Mom's mini adventure

"They can't scare me, if I scare them first."

Lady Gaga

There are, of course, days when I get a sudden urge to make a break for it. Run screaming away from the family at breakneck speed. Every mother has these moments. They can usually be dressed up in a maternal public relations sort of way as a trip to the store/therapist/hairdressers/fill in the blank. However, excuses are few and far between here in paradise. Spending 24/7 with my precious nuclear unit, I do get the moments when I wish to invert the thermal energy and blow it all to smithereens. Maybe its hormones or perhaps its because I had one too many lunch time squiggles? Squiggles are gin and coconut cocktails. My granny always said gin was "mother's ruin".

"Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home." Phyllis Diller

In an attempt to maintain united relations, I decided to have myself an unexpected, mini adventure. So where does one go to get away on an island 6 miles long and a quarter mile wide? The only way is up and that means a tour of the lighthouse. Lucky me, no-one wanted to come with.

The only way to Hopetown lighthouse is to hitch a ride across the harbor on the Aubrey ferry.

"Don't pay the ferryman before he gets you to the other side" Proverb

Fortunately, it is only a minute from one dock to the other and there is no charge! Feeling very pleased with myself for getting this far, I hopped off the boat and onto the wooden pier. The first mate and the captain made quite a to do about being back at 4 to catch my ride back. It hadn't quite sunk in that I would be isolated out there until their return. I cheerily waved goodbye to reassure them as they left. When the wash of their departing boat lapped against this far shore, it dawned on my wee brain that I was in fact all alone with no cell phone. Sunday on this side of the water means it is deserted and the tiny souvenir store firmly closed. It was just me and the looming lighthouse for an hour or so.

I felt the first little adventure buzz, or was that the squiggle repeating on me? I hadn't been this alone with no-one knowing where I was, with no way of communicating to family, since I boarded a train, in Zimbabwe, almost 2 decades ago. That kind of solitude, when surrounded by people, puts you on edge. This kind of solitude, with no soul around, made me wonder how safe the stairs were. If I fell 89 feet from the top I would simply be a unidentified body or a new CSI episode?

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints. Alfred Hitchcock

I'd only been alone 15 minutes and already my imagination was leaping around all excited since it didn't have to figure out how to turn multiplication tables into an interesting learning game. I was really starting to have some gruesome mental fun. This was no time to reassure myself I was only on a peninsula and I could bushwack my way back to a road within a couple of hours using my Swiss army knife. Perhaps I was channelling the spirit of the loyalist settlers from 1785. A small group escaping the American revolution had populated this cay, living from fishing, some trade and salvaging wrecked cargo. I hardly had to swashbuckle forward up the stepping stone path but I went intrepidly onward with my Bahamian sky safari.

"Darkness reigns at the foot of the lighthouse" Japanese Proverb

If a lighthouse is painted red and white candy stripes, what color is it on the inside? Pink of course!

The lighthouse was built in 1864 and then rebuilt in 1934 due to hurricane damage. The lantern has five 'bullseye' lenses and it is one of only 3 working kerosene lamps left in the world. 101 steps wound up and up in an ever narrowing cylinder. I have to confess I think I have vertigo. This does not mix well with lunchtime gin nor my compulsion to go up the tallest building in any area I visit. Maybe I just like cheap thrills and considering it was donation only at the unmanned entrance, that was just what I got. I crouched through the small hatch onto the observation platform encircling this 120 foot high candy cane.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” Maya Angelou

The wind and the view took my breath away as the visibility stretched away and beyond.

You're supposed to be able to see 17 miles, not that I was straining to see much with my eyes squinted half shut in a fearful grimace. With my back pressed into the wall, I started to inch around the rusty white metal platform. It's not that my knees actually buckle when I get high up, its more of a pressure drop in the lower extremities. My knees become the central control unit for my body and they just want to get my upper body as low as possible. Is that vertigo or cowardice?

If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I am a coward."

Jack Handy

As I slid around to the unprotected side, the wind blasted me like a bug on a windshield. With now widened eyes and a panicky stare, I managed to take a photo out towards the open ocean. Shuffling back to the lee, I gazed out over Hope Town harbor and realized what a narrow band of civilization this really was. How amazing that over 200 years ago folk went ashore onto nothing more than a strip of sand and rock barely above sea level and created a town. This narrow ribbon of human tenacity lay on the edge of the vast Atlantic Ocean, its boundless blue horizon stretching back towards the old world.

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean."

Arthur C Clarke

From my lofty perspective, the stories of pirates roaming these waters seemed more believable. If I went back to squinting, I could almost see tallships with sails and rigging, hear the cannon of conquering navies and the cries of delight from the salvaging 'wrackers' on the rocks below.

"You do not have to be a hurricane, to turn things around" Loesje

With the wind still whipping around the other side of the structure, I started thinking about hurricanes and storm surges and all manner of natural disaster. Which, of course, led me to pondering about the soundness of repairs made 75 years ago. My focus on crumbling masonry led to another drop in leg pressure and I was trying to resist a fetal position. Time to double up back through the hatch. My relief increased as I unwound down the stairs. With my retreat came a growing sense of having pushed my forty year old fear to its precipice and conquering it once again. By the time I reached the visitor book at the bottom of the stairs, I felt euphoric and altered by expanding my perspective through space and time. Or maybe I just felt weird from the beginnings of a hangover? Whatever the reason I expansively wrote "To all those who walked before me and whose footsteps I now follow."

"If you search the world for happiness, you may find it in the end, for the world is round and will lead you back to your door." Robert Brault

Time was a-ticking and it was almost four when I arrived back at the dock. Reassuringly the same boat captain and mate picked me up and floated me back to the jetty. Where, of course, my family sat waving and I was ready to stop being me and start being mom again.