POSTED: NOVEMBER 1, 2024
The combination I have of loving to cook and not having much extra cash means I am rarely out to dinner at a restaurant. But a couple weeks ago I decided to splurge and take Captain Ciera out for a nice dinner at a place here in Malta that is one of the best in town. It has some traditional meals of the region but is more focused on current food trends but of course works with lots of the local fish as well. Its much more upscale than I would frequent even if I had the income, and its market is more celebration than consumption. So, among the various locals who were there celebrating anniversaries or other life milestones, and business people out with clients, there were a few (very few) tourists.
We were seated very close to a tourist couple who were obviously American. Now many who come to Malta are not really tourists in the traditional sense. Many people come for a month or a season and really become entrenched in the place. Some come year after year as an alternative to their climate in northern Europe or elsewhere. This couple looked like that type who were not just off a cruise ship or here for a week, but were very comfortable with the community. What made them look American was exclusively his wardrobe and demeanor. She was very nicely dressed, and had prepped for the night out. He was in shorts, running shoes and a T shirt and after a few minutes took off his baseball cap. He also was very relaxed about everything and whenever he wanted something would not wait for his server to come by but just snatch the attention of any staff member close by.
The lesson of not judging a book by its cover it seems I need to learn over and over. While he was inappropriately dressed and his behaviour was not up to the standards of most restaurants let alone a premium one, once we chatted with them that book cover lesson came back into the picture. He had asked about the Seabass dish on my plate and we got to talking.
It turns out that their home was Tampa Florida. Now this was October 8th and the news was all about the pending impact of Hurricane Milton that was expected to make landfall the next day as a Category 3 hurricane, or potentially a Category 4 and the forecast was a direct hit on Tampa. I guess the look on my face gave away the fear in my mind for the loss they would incur, and at about the same time Captain Ciera expressed that they seemed very calm about what was to come. And that is when they shared with us their story.
She had been a teacher for most of her working life and he was in investments. When she retired she became a personal trainer. But the real story was that over the years she had been diagnosed with cancer four times and beat it each time. With each iteration however they learned to live more in the moment and after this last battle decided to take a big trip to Europe for several months and do some of the things they had always wanted to do. One was to walk the Camino Portugues section of the Camino de Santiago. This section of that walking trail is 268 km (167 miles) long and starts in Porto, Portugal and goes north along the coast into Spain. It was clear that they were both in their late seventies or early eighties, and part of the fun of this trip was about sixteen days of arduous walking! Yes, some great views along the way but it is getting that eighty-year-old body out there every day for many hours on your feat on what is not always a flat, or a regular surface and regardless of the hot sun or the rain.
This was only one of the things they were taking on when in Europe. Another one that surprised me was skinny dipping in the Blue Grotto in Malta. The trip was for many months and involved living in Portugal for a month, and about a month in each of Malta, Italy, France, Croatia and the U.K. At the end they had a transatlantic cruise booked to take them back to Florida.
They explained that if you have stared down death a few times, the loss of a building, even your home, while upsetting is not the worst thing that can happen. They had learned to focus on the activity they were doing right now – hiking, seeing, dining …..whatever the activity was, might be the last thing you do, so you should savour it. And with that they focused on their dinner, as the here and now is what really matters, instead of watching the news and getting wound up about losing their home.
This chance encounter really shook me up and left me somewhat inspired. I have bumped into some obstacles in my time, largely of my own making, but have never really been challenged on an existential level. This couple, who one might think would be burdened by the aging process, or the risk to their home, where so many memories had been made and kids had been raised, were just enjoying a wonderful meal on a vacation they had designed to do many of the things they thought would be wonderful life experiences.
When the next day I watched the coverage of Hurricane Milton making landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and seeing the way so many lives would be changed forever, I knew two people who would not only survive the storm, but grow from the experience of coming out the other side of that challenge. I am seventy years old and continue to learn that lesson of using all your life experiences to help you put things in perspective and to cope, and part of that is to enjoy the activity you are doing at the time.
Django