heart. beat.

There's a tiny starfish drifting in the water swirling past my feet. I am standing in the front yard of my house in Chuburna, looking at the vast ocean, the unending horizon. The delicious blue sky melts to lilac where it meets the water, and right there where they join is a band of dark blue. How far can that be from my front yard to where the water turns to cobalt? And how can that same water, rushing toward me from the endless horizon, become such a delicious, sunwashed green? Verde is the Spanish word for green, and it sounds just right for this color. Verde. Verdant. Divine.

The starfish has ridden the waves from the deep, its tiny spark of life adrift somewhere in the ether. Next to the starfish, my toes are buried deep in the sand. I stand here in the light surf, feeling the waves washing over my feet. Each incoming shuuuush feels like a breath, and the outgoing waves make a sound like an exhalation. I also breathe in, and exhale, standing here in the middle of my dream, rooted to this spot, my feet fully buried now in the sand. I can't even feel my heart beating. I feel part of these gentle waves, of the sun overhead, of the sand washing around my feet.

I flew into Merida after dark Wednesday. The cabin lights were out and I watched Yucatan appear out of the night sky as we approached land. Twinkling lights strung out along the coast glowed in welcome, and it felt like coming home after a long absence.

I noticed for the first time in weeks that my heart was beating slowly. North of the border, I am plagued with a skipping, racing heart beat, a beat that has been examined and tested and assessed over and over. It is nothing, this skippy beat, nothing but stress and too much coffee. Destress, the doctors say. Avoid caffeine. But my life is nothing but stress. Stress and exhaustion and caffeine to keep going, to push beyond my limits, to endure; thus the beat, as if my heart's trying to escape, to lead the way out.

But here, in this place, on the coast of a country not my own, I feel at peace. I can take a deep breath and feel it all the way into my belly. My heart beats like a metronome, a slow and steady tick tick tick.

Standing in the surf in my front yard, my feet rooted deep in the sand, the waves are rushing around me and the wind picks up. There are electric flashes of white light in the sky and I make out tiny birds rushing in from the north. There are hundreds of birds, white ones, with flecks of black, and they're making little chirring sounds, soaring, swooping, and diving.

Pelicans have come, frigates are soaring overhead, and I am laughing out loud with the joy of it all. This ocean, this beach, the water, the birds, this house, this life, this place I call home. I can't help but laugh while my heart beats with the rhythm of the waves. I can hardly believe it, but this is my life now. I thought I was stuck but somehow, magically, this is my home, will be my permanent home by November. And on this magnificent day, I am here, standing in the waves in the front yard of my house. The tropical sun warms my head, and life feels fine, very, very fine.

chuburna at dawn

East, toward Progreso.

(Photo courtesy 4 BP)

beach house

We did it. That little pink house on the beach, just a block or so from the town square of Chuburna Puerto? It's ours and that's the view from my front porch at sunset. It's shocking. I'm excited. I'm terrified.

I am a child of caution, the baby of Depression-era parents who planned and conserved and didn't take inordinate risks. Though I cast off their conservative ways in my teenage years and have carried a certain free-spiritedness into adulthood, faced with something as dramatic as giving up my life in the country of my birth and moving to a strange land, it all comes back.

I am afflicted with what-ifs. What if beach erosion takes my little house away. What if the Category 5 hurricane comes. What if the massive number of gringos fleeing the US results in an anti-gringo backlash among the Yucatan people, a people, by the way, who only allowed paler-complected folk into their state in the early 1900s (read about the Yucatan Caste War for details ~ the Mayans were justified, but they are the fiercest of warriors).

The idea of being without income of my own, of relying on my husband is as terrifying as anything. I've earned my own money since I was 12. I was essentially self supporting (clothes, activities, doctor visits) from 14 on. Yes, my parents put a roof over my head and paid utilities and such, but my urge for independence was so extreme that I refused almost all other financial support.

On the other hand, I fell in love with Yucatan. Merida is stunning and such a gorgeous, cosmopolitan city, that it felt like a more beautiful New York. My little village, Chuburna Puerto, is home to 2500 souls. There are tiendas, a cement store, a soon-to-be-internet cafe, and a town square where people gather. There was a carnival going on while we were there, and a real bullfight, replete with blood. I'm told the town is sleepy, quiet, slow most of the year. There's not a Wal-Mart in sight. I can do that.

On Yucatan time, I felt free. My mind stopped racing. Oh, we started planning some changes to the house, but that was fun and wasn't anything like the constant low level hum of anxiety and dread that afflicts me here.

Basically, I have to make ~ or I've already made ~ a decision to go rogue. I'm not going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm not going to work until I'm 67. I'm not going to stay put any longer. I'm going to be a bad grandma and a worse stepmother. The good daughter in me will keep me around until Daddy's gone, but I don't expect that to be more than a couple of years and then I am out of here for good.

Out of here for good. Out of here for good. I type those words and it seems unreal. Really? Me? Moving to a foreign country? It's incomprehensible. And exciting. And frightening. And really, really exciting. I'm happy. Except when I'm scared. But I'm mostly happy.