Fishy Lies Part 1

The water was always clear and there was never any sand – real white sand. The one beach on our “tropical paradise” was a beach names “the Ferry Landing.” We had been stationed on the rock known as Gitmo – known to the rest of the world as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the last two years with at least another two in our sites. Family day consisted of a jaunt to the beach or the pool, cleaning rooms, picnics, whatever the mood struck. For 40 miles of space including the bay, there was only so much one could do with their free time. My mother and father always seemed to be creative. A day at the beach was always something fun and exciting, even when it was just our family who went. For only 40 miles we certainly had a number of beaches to choose from. Each coined with a cute nickname for some physical characteristic. Glass Beach was named that because it was the best beach for snorkeling and diving. Once you were snorkeling, you could go to the bottom of the water, where a multitude of worn, smoothed glass shards danced in the light under the waves.

My brother would collect these great treasures and put them in a cup. My mother would ooo and ahh over them like a good mother would and then when unloading our gear and treasures from the day she would gently and slyly discard my brother’s treasure chest of a cup until the next adventure to Glass Beach, when he would do it all over again.

On one particularly quiet Saturday my family, consisting of Ma and Pop, my 5 year-old younger brother William, and I, loaded a lunch and our beach gear in our car and took off for Ferry Landing beach.

Ferry landing beach was the only beach on the windward side of the island that had sand. There were a few beaches on the leeward side but you mostly had to take a boat to get to those. The Ferry Landing was the port for the ferry that took you from the windward side to the leeward side. A bay of water separates Gitmo. The majority of the families along with the commissary, Navy Exchange, movie amphitheater, pools, and the McDonald’s were on the Windward side of the island. On the Leeward side of the island, freedom lay in wait. The airport, along with military combat training was located on this side of the island. Guantanamo great to live there, but everyone missed the comforts of the main land. So unless you were on your way to the airport or your neighborhood was called to travel for Defex (practice for when Castro could attack), you pretty much stayed windward.

The other appealing aspect of Ferry Landing Beach was where the brine overflow and wastewater concentrated water would drain back into the ocean from the desalinization plant that made our water as drinkable. The best water you’ve ever tasted. I, to this day, have never tasted water as clean and sweet as the water there. It was a large long spout averaging at about 7 feet in width that sent warm water back out. It was like going to a hot spring to lounge in the water. You could float off its current and the amount of salt.

This particular Saturday my family and I were floating in the current, laughing and joking around. My mother, who has always and remains, squeamish sat perched on my father’s lap. My brother and I were bouncing childishly around them. The sun was high and the sky as always was so blue you felt you could get lost in it. We looked out from the shore and saw lots of splashes.

“Gary, what is that?” My mother asked a little on edge already.

“Oh, it’s just a school of fish being chased by some Red Snapper.” My father answered her, tightening his grip around her.

My brother and I thought it was cool.

“Ok, well I am going in. I don’t like fish.” She tried to get away from my father’s tight grip around her, but he wouldn’t budge.

Mona Lisa

I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting on a friend. I came in and sat down at a table next to a woman who was well put together. Her nails were short and round with bright red nail polish. She kept putting more and more jewelry on. First it was a bracelet and then it was a large costume ring. Then she put on another bracelet.

She ordered her coffee and some food and came back to her seat. I was reading the bible and taking moments to reflect on what I had read and this lady started to catch my attention. At first I thought she was just talking to herself randomly. I am guilty of doing that from time to time, but her body language changed. Captivated, I spied on her from the corner of my eye. She turned her body to the right at an angle as if there were a person there to focus her attention on. It was then that I realized she was talking to someone.

Whomever she was talking to I couldn't see; I know the guy at the table next to mine couldn't see them either – but this lady legitimately saw someone. She spoke with intense expressive hand gestures and she responded with laughter, sometimes a louder laugh. She wasn't disruptive, had someone actually been there the conversation was quite normal for the environment and she seemed very content with herself.

I started to wonder who she was talking to. Not in a judgmental or accusatory fashion, but out of genuine interest. Were they male or female? What they are talking about? Does this person, that I can't see, treat her better than any other relationship in her life? Are they the only one that can see her, just as she is the only one who can see them? Is she talking to God? Is he that tangible to her that I sit back in my chair and assume there is something deeply troubled; all the while the Lord is who she is talking to as she works it all out for herself just like I’m doing? I don't know what this woman's story is. I don't know if she is from money or has always been hungry. Is there someone that worries for her safety and waits till she gets home at night?

Is the devil trapped in her mind to isolate her from her destiny and in that conversation is the Lord reminding her that she is a child of God and that he is always with us even when our mind is different from everyone else's? The least will be first and the first will be last…is she first?

She looks at me and tells me that she likes my hair, this, on a day when it's raining and nasty and I'm dressed as a homeless person in protest to the on coming winter. I tell her, "thank you. It's my rainy day hair." She starts to rapidly run her hand from her forehead to the back of her neck over her hair, back and forth telling me that her rainy day hair solution is to cut it really short. And our conversation ends.

I want to ask her who she is talking too. It haunts me and I start to pray that the Lord will open an opportunity for me to talk to her. To provide a door for me to step through if only to see what I am supposed to learn from her through His eyes.

It never comes.

What comes is my coffee date. We talk and share and explore our revelations of God. I tell her about the lady and the conversation that she has been having with the person only she can see. And then we start to dig into each other's worlds and the lady is forgotten.

Now I am thinking about that woman and wondering about her. Wondering where she is and what she’s doing. Wondering. Wondering about God and his plans, wondering why some of us are healthy and some are sick, why some are called and some are not. Why some can chose the wider road and some of us can only imagine the narrow one. Wondering about how big the world is and how small we are, and how we can spend our whole life in a little microcosm of the universe and miss the big picture and how much we just don't know.

I pray for my eyes to widen and my vision to expand. Expand to see more and experience things beyond myself; to get the words in the right order, to get my life in the right order. However, who defines what order looks like? To the lady in the coffee shop order looks like a figment of your imagination that has coffee with you and makes you laugh.

I’ve spent too much time bound up and boxed in to the belief that order must look like a particular picture, a paint-by-numbers where I have to paint the right color on the right number…but my order is yellow when it should be red, it's green when purple is assigned. I've had to give that picture up. I can't paint in the numbers when I don't hold the brush. Once I’m reminded of that, I see my own definitions of order. It's unorthodox, a little messy from time to time, but the end result is still a well formed picture. I have to strip the paints that I think I should have and let them be painted on their own. I'm not Michelangelo, my Mona Lisa is different and I don't HAVE to make it look like anything but Glory.