things that seemed fine either in or out of the water, as though we’d caught them mid-evolution.

Sometime after 5:30 the sun began her scheduled descent and we stood on the beach with everyone else, cameras out, watching her fall within the peaks of Moorea, lighting the island from within so that it resembled a cauldron, a recipe for the birth of the planet.

Dinner was a theme night featuring cuisine and entertainment from the Marquesas Islands – a buffet of fishes and meats (including, unexpectedly, steak au poivre, which is Mr. Smith’s favorite of the red meat dishes) with local vegetables and such, and drumming, dance, and song by a troupe that included some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen wearing traditional dress, showcasing their Polynesian tattoos, and a Google search just taught me that there are five main style of tattoo: Maori, Marquesan, Samoan, Tahitian, and Hawaiian.

Google also taught me that the raw fish dish we had the first night and have seen at meals since is Ei’a ota.

We had dessert – we never have dessert – and it was delicious. As was our wedding cake but I digress.

Two other details: 1) the straws at the hotel are made of pasta, a smart way around the biodegradable thing and one that leads to initial confusion when one requests a straw and is asked whether they have a gluten allergy, and 2) the popular music we are hearing, in the taxis, in shops, in parts of the resort, are American and English songs covered by what we assume to be local artists, eg Wish You Were Here, One More Night, Hotel California …

Day three has dawned.

Day four: it just rained for a good seven seconds and now the sun shines again.

Yesterday we left Tahiti for Mo’orea by ferry. I took a necessary phone call on the boat and said, “I’m on a ferry from Tahiti to Mo’orea” because I wanted to hear what that sounded like.

We befriended a mother, Liz, her 23-year-old daughter, Blair, and Blair’s friend Kiara. They live in San Diego. Bryan and the others, more intrepid than I, walked down to the front of the boat and saw whales off the side. He texted me, but I missed the whales. Still it was beautiful, a commuter ride like the one from Rumson, and totally not like the one from Rumson.

When we arrived in (on) Mo’orea our transfer was not there. We waited for backup with Liz, who was waiting for the girls, who’d run across the street to the gas station to procure fruit juices with which to mix the vodka they’d bought at duty free. They returned with a box and joked that they’d had an Amazon delivery. While they mixed their drinks for the road, Liz explained of her daughter, “She’s been working very hard.”

She’s also 23 and can do this sort of thing. We met them because they liked my dress, and so I gave a plug for Mahi Gold and told them of the current sale.

After we said goodbye to the Californians a van returned for us with two confused Europeans in tow – they’d been on our ferry and were headed, I suppose, to their hotel when their driver doubled back to pick us up. Fortunately the hotel is quite close to the ferry port.

We arrived and were given less fragrant but equally lovely leis, which are currently drying on the deck of our larger and more immersive bungalow. These bungalows sit atop crystal clear, shallow waters full of coral and tropical fish. Late afternoon we went into the water and were quickly swarmed by these beautiful yellow and black ones – who seemed genuinely curious and fairly welcoming, though being the New Yorkers that we are we got suspicious and climbed back up the ladder. Turns out these guys are friendly, it’s the Picasso fish you have to watch out for.

Mercury is in retrograde as of the past day or so, and that presented in our first couple of hours in Mo’orea … first the transfer snafu, and then when we got to the resort we were told that there were two concurrent reservations for Bryan Smith, one for five days and one for six. We opted for the latter. When we got to our bungalow we were instructed to turn on the television and scan the app; our television said, Room is Vacant. We called, they told us to check again, we still were, apparently, not in our room. And yet we were. Finally they sent a handyman who bore a resemblance to Schneider – really. There were a few other things missing from our room and so we called the desk again. Bryan commented on all the French I’ve been speaking and I joked, though it’s true, that yesterday I had occasion to say things in French like, “but is everything alright with our reservation?” and “Are you here to repair the television?” and “Are you bringing these pillows to our room?”

But everything is now sorted (except for the shower, but we’ll work that out) et tout va bien.

This resort is swarming with chickens and roosters and at breakfast (and lunch) there seemed to be a staff member dedicated to shooing them off the terrace. Chicken bouncers.

Last night we had dinner at the main on-site restaurant – they’d sent a bottle of champagne to our room because of the occasion for this trip, and we had a glass and then went to dine. The food was delicious but I was so tired having only gotten about four hours the night before (insomnia) that I’d have been happy with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, which sounds weirdly good right now. There was live music at dinner, and a curious older couple sat at a nearby table eating spaghetti of some sort. While she twirled her fork on her spoon, the woman there sang along in this loud, trilling, exceptionally beautiful and entirely strange (coming from a woman twirling her spaghetti) voice. I quite enjoyed it, others were confused, including the table behind us that was full of beautiful French people with very cool glasses and smokers’ coughs.

Later, or tomorrow, I shall write about today.

The heart has its seasons, its evenings, and songs of its own

This post is inspired by and dedicated to a dear friend who is having a challenging time right now. My friend is brilliant and wonderful, empathic and beautiful, and an excellent support to the people in her life. This morning we texted and she filled me in a bit on what she’s been going through and the emotions surrounding it and the patterns that have emerged of late and, without wanting to be prescriptive or preachy (which is exactly what I said), I offered some of the tools I try to use when I’m having difficult times/feelings.

The most effective for me is movement … exercise of any kind is the best antidepressant this side of antidepressants. Some years ago, when I went through a bad bout of depression, my doctor suggested I incorporate more exercise into my life—this at a time when it would have been impossible to incorporate any less. I belonged to an extremely unwelcoming gym and going to it was among the last things I felt like doing, so I didn’t. I’ve since learned that a gym is not necessary to gain the mental health benefits of movement – taking a walk, not a power walk, can be enough. Don’t feel like leaving your home? Pace. Do some jumping jacks. Dance like no one’s watching because it would be kind of creepy if someone were. Movement is medicine. I may have just coined that – nope, just looked it up.

Meditation has become an important, albeit irregular, part of my life. Some other years ago (eight-and-a-half, to be precise), my mom gifted me Transcendental Meditation, which one learns through a certified teacher over the course of a couple of days. It took me many months to actually take the plunge and the reason for that was that I found the idea of learning something I was supposed to practice every single day daunting. But eventually I learned it and I took to it. Then something happened in November of 2016 that made me not want to be alone with my thoughts, so I fell off the wagon. I got back on and then this happened in 2018 and I fell off again, and so on and so forth with the ups and the downs and the times I’m okay hanging out in my mind and the times I need distraction. And this is all okay. I am currently in a good phase with TM but I am also in a phase where, if the day gets away from me, I don’t worry that I’ll undo all the good I’ve done by missing a couple of sessions. Meditation does not have to be formal or rigid. It can be closing your eyes for thirty seconds and breathing. It can be repeating an encouraging mantra while you take one of the aforementioned walks, or aforementioned pacing sessions around your room.

I guess what I’m getting at is that my toolbox is full and each implement comes in many varieties; I have a Phillips Head screwdriver, a flat one, a tiny one for my reading glasses, and a cordless one that runs on batteries. They all essentially do the same thing, some more effectively than others, but none are a waste of time. I can also use a butter knife or a letter opener in a pinch.

I feel compelled to point out that I didn’t lead in conversation with my friend with my unsolicited advice, I led with understanding of why she’s feeling the way she is — the suggestions above came later, by way of relating to the feelings she’s feeling and mentioning how I work to counter them.

Forgot to add: hydrate, people, throughout the day every day.

Many of the people in my life who are my age-ish are going through these challenging phases of needing to be present for people older and younger than we are, being relied upon in tangible and intangible ways, and for many women I know, this very often comes at the cost of keeping our own wants and needs in mind. Add to this the modern-day phenomenon of people expecting immediate answers via text, and frazzled becomes a way of life. It is an overused metaphor but an apt one for all of us, the value in putting on one’s own oxygen mask, etc. You know the rest. It’s overused for a reason: it’s the truth.

I have worked hard to eradicate the words “should” and “sorry” from my vernacular. Should I slip, I apologize.

I am also working on letting go of both attachment to outcome and need for perfection. I am getting married in ten days, and while that fact is a beautiful one, and the plans we’ve made are wonderful, every little detail has not been and will not be. And that’s okay. Flexibility is my friend. Appreciating what is and letting that speak louder than what isn’t is my goal. As anyone who’s in any line of work or play that requires feedback knows, 99 yeses are dampened by one no. Let’s all work to make the yeses matter more.

I am also being published next year. I am very, very happy about this and it has been a very, very long road with some intense disappointments and existential crises along the way.

This is where I am right now and it is where I’m supposed to be. Beautiful friend for whom I wrote this, you are as you should be, and I love you for it. And this goes for all the rest of you.

Thank you for reading.

footnote: lyric from “Eyes of the World” by the Grateful Dead, a band whose music has become as large and perhaps more consistent a part of my life than movement, meditation, AND gratitude (yes I see the irony). Working to bring them all up to speed.

When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by

It’s been almost ten months since I’ve written here, and though I’d thought of closing this forum, today seemed an apt day to post again.

I’ve written about 9-11 many times and in many different ways. Last time I did, two years ago, I told my story at the request of a friend. That was probably my least poetic post on the topic, but it is a record of events as best I can recall them. The sights, sounds, smells of that day and its aftermath will always remain with me, as I imagine they will everybody who witnessed it firsthand or was otherwise affected—so, all of us, really.

What I first learned that day that has impacted me many times since is our collective capacity for strength and resilience, and that from great tragedy can come great beauty. After 9-11, the sense of bonding and community, the gentleness with which we treated one another, the checking in, the deliberate connections, remained for quite some time. And then, as is human nature, bit by bit they faded away and for many of us, life returned to some semblance of “normal,” forever changed though we were.

There’ve been far too many opportunities to experience this since that terrible day. I think of 11-9-16 which, for me and many people I know, was an absolute tragedy. And in the aftermath of that unthinkable day, I found my tribe.

In 2020, science fiction became reality. In the midst of debilitating uncertainty and fear, and a loss of lives so catastrophic it was impossible to grasp, new kinds of connections were forged. New survival tactics. Yes, we all spent way too much time on Zoom, but how isolating it all would have been without this dubious technology? The people I’d have expected to stay connected with during lockdown and those I did connect with on a regular basis were not entirely the same group, and I was grateful for the two-dimensional relationships I maintained and the new ones I built.

I suppose the point of this post is that out of blackness can come light, if one is open to finding it. It doesn’t eradicate the darkness or the trauma, but these things can coexist with unexpected comforts and bittersweet joys. One need only skim Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning to read much more eloquent words on this topic from a man who has weathered far worse than I have.

But I don’t want to diminish my experiences, because I’ve weathered pain as well. We all have. And in so doing, I have found meaning of my own, people upon whom I can rely, and resilience I didn’t always believe I had.

I took the photo above earlier this summer while I was recovering from COVID and feeling quite blue. I had a lovely home (not my own) in which to convalesce but I had too much time to think and feel lonely. And in the early morning hours, earlier than I’d wanted to be awake, I saw a stunning sunrise.

The title of this post is from the Nat King Cole song “Smile,” which B and I have long had a connection to. This past February and March, he spent about six weeks in Ukraine. We met in Paris for a brief respite shortly after the invasion began and the news was, of course, heart wrenching and terrifying. On a day I was particularly lachrymose (even by my standards), we walked across the Seine and stumbled upon this (click to play video):

On this most difficult of anniversaries, I send love, strength, and resilience to all who read my words.

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