Every American I've Ever Seen

What did we do?  Well, this was billed as a day to flop around and do nothing.  That’s what we did.  I spent an hour in the pool with my younger one.  It’s a beautiful pool and it snakes around the rim of a cliff, down over the bluff to the coast below.  We flopped around and did “how long can you hold your breath” games.  We did handstands.  We went in the hot tub.  We got very sunburned. 

My older one did homework.  My wife lay on a reclining seat reading.  For lunch we went back to the same falafel joint located fifty meters outside the compound.  The place was run by a spunky Israeli lady who was playing spunky Israeli music which I didn’t recognize, until Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" came on and it was somehow touching to think of her troubled life and stare out over the back yard below.  I was lulled into sensitivity by then when David Bowie’s "Major Tom" followed.  I allowed myself a few moments to consider the Space Oddity and his recent passing.  The song would return to me later in the evening, in the form of a dream. 

We picnicked out on the remarkable porch with the remarkable view and sipped wine and cut avocados and mangos and applied tahini.  I planned these days as days of no museums, no churches, no treks, no nothing, but chilling for a few days at the end of the all, so that these gals, who’d been good sports with my litany of must-see sites, could return home properly rested.

I told my daughter she’d be burned, before she realized it had happened to her.  Soon she agreed, and began to complain about the pain.  We threw on the air-con and she crashed out.  Later I bought her some talcum powder which has saved more then one excursion for me. 

Once you’re settled and not en route, the world of obligation begins to find ways in.  A week’s worth of overdue.  A week’s worth of must dues. “Can you talk now?” “Um sure.”  “When can we talk? “ “When can you get it to me?”  Fortunately the Internet was horrible.  

Dinner was the second place we could find, right outside, after the first one suggested a thirty minute wait.  We sat next to a table of twelve year olds who looked like every American I've ever scene.  I spoke Spanish and ate snapper and bought the bill from proprietress who hailed from South Carolina. She served a burger that two table's ordered that was undeniably the largest I have ever seen, with a bun the size of a tennis racket. Everyone was tired and ready to go.  The day of nothing was coming to its logical conclusion.