Divinis Flammeis Visionib.
Freqventer Admonit.
Et Virtvtis Magnae Mai Iestatis Martyrii Calelestivm Virgin Imminentium ex Partib.

St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, the second port of call during the July cruise of my mother and myself. Since the names of places I visit always intrigue me, I had to wonder about the virgin part. It didn't tax my imagination to picture a virgin island as a pristine, unsullied-by-human-being, white-sand-beached circle of land surrounded by crystal clear waters. What I could never have guessed is that Columbus named these 1600 small islands after St. Ursula and her 11,000 martyred virgins. I had to know: who is this St. Ursula and how is she associated with the martyrdom of ELEVEN THOUSAND virgins?

This revelation needed some hard-core research, so I turned to my childhood idea of gore heaven, The Lives of the Saints. There was no mention of Ursula. I felt somewhat vindicated in my ignorance, since I thought I knew every saint in that book - at least all of the martyrs. Turning to the trusty Internet, I found The Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions - now this sounded like my kind of tome.

Sure enough, the legend of St. Ursula has it that she, a British princess, in order to retain her virginity for three years after her pre-pubescent betrothal to the son of a great pagan king, was sent to sea. As companions, she was given ten young virgins of noble birth, each accompanied by a thousand virginal girlfriends. This breathless lot, plus a faithful and saintly crew, sailed in eleven ships around the Mediterranean for the appointed three years. Right before her patient fiancé was to claim her as his virgin bride, they were all slain in a fit of rage by the Huns while debarking into the port of Cologne. The sheer density of virtuous Christianity was apparently overwhelming to the barbaric sensibilities of these angry heathens. A possibly apocryphal event, this occurred in either the 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th century, depending on which documents one believes, combined with which fables and what hearsay.

The "frequent divine flaming visions" of the above-quoted Clematius, which eventually compelled him to build a basilica on the very spot of this blood bath, are just as mysterious. He had for many years lived in the Orient, which may, after his dis-orientation, have caused him to be particularly vulnerable to vagrant energies of supposed holy massacres. I asked myself: should I now inquire into the life of St. Thomas? I quickly perished the thought.

This was Day Five of our cruise, and the Enchantment of the Seas had sidled up to a dock on St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. After a slow and easy morning, Mother and I decided to step ashore to see a few sites. She, the disco queen, was a little stiff after our raucous night out, but gamely made it for a few minutes into the local handicraft market before the heat and the bustle soon overwhelmed us both. Mother wisely taxied back to the boat, while I wandered off in search of diversion in any air-conditioned environment.

As I walked the hot brick streets, I remembered that twenty years ago, Jay and I had attended the Key West wedding of my little sister, Barbara, and flew away with her and her new husband, Lundy, to this island for their honeymoon. I vaguely remembered snorkeling here, visiting a huge cave somewhere in the woods, and walking along the beach, but all the adjacent details have, for the last two decades, been misfiring into the ganglia connected to my left baby toe. To commemorate this timely memory, I found a bottle of flavored rum for the still happily married couple, a nostalgic gift for their next anniversary.

As most of you know, the word 'antique' is a powerful magnet for me in any country. When I spotted this painted on an old sign with an arrow pointing up a steep flight of crumbling stairs, my hesitation in the face of heat's tendency to rise was fast overridden by curiosity. I craned my neck round the first corner and oddly felt cool air rushing towards my overheated cheeks. This drop in temperature energized my leaden steps, and I hastened upwards, drawn by some osmotic imbalance deep in the certain core of my being. I want to tell you about the man who was waiting for me behind the wooden door at the top of the stairs. I want to tell you how he welcomed me into a magical room resplendent with gold and glittery old things, his voice as resonant and musical as the laugh of the devil. But I would be lying. I never made it up five steps before the heat smote me down into the nearest perfume shop. As consolation, I bought super-hot mango jalepeno chutney for Jack and rum balls for Mother, then made quick haste back to the boat.

The guidebooks say that pirates made port in the Virgin Islands to repair and supply their vessels, squandering their remaining booty on rum and flesh. Imagine. (I did!). And Blackbeard had his actual castle, one of the tourist attractions I chose not to visit, on this very island. A colorful character, he is said to have sipped rum laced with gunpowder, a curious mixture that may have abetted his possession of fourteen wives. History is uncertain, however, as to their deployment, whether sequentially or all at once, harem-style. I wished my laughing imaginary host had offered me a tumbler of the stuff - I'd know the answer, at least on paper.

At dinner that evening, Jerry and Carol, our Irish tablemates, waxed enthusiastic about their swim that day with the dolphins. How incredibly special it was to connect with wild beasts in a tame environment: he even showed us the Polaroids. In my misguided attempt at empathy, I told them of a similar experience I'd had in India when I'd found myself at a roadside attraction, drawn to the snake charmers with boas and cobras in hand. How incredibly special it was to connect with the writhing serpents as they draped them over my shoulders and around my neck, how I'd smiled with glee as my friends snapped photos. Jerry and Carol simultaneously looked at me as though I was an aberrant being, like a Martian or something from a dirty Petri dish, fascinating in a horribly tragic way, certainly not something you'd want to take home to the kids. We all laughed a little feebly and dug into our Sassy Snapper filets - so much for empathy with folks from the Irish countryside. Jerry bought me a glass of whatever I was drinking; I guess he figured it would do me some good.

Back to this landmark trip with my mother, it's time to discuss something of major importance, a minor tangent to the owl/lark thing: the differences in sleep requirements between an 82 year-old widow and her unmarried daughter. These pertinent adjectives obliquely illustrate the relative ease of accommodation to the differences between the two generations, but we quickly made peace at every point.

When I go to bed, I like the act of sleeping to approximate death as closely as possible, since they result in relatively similar states of unconsciousness, god willing. I like it dark, quiet, cool, and still, along with a blissful feeling of weightlessness. Let's look at these qualities one at a time, contrasting my ideals to what my mother prefers:

1. Dark: in my world, if there is light in a room, it means that there is something to see, which means my eyes will open for the experience. To Mother, a safe trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night is important, given fragile hips and all. I don't mind a little stumbling in the dark - it makes me feel warmly human. So we compromised, leaving the bathroom light on with the door slightly ajar. I built a small fortress around my head with the curtain that dropped at the foot of my bed, having reversed my body head to toe. This created a penumbra dark enough for me to keep my eyes closed during most of the night. Both of us were safe and content.


 

2. Quiet: this is a relative thing. For me, the sound of my heart beating steadily in my ears after snugly installing premium rubber earplugs is a comforting sound. To others, I have heard, it is horrific: they would rather hear random noises, scuffling and the creaking of heavy metal plates, accompanied by an air conditioner that cuts on and off every ten minutes. I say: whatever works.


 

3. Cool: there has never been a roommate who has enjoyed air as cool at night as I do. However, when one's circulation has been hindered by decades of saturated fatty acids and smoking, as has my mother's, unfortunately, one tends to like the air on the warmer side. My fear of night sweats is bad enough: I refuse to encourage them by having the heat on in the summer. We compromised again, setting the thermostat dead center - Mother warmly cuddled under two blankets while I happily slept under a sheet.


 

4. Still: this is some trick on a boat, even on a ship the size of a small city. Our Irish friend Carol reported smugly that she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, due to the gentle rocking of the boat. She thought it must have some connection to being rocked asleep as a child. Well, I was in the same room with my dear mother, and the rocking only made me nauseous and restless. I must have been a star crib baby, no rocking required. Especially restful was the third night at sea when we hurtled toward St. Thomas to discharge a dying male passenger, only to hurtle back to our scheduled port of St. Martin before daybreak. Traveling at 32 knots per hour does not make for a steady ship: that was a two Tylenol PM night for me. Mother slept like a baby.


 

5. Weightlessness: this is akin to dying, in that your body does not talk to you while you're trying to sleep. I'm distracted when my shoulders fall asleep before I do, when my hips are on a parallel plane with my narrow waist, in short, when I am put to bed on a hard or even firm mattress. The solution: ask every steward on ship if they know the whereabouts of some foam egg crates - eventually, someone will want to be the hero. In fact, on night number two, I was in spaceship heaven: Fernando had found in some closet the very foam of which I dreamed.

Mother and I quickly achieved a perfect balance in our night times together, no small accomplishment given a room that is seven by nine feet, bathroom included. Thankfully, I'd brought enough Tylenol to share. I followed one other bit of advice that was actually given to me by a dear friend: no processing during this vacation. I stuck to this promise and we had not one heated, rueful or tearful discussion of any imagined or actual family dysfunction. Processing is most productive and satisfying done on dry land, in a house with rooms furnished with doors that close and windows that open. We, instead, had a true vacation, our only effort being finding reason enough for yet another occasion to eat. Have I mentioned the food?

We had one additional port of call: Nassau, in the Bahamas. Insha'Allah, a dispatch will congeal around that event. For certain, however, Dispatch No. 5 will be sent from Denver, Colorado, where I will soon be hunting elk with kin, kinfolk and folk. There will be no knee-jerk PC perspective in my reporting, but I AM a softy when it comes to animals, always staunchly defending beetles and spiders from childhood predators (parents). I have no idea what you will read next.

Cheers on this first day of Daylight Savings (argh… love the extra hour, loath the premature darkness).

Love to all, Zena

 

CARIBBEAN SEA        ST. MAARTEN        DISPATCH HOME