Panama 3
My family moved to Panama in the beginning of 1977, about a week before my seventh birthday. My sister Tina was 14 and my sister Tricia was 4. One of the first memories I have of Panama is arriving at Tocumen Airport and seeing flocks of hundreds of tropical birds, all flying in circles around the rows of palm trees that faced the airport. The sky was always amazing in Panama—variegated shades of pink, fuchsia and coral against crystalline blues. We later learned that the birds fly in frenzied circles, en masse, before a big storm hits.
It rains for almost 8 months out of the year in Panama. We had to get used to the smell of mildew everywhere, no matter how much bleach my mother used. And it’s hot there. I remember the rain ponchos were horrible plastic, like they used to make Halloween costumes out of, and had a few holes punched under the arms for ventilation. But I would always rather get soaked than wear one. And the rain could hurt your skin; the drops were so big and fell with such force.
When we finally got settled in our new home it was the dry season. My parents decided to build a pool and changing room behind the house and the whole time it was being constructed we’d play in the widening muddy hole. There were piles of sand for mixing into concrete. The sand was hauled straight from the beach and the workers had giant sieves they’d constructed of chicken wire and rough wooden frames. They’d sift the sand through, over and over, and we’d scoop up all the shells that would drop along the mesh.
The back garden was lush, verdant even. Anything could grow there—well almost anything—we couldn’t have our daffodils and snowdrops and tulips—our darling flowering bulbs from England. In Panama, the flowers were hibiscus and bird of paradise and bougainvillea. We found strange pods and blood red berries growing all over. We’d try to tame everything into cultured beds (bordered with the scalloped shells we took from the construction piles), but nothing obeyed. It was literally the jungle back there.
We found frog spawn and tadpoles in the hole that would eventually be our pool and put them into a giant tank on our patio. Once the pool was finally finished, we did little but swim from the time we got home from school until late in the evening. Sometimes we’d even go out before school in the morning for a swim and we’d find an iguana (a giant one), overcome by the chlorine and floating listlessly in the pool. We had a long net on a pole that we’d scoop it up with and we’d dump it out near a drainage ditch on the edge of our property. It would sit, barely blinking in the sun until, re-energized, it would shake itself off and slip away.
Two monkeys in particular spent part of each day in our trees. A small, ginger-coloured one was sweet and friendly and we named him Jeffrey. The other was much bigger and had black fur. He was always mean to Jeffrey and threw mangos and coconuts at him and sometimes us. We named him Joe. My father’s name is Joe.
My sister Tricia and I played make-believe from all the books we read. She had bright red hair and freckles and related strongly with Pippi Longstockings. So when we read that she had a tree that grew bottles of lemonade (or maybe it was ginger beer), we tied glass bottles of Squirt in the branches of a mango tree. When we read Harriet the Spy we immediately started a spy route over the walls and fences of the neighbouring properties. We were not allowed to leave our back garden, but sometimes, when we knew the neighbours weren’t at home, we’d climb into their yard and run around.
There was one incredibly tall wall, all the way at the back of our property and we could never climb it. After trying to get to the top of the wall for a few years, my sister finally succeeded. I had boosted her as high as I could and she’d found toe and finger holds in the bricks and lifted herself to the top. She called down to me, “Teresa, it’s like paradise!” And that’s what we called it from then on, paradise. With her help I scrambled my way to the top and couldn’t believe my eyes. They had a tiered fountain that splashed down into pool after pool (there had to be at least 6 or 8 shallow pools, each bigger than the last, the smallest was bigger than most toddler wading pools) creating a cascading waterfall through their property into a huge and deep swimming pool. After seeing it, we were obsessed with the idea of playing in that garden.
My family moved to Panama in the beginning of 1977, about a week before my seventh birthday. My sister Tina was 14 and my sister Tricia was 4. One of the first memories I have of Panama is arriving at Tocumen Airport and seeing flocks of hundreds of tropical birds, all flying in circles around the rows of palm trees that faced the airport. The sky was always amazing in Panama—variegated shades of pink, fuchsia and coral against crystalline blues. We later learned that the birds fly in frenzied circles, en masse, before a big storm hits.
It rains for almost 8 months out of the year in Panama. We had to get used to the smell of mildew everywhere, no matter how much bleach my mother used. And it’s hot there. I remember the rain ponchos were horrible plastic, like they used to make Halloween costumes out of, and had a few holes punched under the arms for ventilation. But I would always rather get soaked than wear one. And the rain could hurt your skin; the drops were so big and fell with such force.
When we finally got settled in our new home it was the dry season. My parents decided to build a pool and changing room behind the house and the whole time it was being constructed we’d play in the widening muddy hole. There were piles of sand for mixing into concrete. The sand was hauled straight from the beach and the workers had giant sieves they’d constructed of chicken wire and rough wooden frames. They’d sift the sand through, over and over, and we’d scoop up all the shells that would drop along the mesh.
The back garden was lush, verdant even. Anything could grow there—well almost anything—we couldn’t have our daffodils and snowdrops and tulips—our darling flowering bulbs from England. In Panama, the flowers were hibiscus and bird of paradise and bougainvillea. We found strange pods and blood red berries growing all over. We’d try to tame everything into cultured beds (bordered with the scalloped shells we took from the construction piles), but nothing obeyed. It was literally the jungle back there.
We found frog spawn and tadpoles in the hole that would eventually be our pool and put them into a giant tank on our patio. Once the pool was finally finished, we did little but swim from the time we got home from school until late in the evening. Sometimes we’d even go out before school in the morning for a swim and we’d find an iguana (a giant one), overcome by the chlorine and floating listlessly in the pool. We had a long net on a pole that we’d scoop it up with and we’d dump it out near a drainage ditch on the edge of our property. It would sit, barely blinking in the sun until, re-energized, it would shake itself off and slip away.
Two monkeys in particular spent part of each day in our trees. A small, ginger-coloured one was sweet and friendly and we named him Jeffrey. The other was much bigger and had black fur. He was always mean to Jeffrey and threw mangos and coconuts at him and sometimes us. We named him Joe. My father’s name is Joe.
My sister Tricia and I played make-believe from all the books we read. She had bright red hair and freckles and related strongly with Pippi Longstockings. So when we read that she had a tree that grew bottles of lemonade (or maybe it was ginger beer), we tied glass bottles of Squirt in the branches of a mango tree. When we read Harriet the Spy we immediately started a spy route over the walls and fences of the neighbouring properties. We were not allowed to leave our back garden, but sometimes, when we knew the neighbours weren’t at home, we’d climb into their yard and run around.
There was one incredibly tall wall, all the way at the back of our property and we could never climb it. After trying to get to the top of the wall for a few years, my sister finally succeeded. I had boosted her as high as I could and she’d found toe and finger holds in the bricks and lifted herself to the top. She called down to me, “Teresa, it’s like paradise!” And that’s what we called it from then on, paradise. With her help I scrambled my way to the top and couldn’t believe my eyes. They had a tiered fountain that splashed down into pool after pool (there had to be at least 6 or 8 shallow pools, each bigger than the last, the smallest was bigger than most toddler wading pools) creating a cascading waterfall through their property into a huge and deep swimming pool. After seeing it, we were obsessed with the idea of playing in that garden.
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