But we can't, yet. Steve has to manoeuvre the dinghy through the mounting seas to pick up our passports in town and check us out of the country. Meanwhile, adrenaline pumping, I ready the boat for rough weather, pretending to our landlubber guests visiting from back home that this isn't anything out of the ordinary. "No problem, just a few waves," I say reassuringly as I lurch around, taking off the sail cover, running lines and stowing or tying down anything that isn't firmly secured to the boat. As soon as Steve returns, he crawls to the foredeck to hoist the anchor while I motor us forward under full throttle -- although we're barely moving since Receta's bow (with Steve attached) is being buried by the steep waves -- and then drive us safely off the shore.
"I can trust Ann's boat and sail handling in all sorts of weather and waves," Steve tells people proudly. "Even through a couple of sizzling lightning storms she always remained calm and competent. Even when I'm asleep belowdecks on a night passage, I don't need to worry." His confidence in me gives me confidence in myself. With just each other to rely on, we share more now, too -- what we're thinking, fearing, hoping and dreaming. And, of course, the chores.
Divided duties
We do the dishes together each night, singing along and dancing to island calypso and soca CDs while I wash (in one small dishpan of water since every drop has to be caught when it rains or ferried aboard in jerry cans) and Steve dries. I'm responsible for the weather forecasts (three or four every day); Steve, the mechanical systems and the head. We share problems, troubleshoot and work out solutions together, whether it's figuring out why the engine is overheating or how to deal with the monstrous lobster Steve has speared, since it's way bigger than our biggest pot.
Back in Toronto, four years after our return, I still think about our midlife break almost every day. In part, that's because I have just finished writing a book about it. But it's more than that. The trip -- its challenges and its pleasures -- reshaped our lives together. "I don't want just to sink complacently back into our old existence," I wrote in my journal the night we arrived back. "I've seen too clearly there's more to life than that."
A new closeness
The top half of the door to my office -- now right next to Steve's office on the second floor of our house -- is covered with a sheet of white paper. Steve tacked it up months ago as I struggled to capture in words the feel, scents and tastes of Caribbean life. On it he scrawled notes of encouragement and his reaction to each chapter I passed along to him. In the middle of the sheet, he prominently wrote, "Take time to lime!" Lime is a Trinidadian word loosely meaning to relax, laugh, chat, catch up, take it easy, have a drink, listen to music, dance, enjoy life.
We work together better now, as a team, than we ever did. But work is no longer everything. We take time to lime. And even though we don't have to pass sideways in the hallway to get from one office to the other, and I can get out of bed without climbing over Steve, we're never too busy, never too caught up in work, to give and receive a hug.
Ann Vanderhoof is a Toronto-based writer and editor. An Embarrassment of Mangoes: A Caribbean Interlude (Doubleday Canada, 2004, hardcover, $34.95), Ann's new book about the couple's midlife break, also includes island recipes.
