Subourbon Mom

Spring break this week couldn’t have come soon enough, after yet another week of missed work, missed school and sleet that no longer sounded like popcorn on the windows, but more like an irritating toddler tapping on the bedroom door while Mommy was in “time-out.” Courtesy of my very generous in-laws, we were invited to spend a few days in St. Maarten.  For weeks I’d been envisioning white sand beaches, tropical drinks and hangovers that mysteriously disappeared with an hour or two of being in the sun.

I also had visions of how I would be looking in my bikini.

Huh.

I didn’t remember I’d have two teenage daughters with me, and that I would be surrounded by other youngsters in their 20’s, with no wrinkles or worn-out-looking skin draping their bodies like Scarlett O’Hara’s curtains before she made them into a dress.

But I wore it anyway. Hell, I didn’t know anybody there.

I also tried to justify it to myself by going for a walk from where we were staying up to a radio tower on top of the “mountain.” Okay, it wasn’t really a mountain, but it looked like one when I was eyeballing it from the breakfast table, with a stomach full of healthy granola trying to counteract the bellyful of pizza and Heinekens from the night before.

My eyes have always been bigger than my stomach, and that day, they were clearly bigger than my exercise capabilities.

So off The Fam went, a water bottle in each hand, our pale, prison-term skin glistening in the mid-morning light and blinding the locals.  As we plodded along the congested street to get to the “mountain”, my only thought was, “My goal today is to sweat out the many, many toxins I ingested last night.”  By the time we’d gone about 500 yards, I’d achieved that goal. We hadn’t even started uphill yet.

Our friend and guide to all fun things local, Mark, led us landlubbers through the maze of tiny lanes winding up the hill. Each indentation in the road hid a charming villa overlooking the ocean in a panorama of turquois and cerulean blues that made your heart actually ache, wanting to see that view every day.  In his characteristic speed-walk (large steps, head swiveling from side to side like an ostrich as he scanned for potential hazards), we hiked up the mountain that I had quickly decided was not eroding with time like a normal mountain, but was in fact growing, probably due to some strange up-thrust of island infrastructure-related sewage activity. (For some reason, there was a stench of raw sewage that would come at us in wafts all over the island—random waves of shit-smell that would actually burn the back of your throat until you cleared the area).

Two-thirds of the way up, I had to take a break. Mama Bear was falling behind, and not in a, “I’ll block the cars from the rear,” protective kind of way. My lungs were on fire, and the hip I busted white water rafting was seizing up in a way no WD40 or bottles of Aleve were going to fix.  Ahead, Mark and Daughters 1&2 were plowing on with heads down and shoulders hunched against the humidity and the the incline. 

Hubby was patiently waiting for me to catch up, the last prisoner on this Bataan Death March.

Eventually, we made it to the top, and the view?  It was worth it—a panoramic view of our part of the island.

The best parts of the whole adventure?

1. No texting
2. Daughters 1&2 were impressed with something that, while not exactly life-sized, was not on SnapChat until THEY put it there.
3. I didn’t have to use my inhaler, and the hours on the elliptical weren’t wasted.
4. I was toxin-free…
5. …until I had the three frozen lemonade drinks at the beach bar later on that were GUILT-FREE.