Home Thoughts From Abroad

I cannot remember when I first read The Diary of Anne Frank. I was young, too young to understand all that was said, alluded to, or implied. I know I was struck by Anne’s honesty, more so when I came to grips with what the Nazis did to her and millions of Jews like her. It is not easy to wrap your head and heart around that level of demonic evil when you are young. I toured the Annex when I was in Amsterdam, as a mature adult. We shuffled from room to room, dumbstruck by the banality of the horror that was written on every wall.

So when the Cayman Drama Society opened auditions for the play, I knew I had to try out. I wasn’t looking for a major role, just something to get my feet wet on stage after more than a dozen years coaching students from the sidelines. I tried out for Dussel, the fussy dentist that comes in halfway through the first act. I practiced a passable German accent and committed a few passages to memory. I was little taken aback when the director, Kirsty Halliday, said, “Very nice, now drop the accent and try it again.” I did, and got cast in the role.

This summer I used every available minute to commit the script to memory. Then I worked on all the cues surrounding my part. Rehearsals went on while I was away in Canada, but that couldn’t be helped. As soon as I got back I jumped back into all the blocking that I had missed and introduced myself to the cast. Fortunately, drama folks are a pretty accepting sort, and I soon felt comfortable and found their company pleasant. The schedule itself was tiring on top of teaching all day: two late nights a week and four to six hours on the weekends. But slowly the bits and pieces came together and we began to jell as a cast.

Kirsty had three primary ideas she wanted to embed in her production. She wanted to put the entire audience, all 80 of them, on the stage with us so there would be no escape, no turning away. The auditorium would become the warehouse through the audience would walk, behind the bookcase and up the stairs into the Annex. Then she wanted to visualize Anne’s nightmare scene, bringing the three Nazis on stage to terrorize her as she slept. Then in the final scene she wanted us all to march, zombie like, onto the stage and fall into a heap of bodies, eyes open and gazes blank staring out at the audience. The effect was devastating. Many sat in tearful silence for minutes after the show was over, unable to compose themselves enough to leave. The nine shows were sold out to the last seat for every show, and the reviews and comments have been overwhelmingly positive, many saying it was the best show that the Cayman Drama Society has ever done, and the strongest cast.

It has been so rewarding for me to have even a small part in such an important play. The cast, especially 15 year old Jasmine Line, who played Anne, the music, the set design, and the staging were all impressively professional. I enjoyed the camaraderie of our cast and the nightly challenge of bringing my character to life. I will likely do another show, now that I am back into the groove, but I can’t think that anything else will ever come close to the impact of this show. It is difficult even after a week away just thinking about what we had to go through each show. 

One night I spoke to the only Jewish rabbi on Cayman who had come to the show. After he had complemented me on my Hebrew during the Sim Shalom prayer that I offer, I asked him about his reaction. He said he found it moving and authentic. He also shared that he had lost two of his great grandparents in the Holocaust. I asked if he minded us, an entirely Gentile cast, presenting this work. Oh no, he said, very firmly. The truth must continue to be told so that this never happens again. Never again.

Pam and I thought long and hard about buying a boat when we arrived in the Cayman. It seemed a natural: we lived right on the longest canal on the island, the waters were crystal clear, and the breezes were mild. All our neighbours seemed to have boats, and we had visions of taking our grandchildren out across the North Sound when they came to visit.

Sadly, that dream had to die. The cost for even a small runabout was exorbitant, and apparently the boat maintenance here is astronomical.  Then too we noticed that our neighbours never actually seemed to use their boats. The workdays are long here, so there is only the weekend. Besides, snorkeling had taken over our interest in the water and we were developing a nice group of older people who like to snorkel and were good company at the pub afterwards.

So we moderated our passion for boating and took whatever opportunities availed themselves to us to get out on the water through staff cruises or trips across the North Sound to the restaurant at Rum Point. However, there was one cruise that we had not taken in our three years on the island, and that was the Sunset Cruise off Seven Mile Beach. The reason was obvious, it cost more than we felt comfortable paying to see a sunset we could sit on the beach to see for nothing.

But for our anniversary, a young couple in our community group gave us the gift of a Sunset Cruise. We tried in vain to fit it in before the summer break, but the weather refused to cooperate. Finally, once we returned to Cayman, we got a chance to go sailing, and it turned out to be well worth the wait. Since we moved to the Caribbean, we have become sunset connoisseurs. There are sunsets too dull to even matter, sunsets that promise much, then just peter out, and sunsets that go out in a brief blaze of glory. However, our favourites are the ones that linger in the clouds for nearly two hours. We had one of those on the night of our cruise.  

The breezes were delicious, warm and fragrant. There was no sound but the gentle muted conversations on the deck and the flutter of the sails in the breeze. As the glow from the sunset faded, the stars came out as clear as diamonds on black felt. We had Cayman lemonade, and some chicken wings and just soaked up the great privilege of being allowed to be here at this point in our lives. It was a beautiful evening.

When Liz and Greg welcomed their first baby, Russ into our family, Jon and Nic and the kids made the long drive from Seattle to meet him. There have been many, varied visits family visits and events in the mean time but since then that we have not been all together in one place.

It took a lot of planning and a tremendous amount of effort on everyone’s part to coordinate our schedules but we finally got together again just in time to celebrate Russ’s fifth birthday. We gathered at Greg’s family’s beautiful cabin on Moyie Lake in southern British Columbia. Jon and Nic rented a small but very adequate cabin about five minutes walk away. Dave made the five hour trip through the mountains on his bike to be there with us,

Along with lovely accommodations we had the use of a boat, canoe and kayaks and a cool lake for swimming. We BBQ’d and had great meals together, hung out and played what was for us a new board game, Settlers of Catan, without too many disagreements.

The weather was spectacular with cool, clear mornings and warm, sunny afternoons. Steve had a great time teaching Ben and Abi to paddle the canoe and they were both steering quite competently by the end of the week.

We moved to the Caribbean so Steve could continue his ministry in teaching and yet still be close enough to our family to be able to have this kind of vacation. This time on the lake certainly brought home to us home much we love to be with our children and their children.

It is a great thing to be around your adult children and see them and their kids all getting along. For Canadians is like something in our DNA that this is most enjoyable outdoors. The Cayman Islands have lovely beaches and warm weather year round. But they don’t have the kind of beauty you see in the Rockies.

The lake was cold, but not unbearably so. All of us went in the water at one time or another, some as a result of going too fast in the raft, but always with a great deal of laughter. It was the nicest summer we have had in many a year.