'Hi's and lows - part one

She always got a sheer joyous expression on her face whenever she saw her dad walking down the sidewalk towards the house. On this particular day though, it seemed that the look was more of a puzzled expression than a look of happiness. My first thoughts were that the reason could have been that his appearance was unexpected or that she saw something in his mannerisms as his strides grew closer that aroused concern or curiosity to cloud her cheery demeanor.

The obvious question that I found framed on my lips was “What’s wrong Cassie?”

Her response was delivered in more of a sing-song tone than a matter of fact statement, “I think that I’m going to be sick” is what she interjected.

Never having done well with understanding women in general and little girls even less so, I paused a little too long to retrieve a bucket or some container that could receive the result of her having consumed three large candy bars in the last twenty minutes (and on my watch). The resulting splash caught her play dress, her socks and shoes, a small portion of the hall rug and of course my $100 designer slacks. All of this happening just as my brother (the girl’s father) enters his abode after the Sunday golf tournament that had me house sitting that afternoon.

“Smooth move, Glass. What the heck have you two been doing?” he crowed as he strode down the hall toward us.

“Well, I wanted to spoil my niece a little but, I think we made some bad choices”

“I’d concur” my Brother countered.

After cleaning up the mess in the hall and my young charge, I turned my attention to my own pants and started to pat myself down. “I hope you had a good time at the tournament. Did you play well”

“I’ve had better days but, it was certainly a good break… Thanks for looking after things here although, I’d rather you didn’t load her up on sugar on a school night.”

“I’m sorry about that, she asked for the after dinner snacks.”

“Yeah, and you are the adult here… or so you’d have us believe”

After we conversed for a little while, I took my leave and headed home. I borrowed a pair of shorts from my big brother so that I wouldn’t screw up the seats in my truck and drove back down the ocean drive to my slip in the marina. After going through my standard checklist in preparing for the evening, I slipped into my berth on the boat and fell fast asleep. All other cares and responsibilities were summarily pushed back on the calendar for another day.

The next day was the start of the work week so, I chose to sleep in just enough to make my preparation and the ride to work stressful. I hate being late so much that you’d think that I’d be better at starting my morning routines on time. Since I moved to this lovely island, it’s laid back culture has only served to fuel my affinity for procrastination to almost annoying levels (annoying for me more so than others I think).

Island life has been life changing in more than a few ways. The most obvious was in my gainful employment choice. There wasn’t much call for a network designer and technician in this island paradise (there also weren’t too many 6 figure jobs to be had either) so, with limited options I settled on a position in one of the local watering holes called the “Hungry Iguana” or HI for short.

Working at HI meant that not only was the primary focus keeping the tourists happy, my responsibilities were limited to providing food, drink and conversation. The first two tasks in the list were route details that I quickly acclimated myself to, the third was a leap for me being somewhat of a social hermit in most of my prior dealings with my fellow man. It’s been very much a learning experience… mostly positive.

I came here from the cold of the Northeast in upstate NY. The winters drove me from the surroundings and people I had grown up with. The draw to this particular area was my brother’s family. My brother had made the leap to island life at a much earlier time in his life. When his wife passed away suddenly, leaving him a single parent I did what I thought I needed to do which was voluntarily take a leave of absence to help out until he got back on his feet. I hadn’t realized that it would become a longer term stay.

….to be continued…

---Jim