Tapping Into Your Inner Turtle

Time for a Vacation

Thomas the Teenage Turtle

On a plane with my beloveds: husband and daughter. Tim almost didn’t make the flight. He kept testing positive after his blessedly light encounter with the dredded bug.  We were stressing out that our dream escape might get Covid cancelled. Friends shared stories of graduations missed, countries they got stranded in, marriages delayed because of tests that stubbornly remained positive for weeks and months.

Finally, yesterday afternoon, last dibs before take-off, the little bastards finally made their officially-sanctioned exit from his nose. The nurse was dancing and waving his clean bill of health in shared delight at his lucky break. We’re headed south for a week in St Vincent & The Grenadines (sounds like an old music group from the 70s). I haven’t done much of this sort of vacation in life, as my family’s skin and the sun are not friends. But a week on an island is the daughter’s birthday gift, it’s a hop, skip and a jump from Boston, and it will be a welcome balm to the spirit. We are much in need of a short withdrawal into the warmth of the family shell.

It’s been one of those weeks in America. On the backdrop of a brutal Russian war, a nation supposedly at peace seems at war with itself. Yet another horrific shooting, another series of breast-beating, weeping parents, emotional op-eds and rising gun sales. Trump and his NRA friends meeting up next door, in the same week and the same state as the massacre. The police admitting they made “a mistake,” waiting outside for incomprehensible, heart-aching stretches of terrified time as kids kept calling 911, begging for the rescue they had been taught would come. The divisions deepen, the politics heat up, emotions rise yet another notch. It ain’t looking good in America.

In Cambridge, Harvard perfectly timed its invitation to Jacinda Ardern to give the Class of 2022 Commencement speech on Thursday. It is worth watching if you feel in need of a bit of inspiration. Her ready smile, natural warmth and simple kindness (a word she wields as a radical mission statement for politics) are like a beacon amongst darkening democratic skies. Her leadership presents a dramatically different vision for the world. When New Zealand suffered a mass shooting, she got a gun ban through – in a matter of weeks. She decriminalised abortion. Had a baby in office (only the second female leader to do, after Benazir Bhutto – 30 years ago). Gently navigated her country through Covid. She breathes youth, health and humanity. And with a warm smile, offers up her country’s example as hope to the soul-starved American students who tearfully - and repeatedly - stand in adoring ovations.

I’ve been reading the Chilean author, Isabel Allende’s book A Long Petal of the Sea, and its description of the 20th century’s traumas seen through the eyes of a family of refugees fleeing Spain’s Civil War. They emigrate to Chile, thanks to the poet Pablo Neruda’s commandeering of a single boat, The Winnipeg, that saved 2,200 (carefully selected) Spanish souls and spirited them off to the distant tip of South America. The boat docked in Valparaiso on the day WWII was declared in Europe. Its cargo of human potential evaded Franco’s 30-year rule and the Second World War to thrive in their adopted land, but were then victims of Pinochet’s brutal rise and reign. It’s a litany of a traumatic century, of displacement and exile, and a reminder that the forces of human darkness, once unleashed, decimate countries – and generations.

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Now arrived on my dot of an island in the Caribbean (Bequia), I watch five turtles amble in the garden. I have a week to figure out what this incomprehensibly awkward family is up to. Researching what they are, I learned that while all tortoises are turtles, not all turtles are tortoises (which sounds deeply philosophical, and gives pause for the week). Their pace is a master class in slowing down. There is a mother, a father, two teenagers and an impossibly tiny, baby turtle. They cuddle behind a large rock and stare at us, seemingly as amazed by what they behold as we are. But like us, they are a family knitted together by genes and history - and, we hope, love, although it’s not obviously on display. The hummingbird, on the other hand, flits about at mind-boggling speed, a hilarious reminder to the daughter of the New York city frenzy she has left behind for a week with the folks.

The only sound comes from the caressing breeze and a symphonic collection of birdsong (as well as something incomprehensible squawking away in the ceiling). This morning’s pineapple is the sweetest I have ever tasted- a complete revelation of what the fruit is meant to be. A golden, sun-drenched delivery of sugar! Chichi, an ageing, battle-worn lady dog, welcomes us in and sleeps by the front door to ward away the evils of the world. Fat chance. The house, like our lives, is open to the elements and the inevitable winds of change that are ‘a-howling. But this week, we’re gonna emulate the turtles, channel Jacinda and learn from the hummingbird: cuddle in with the family behind our little rock, bask in the love and kindness of our family shell, and suck all the sweetness we can from life’s colourful fare - while it is in bloom.

May you too, find a blissful break from the news, the pace and the smartphone this summer. And tap into your inner turtle.