Yucatán Return- Attending to Small Wonders

Within a tangled tropical garden, I am a gecko chirping, a great-tailed grackle swaggering, or perhaps a chachalaca bird feather swaying in the humid salty heated air flowing in from the Caribbean sea. Standing tall, feet close together with arms raised, I imagine feathery barbs and barbules ruffled and then smoothed until all is interlocking.

My breath becomes a leafy wave until….a great crashing sound! Spider monkeys swing through the tops of palms–their passage bending green shiny leaves the size of canoe paddles. A trio whisks across the bungalow roofs. Two mothers carry their young on their backs.

Up before 6 a.m. for the ritual of sunrise on the beach, I’m padding barefoot on a pathway when a white-nosed coati saunters by with a raccoon-like tail held high. Two tiny frogs are duetting in a whisper like the tap of fingertips. Geckos enunciate the dawn in clicks and chirps. Wes and I hold hands lightly as we turn to walk the Caribbean white sand to the sea.

This returning to Petit Lafitte is a celebration of my brother Rob and Cynthia’s 30th wedding anniversary held over the summer solstice– a constellation of family and friends sparking scintillating conversation interspersed with languid loosening of a taut faster-paced life up north.

Seven years ago, my mother and sister-in-law Cynthia clinked glasses here at the outdoor bar. Then, I thought I might not come back, despite my affection for this place and for the staff, some who first met my parents in the early 1980s at the prior resort Capitan Lafitte (demolished by Hurricane Wilma in 2005). The development encroaching on a once wild place felt too heartbreaking.

And? I’m grateful for this gift of joy-filled festivity. This return. I decide to not ignore what’s broken in the fragmented nature of the Caribbean coastline stretching south from Cancun, but to attend to the small beauties, like a line of leafcutter ants bearing purple flower petals as if they might catch a breeze and sail away.

Often, I feel my mom’s presence, as if she were by my side in a lounge chair under a palapa reading to the susurrations of turquoise jade waves. I’d written about one of our times together in 2010 now within my book Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher –and reflect upon these lines:

“My mother and I never tired of the pelican squadrons riding the air currents above the waves. They reminded her of courtship days of the 1950s. Dad was the dashing jet pilot flying for the US Marine Corps, racing the clouds for a few war-free years. Under starry nights, he would switch off his radio to fly in silent meditation. He also penned daily love letters, which our mother kept in a box as her most precious possession.

I can understand why he would drive eight hours north from his post in Cherry Point, North Carolina, to see my mother, speeding in his 1953 Mercury Monterey Coupe he’d dubbed Bittersweet for its orange-gold hues. I glanced over at her, where she read a mystery novel under the shade of a palapa. Tessellations of wind rustled through the palm frond shelter. Every ocean wave was a flirtation.”

I left a copy of my book there at Petit Lafitte in honor of my parents and for all the belted kingfishers that still skim the line of ocean and shore seeking fish. For the pelicans, magnificent frigatebirds, and the snowy egret gracing the day’s end.

At Petit Lafitte, there is a way of kindness toward other species, and an offering of a simple Mayan-style alternative to the all-inclusive massive resorts. Their way yields to nature rather than dominates.

Here, golden-fronted woodpeckers tap a rhythm on hollow tree branches. Iguanas bask on stones. Great kiskadees proclaim their names from shadowy palms above–Kiskadee! kiskadee! They are the swashbuckling pirates with black masks and bold banana yellow plumage, while great-tailed grackles are the drunken sailors slurring sea shanties.

And who am I? One feather on a bird winging toward a rainbow.