Paradise Outside

(Photo note: if you look very closely, you can see a little speck of an island guarding the main channel into Belize City. It's Goffs Cay. Frightening but altogether possible that maybe I've got some colonial English roots. Or branches. Or coconuts)


I managed to cut one and burn the other, and now my pointer fingers are red and swollen. (I don't think I've referenced "pointer finger" since elementary school)
I sampled just about everything I cooked for the guests, so my belly is full and my eyes allergy itchy with sugar and wheat. Mmmm banana bread and strawberry scones, chocolate walnut shortbread and fresh baked yeast bread, coleslaw and tropical rice salad. I am relief chef, really a cook, really wondering how these hamburgers will turn out. I haven't been a true vegetarian since college, but man, carnivorous cooking still makes me anxious and sweaty.

The day emerged rainy dark damp but warm, metamorphosing in my peripheral view through thick galley windows, plated glass keeping the sticky air out but the eventual sunshine too.
When I did venture outside, my eyeballs soaked up the palm crowded islands fringing our horizon in almost all directions, the clear blue then green then white then blue water, the sailboat bobbing a few hundred meters behind our towering ship, a kayaker close by. I slipped into the water for a few minutes of treading and doing laps the length of the transom, eyes focused on distant wakes, waiting not wanting for the guests to return quite yet (I want to swim forever!) but dutifully hopping out and returning to the galley, to the stove, to the soup, with bucket-loads of time to spare.
Hurry up and wait. I rest against the sink.

The sun is blinding outside, she says.
There is a world outside, I sigh.

We dish up and out, they eat, they applaud, I stammer and blush. Then retreat to my cabin when the relief to the relief appears and dons an apron.

The sun is still shining, and the view from my porthole is still more amazing than any office screen saver I've seen.
And come Saturday, I will be able to go outside again- into the water and through the streets (on land!) on my own precious time.