Pond Hockey

I live about a hundred yards from the house where my family moved when I was three. At the center of the property is a large, spring-fed pond that nearly a hundred years ago was dammed to soak the timber for the Cathedral. For many years after, this pond was the town's winter skating rink. 

However, the shift in climate and the constantly running water means that in all the time I have lived here, it has not been safe to skate on the pond. My grandfather, whose job it was as a boy to check the ice on his local skating pond outside Chicago, shut this pond down and built a safer, outdoor skating rink where we all currently enjoy our hockey season. 

Last weekend, J flew home from Utila. The temps had not gone above the teens for the past twelve days so after Max's early game he and Sampson set out with his drill to test the ice. My grandfather, now almost 93, drove by to see what he was up to and assured him that 4-6 inches was safe for backyard skating. What followed is one of the best winter days we have ever had. Friends and kids arrived at the house all day. Gear bags exploded on the grass. I tied a dozen skates at least a dozen times. Max braved his first day out of goalie pads. Hot chocolate and soup bubbled and flowed. The ice held, singing its unique pond hockey accoustic twangs. Sampson was in his puck-stealing, kid-chasing glory. Youth hockey boys got back from their early NJ game, and some left to head up to the home rink for their late games, and came back to play more. Little girls alternated between skating on the side rink and indoor Valentine creations. Baby Harper snoozed, and the big boys played hockey until J brought out the construction lights. As darkness fell, the parents shivered outside in shifts, sipping hot soup and cold beer. 

By Monday, it was raining, and yesterday, a warm wind from the south melted the last of the ice and whipped the water into waves.

It was a day we may never have again; one which we won't soon forget. 

J and Max prepare the icesweeping the snow 

 Mama Max and Pip play early morning Piper in "full gear" Max's first day out of the pads the big boys get back from NJ and join in

Teams are made and the games go into the night

hot cocoa on tap and endless chips and queso

Niece Quinn joins in!

J shovels a side rink so the girls are out of puck range

Sampson takes a break from playing defense

pond angel* *** * 

Girly Craft Day

the Mini Boden inspiration

I am forever looking at things in catalogs and craft stores and design mags and thinking, I could do that. Today, I did. 

The boys are in an all-day ice hockey camp so Piper and I ticked a bunch of things off our To Do list and then rewarded ourselves with some leftover won ton soup and the tackling of a craft project. 

I saw the inspiration T-shirt in Mini Boden, a UK based clothing company that I usually enjoy browsing because I like their style and what's more, they interview their child models. I have bought some slouchy skater pants for my boys there but mostly feel it's a little overpriced for kids clothes.

But when I saw these shirts, I thought of the piles of leftover felt in my craft closet after the owl project. I started with the circles, because it was easy. I'd picked up a few blank T-shirts on sale at Old Navy and continously browse our thirft store for decent basics. Note: this project would also work with some favorite T's that got the dreaded grease stains. 

I made two circle templates and cut them out, then played with pinning them in position until I got a pattern I liked. 

circles pinned in position

While I did this, Piper tackled the regluing of glitter polka dots on a pair of really hideous Old Navy leggings we'd snagged for less than a dollar when I was fresh off the plane from Utila and desperate to cover her chilly little legs with anything. I warned her that the gold polka dots or their friends the big hideous rhinestones at the gathered ankles might not stay on through the wash. I was right about the polka dots. 

Pip set to gluing and sprinkling the fabric glitter my brother gave her for Christmas while I fired up the sewing machine. It took about seven minutes to straight stitch the felted circles into position. 

pip in action

I seriously didn't think her pants could be much uglier than they were when I bought them. They are, but infinitely more important, she is thrilled with them. 

The fruits of our labors can be seen below. Next, Piper has to do the backside of her leggings, and I think I'll try either the butterfly or the pear shirt. Total cost $4. Total time: 20 minutes. 

A successful afternoon of crafting with my girl: immeasurable. 

Piper's leggings

Piper models her finished shirt

La Vida Tranquila -- Ten Take Home Lessons

1. Things can be more simple.

sunset dock fishingHayden often said about Utila, "The days here are long, but the time passes quickly." Of course that is true when the day begins at dawn, when much of our effort is spent on the truly elemental tasks of food, exercise, water, heath, learning...

Why do we lose that in the translation of trying to hit the ground running in our US life? I have already caught myself leaving the tap on while I brush my teeth, and my initial combination of wonder and vague queasiness at the absolute abundance in the SuperGiant has been replaced by 'get groceries' on my To Do list.  

 Piper came to me the other day with a plastic bottle cap she had found on the beach.  She was carrying it carefully so the water wouldn't slosh out.

When I asked her what it was she said matter-of-factly,  "It's the back-up cistern for my fairy house." 

How do we remember all this when we go back to the land of stuff?

2. Make or purpose things we don't have.

Max and Pip constructing

we mastered the art of homemade bagels

3. Appreciate but do not abuse our new unlimited access to ... (fill in the blank: instant and constant internet acess, an iPhone that does more than act as a camera/flashlight, 24 hour electricity, hot water, drinkable tap water, paper products in public restrooms, imported produce, amazon.com, etc)

4. Use less of...  (fill in the blank, see above list) 

5. We can live without TV, cable, microwave, dishwasher, dryer, Xbox, Playstation, (see above; the list is long)

6. Friendships forged in unusual places can be immediate, lasting, and span vast bodies of water.

Piper and Bine

chandra and amanda

pizza night with friends

Pip and Benja

amigo and max

7. Keep finding the interesting people, the experts in their fields and connecting them with the kids.

Uncle Brad was an endless source of marine biology info

Yesterday on our travels home we met the anthropologist Sue Hendrickson, who lives in Guanaja. She and Hayden chatted dinosaurs and conch pearls, Central American sandfly remedies and SCUBA diving. 

At the end of their visit, she swiped her palm against his for luck, and gave him a signed photo of her and her famous find, the most complete T-Rex skeleton.

We also were lucky to live next door to marine biologists Brad and Andi Ryon. Brad (center at left) was a willing partner in SCUBA, fishing and other maritime adventures, and Andi facilitated our connections to yoga. We also nd became close friends with Amanda and John Arne Løken of Float Utila, the world's largest sensory deprivation tank. You can read Hayden's review of Float Utila here.

Regular dive experiences with Diego Frank and Amir Gavrieli rounded out the experiences at Underwater Vision.

 There is something to be said for the kernel of adventuresome spirit that it takes to live in Utila, and the endlessly interesting characters one is fortunate to encounter there. 

8. You can move thousands of miles away, but it doesn't change who you are.

Within a month, we had a black dog sleeping in our bed, and mewling kittens waking us up to be fed.

Amigo and kids

Thunder, our formerly feral rescue kitten

9. Following our story has taken us to unexpected places both on the globe and within our family.

flying in Capt David's plane

commuting home with Andi

J and Max go diving

Hayden--certified diver

fishing tourney

La Ceiba, Honduras

10. "Clean" "Safe" and "Necessary" are all relative terms. 

Night bonfires

 treasure collecting

Piper's schoolbus

don't worry--medical care is just a flight away

roasted coconut--a favorite

 BONUS Piper's favorite rule: In Utila, hairbrushing is optional. 

 Island girl

La Vida Tranquila -- Pint-Sized Tour Guide

I've never been a good napper. When I lived in Tarifa as a single woman, I spent the siesta hours of the afternoon taking long walks with my faithful dog and a Nikon. Peeking through arched white-washed doorways in this Spanish town with 13th century roots and heavy Moorish influence, I assembled a photo essay called Las Puertas Antiguas de Tarifa. I was thinking today that if I ever put together a photo essay of Utila, my common theme could be La parte posterior de las cabezas Bine y Piper since I spend much of my time in Utila following these two around. It's a pretty good gig.

The Backs of Bine and Piper's Heads 1

The Backs of Bine and Piper's Heads 2

The Backs of Bine and Piper's Heads 3

The Backs of Bine and Piper's Heads 4

Bine (pron. BEE-nuh) is Piper's dearest friend here. Her parents run FLOAT UTILA, the world's largest float tank (designed and built by Bine's Dad). They have one of the best love stories I have ever heard and I could spend hours sipping coffee and chatting with her mom while our kids play cheerfully.

Bine is a creative, curly-haired girl with a whimsical spirit and such a transparent, honest streak she often floors me with her direct imperatives and observations. 

I'm noticing a tender innocence to many of the children of my Utila friends. On the one hand, they are exposed to so much on the streets of Town. I often wish for ear muffs for my own kids when we pass the ferry port and there's crazy shirtless Webb greeting the incoming boat with his tarantula on a stick and some pelvic thrusting as he howls, "GOT-DAMN I WANT SOME FAH-KING GRINGA PUSS-Y!" as the horrified backpacker girls scuttle past. Or there's the diabetic bum begging for soda as he urinates openly next to the cafe where we're having breakfast. Or the crackies spitting at each other in a domestic dispute, or the brash potty-mouths of the twenty-something Aussie divemasters as we pile in the bed of the pick-up truck driving out to beach clean-up. 

But here there is also no TV, no commercials, no WalMart; a complete blissful lack of awareness of mainstream juvenile popculture. Maxim (5) only just learned of the existence of Batman. There is a commitment between the mothers here to maintain that innocence, and preserve some of the wonder of childhood, where afternoons are spent finding snails in the harbor, creating castles for hermit crabs on the beach or visiting bats in abandoned hotels. 

Bine, our tour guide

Today, after Piper's BICA school and yoga and workbooks with the boys in Bundu Cafe, we followed Bine on a tour of her version of Utila. We set out with the girls' hands tucked into mine as we attempted a snake-like single-file through the narrow street, the boys running ahead, and Bine and Pip singing in the sweetest improv soprano soundtrack, 

You have to be nice and caring

to fulfill your heart

and your dreams

of love

You can't be aggressive 

like a bulldog

or Piper's brothers...

FIRST STOP -- THE BAT HOTEL

 This place caught my attention the first time I traveled from Utila Town to the South Shore by boat, on our way from the US. It is a distinctly dated but elegant structure clinging to the hillside over the harbor. I asked our boat captain so many questions about it--why had it never been finished? who owned it? who lived there? that my kids dubbed it "Mom's Old Hotel".

Bine skipped ahead up the steep, green-slick street of Colibri Hill past a tangle of woods and barbed wire with the promise of bats on the fourth floor and a breathtaking view of the harbor. 

hiking up the hill 

Bat hotel 

I was fascinated by the wild grounds that showed hints of ambition, intricate tile work and the design of future fountains and gardens.

Bine danced past laundry on moss-slick paths, past an ornate red iron bedframe and turquoise bike and tugged open the unlocked door. All four children raced up the stairs screaming and clapping.

Underfoot, decades of guano and fruit pits crunched, amidst panes of broken glass and construction debris.

beautiful tile workIt reminded me of the Disney World attraction "Tower of Terror", set in a 1940s abandoned hotel with endless attention to historical detail to entertain park guests as they stood in hours of snaking line and waited to be thrilled. Only here, as my children clapped to startle bats and climbed through broken windows to balconies, I was acutely aware that no ride inspector or first world litigious system was ensuring their security. 

potentially stunning botanical and water features

view from the topThe view of the harbor below was worth it.

Bine's mom waved to us from the porch of their house below where she was whipping up one of her signature delicious lunches and toddler Gus was no doubt sword-weilding or plunging into their homemade boat bath in his underwear. 

Back inside the hotel, the startled, nocturnal bats flew in and out as we trekked through their territory. Photos couldn't capture it, so I shot a little shaky iPhone video (in between ducking).

bike and bed on the grounds

After I convinced the kids that dropping broken glass from the windows would be a bad idea, we followed Bine back through the overgrown grounds to lookout points. On the balcony of an outbuilding, a young couple kissed, smoke curling up from the cigarettes tucked in their dangling hands. Leafcutter ants stretched a procession a hundred yards long like a miniature landlocked green regatta.

At a fork in the road, we wound up to the Colibri Hotel with the promise of kittens, only to find they had grown into standoffish cats. Instead, we discovered a bright blue pool in a cove of palm trees, and an overloaded avocado tree that rained down its fruit in a gust of wind.

the backs of Bine and Piper's heads 5

A street puppy followed Piper and Bine over the rise in the hill and down again to town, panting and smiling up at them.

A motorbike carrying a family of four zipped past, the baby straddling the gas tank in an overloaded diaper.

An elderly Honduran cowboy in a bright orange shirt bowed and chuckled as Piper and Bine breezed by him.

"Come on!" Bine cried as she and Piper opened their arms like bird wings and rounded the curve of the hill by Johnny's Water back to Town.

"I know where we can see a bulldog named Ceiba and real live green parrots!"

I hurried to catch up. 

* *** *

La Vida Tranquila -- A Visit with Old Tom

When I first arrived here, Señor Tino told me about the fisherman's lore of Old Tom, similar to our Sasquatch, a fish so big it could swallow you whole. The real Old Tom of Utila is the whale shark, a regular visitor to the warm waters between Utila and Roatan. I joked that I would not leave until I swam with one myself, but I knew it could take many years and hours logged on the water before our paths would cross.

Yesterday was our beloved Cherry's birthday, and as we set out with our friend Brad on a lap around the island, fishing lines out in hopes of catching dinner, I whispered a little wish to the world--that she might send up some whale sharks, or at least a dolphin or two.

We had loaded up with gas and a cooler full of junky snacks, Gatorade, water and beer at Bush's Supermercado and set out to the East around Tradewinds. The kids binged on Pringles and Doritos, and as the fishing lines remained slack, the mood deteriorated. The effects of copious amounts of MSG and red dye number five were obvious in the behavior of the niños. J asked if I had picked up any bananas at the store.

"No, only plums," I said, confused, and they explained the fisherman's curse. 

No bananas on the boat, and still no fish. We traveled out to the banks, eyes scanning the horizon for a bait boil or a cluster of birds, both things that indicate the same fish that draw the whale shark. We looked for other dive boats, or the spinner dolphins J swam with on his last trip. 

At last, a boat pulled up alongside, and asked if we had snorkel equipment on board, and told us to follow them--they had spotted a whale shark! We lay flat on the bow while Brad gunned it, my heart racing, tossing equipment to each kid, tucking hair out of masks. I have often wondered if I would be afraid to drop in with a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. We are not on their menu, but imagine encountering a shark the size of a school bus out in the deep blue ocean. 

When the moment came, we cut our engine behind the other boat and there was no time for hesitation. I saw the massive fin slice the water in the midst of the fish boil. Twenty yards ahead, I could see a dark shape near the surface and I dropped in with my children. The water was true blue--visibility littered with particulate, no sight of the deep bottom to ground myself. Holding Piper's hand, hearing my own shallow breath through my snorkel, we swam right toward him.

first view of Old Tom I expected some hesitation from Piper, who is only five, or at least some frantic squeezing of our clutched hands, as my sister and I did when we went on a shark dive in Fiji. 

Nothing. Piper wasn't even breathing hard. Old Tom passed close enough that we could touch him. (We didn't--it's not allowed.) Piper neither pursued nor hung back--she stood her ground, tread water, and turned and waited peacefully for his next pass.

Hayden free dove down and swam close for video footage with our go-pro camera, and then made a beeline for the surface when his swooshing tail passed within inches of him.

This shark was curious, making several close passes, staying close to the surface with us. We made eye contact. Occasionally, he would disappear down into the depths below us. J, an excellent free diver, swam down sixty feet and said he could see him at about a hundred feet. Then he would turn and open his mouth, a six foot wide gaping slot, and swim straight up to the surface where we bobbed and waited, feeding on the bait fish, appearing out of the navy blue abyss.

Hayden shoots videoHe stayed for twenty minutes, visiting and passing close, diving down and surfacing. In hindsight, I wish we had been better at documenting this experience (half the video is shot with the camera upside down) but we also knew that for our first time, it was more important to just be present, because whatever we took home wouldn't come close to capturing the magnificence we felt. 

I have some video to post later, when I edit it, but trust me, it doesn't even come close to showing how breathtaking, how awe-inspiring it felt to be so close to these creatures.

 When this one dove, and didn't come back to the surface, we retrieved the boat we had abandoned with the help of the friends who had tipped us off. We sat in a kind of quiet awe, unable to believe what we had just done and seen. 

Over the next hour, we found two more whale sharks. Both were bigger than the first one (who was maybe 25 feet?) and one was almost double his size, but neither wanted anything to do with us. We would approach the boil in the very center of the jumping tuna, and we'd see a magnificent black tail fin, and a dark shape underwater double the size of our boat. I asked once, as I tugged my mask strap over my head, if we were sure these were whale sharks? It could be anything big feeding here--orcas, tiger sharks, something a little more interested in swimmers bobbing in the middle of a bait ball.

But whenever we slipped into the ocean, we'd catch a glimpse of another Old Tom before they disappeared into the depths.

whale shark feeding

We left them to feed in peace and continued around the island to a remote beach, accessible only by boat. We snorkeled the shallows and collected puka shells, and came across an octopus eating a crab. We ate granola bars and had a beer in the shade of the casuarinas,  until the slant of the sun meant we needed to finish our loop around the island.

As we came up on the Cays, we passed Raggedy Cay, the bird sanctuary, surrounded by frigate birds, egrets and terns. 

Our fishing lines still slack, we squinted into the sunglare on the water--there was activity up ahead. A bait boil? Another whale shark?

This time, it was a giddy pod of spinner dolphins, who came to play along the bow of our boat. We flattened along the bow, and they pulsed in the wake, turning their eyes up to look at us through the foam, a mother and a baby, close enough to touch, while all around the boat, the others leapt and played.

passing just below usWe could hear their whistles and clicks, and on the surface, Piper's delighted squeals. DOLPHINS! WHALE SHARKS! 

We reveled in our good fortune, the strange euphoria of swimming with such a rare and stunning creature, and the friendly curiosity of the dolphins... 

We didn't catch anything for dinner, but we came home with fish stories to spare. 

* *** *

Goodbye Old Tom... until we meet again...