Sunday at Hog Island

Sand in my toes, sun in my eyes, I sit on a piece of driftwood, feeling the bass of the live soca band sounds, playing in the bamboo makeshift stage in front of us.

Various tourists, local rastas, long term cruisers and aged hippies sway to the music, beers or rum punches in hand. Children shriek and run about, kicking up sand and disrupting wafts of smoke from the dubious homemade cigarettes. Just behind us, the Sunday chicken dinner is being served up in huge tin bowls. Potato salad, mashed pumpkin, callalloo, barbequed chicken legs. It’s hot and the sounds and scents around us are overpowering. I’m in a trance.

Rogers Bar on Hog Island

People arrive by boat for the Sunday barbecue festivities

We’ve just made our first ocean journey from True Blue Bay, and Shiloh did well, despite some issues with the auto pilot and the many reefs we had to dodge to get into this bay. Shiloh is anchored out just beyond the island. Shining white in the sun. She’s easily the prettiest boat here, but then I’m biased. I keep worrying the anchor will slip and she’ll float backward to the reefs. It’s in my nature to worry about such things.

I turn to JW and shout over the music,

“Shiloh looks good here” but in my mind I’m watching the dirty ragged little boys run by, delighted with themselves and the day at the beach, and I’m thinking about our boy.

JW can’t hear me well. He squeezes my hand and says,

“He would have loved this life.”

And tears blur my eyes behind my fancy polarized lenses. We both can see him here in the sand, darting around, out in the waves, making fires back by the bushes with his friends.

I squeeze my eyes shut and feel the music. Shiloh is in it. He is there.

Later at night we sit aboard in the silence of the bay, I look up and a shooting star whizzes by. In the ocean of darkness and light above us, Shiloh has winked. He is playing among his friends and he does love this life.