I haven’t been to Panama since 1985. And it is weird since Panama was the place where so many hard things happened. Perhaps that is why I haven’t been back. It is such a mysterious place for me in my history - so many memories and so many good and so many bad ones.
I have this recurrent dream that I am back there often. The dream always has different facets but it usually involves driving somewhere, Gorgas hospital and Central. I am not sure why all of those things are part of this recurrent dream, but they are.
What it mostly feels like is I am there to reclaim something I lost, like I am always trying to get somewhere and there are always obstacles. And that would make total sense considering all that happened there. My childhood is punctured with pain and joy from a place that I have been away from for so long and returning to seems like something I need to do. And yet, I never think about going back there...
On the rare occasions I do think about going back, that thought is whitewashed in positivity and coolness, some sort of prop my ego has used all these years that is really colored and stained and I am just pretending that it is a beautiful white landscape of childhood memories.
My mom hated it there...both times. I never really understood how she felt. I mean it rained a lot but it is so funny, every single one of my memories from Panama does not include rain. In fact, when I try to think of times that it did rain, I come up with only one memory standing on my back porch watching it pour. That is it. I mean it rains all the fucking time there and I can only remember one time. What the fuck is that about?
Someone from high school posted a photo on social media the other night. Tits Beach - a favorite surfing spot and arguably the best beach on the Pacific side. I spent a lot of time there as teenager. I am not sure if that was the beach that my friend, consumed with surfing all day, forgot his car was parked on the beach as the tide rolled in, and by the time anyone noticed, the car was completely under water. As soon as that thought lands, I wonder if that even happened. So lost in the folds of my mind, did I just dream that or did it really happen? I am pretty sure Mike’s VW was lost forever on Tits Beach. Or maybe it was another beach...
Such a weird name for a beach...but it was called that because the River Teta emptied out onto that beach, Rio Teta, and thus “Tits” Beach was born.
When this person posted the photo below, I was taken back to a time that was so bittersweet for me. So much hope and promise, so much pain too. It is hard sometimes to rectify your adolescence when it is spread over 4,000 miles.
Regardless of the weirdness, the shame, the pain and the angst I feel, I have this fondness for the place. I have this soft spot in my heart for the beauty and the fun that was had there. My alcoholism was born there for sure. Not when I was 4, but at 14 for sure.
Panama was always good vibes, lots of booze, surfing and fun. Until it wasn’t.
So it remains this hard to reconcile place for me. But when my old high school acquaintance posted it last night, I knew I would write about it. I knew that I would revisit the good, the bad and the ugly because that is what Panama is for me, a place that represents the wholeness of life. The misery, the hardship and the laughter and joy. I used to feel these things were so incongruent. But I realize now, they are just the way life is no matter where you are.
So this photo that I totally stole from John, is one of the good memories. I can remember standing on that beach, just a young girl, with so many hopes, and dreams and a burgeoning love of beautiful beaches. My love for watching surfing was born there. Right there on this very beach, I fell in love with watching the guys ride those waves and carve them up.
And I guess Panama really is just another place where life happened for me and to me. Nothing bad that happened there was Panama’s fault. And so much of the good was a direct result of my engagement with the landscape of that far away place...the causeway, Taboga, Tits Beach, Rio Mar, Contadora, Coronado.
It was the land of surf and sand and youth and inexperience. And today it is all jumbled together on this life tapestry I have been blessed to create this long.
So many good things felt close on Tits Beach. So much potential, so much fun, so much life happened there. So funny, your head can be in one space and someone can post a photo on Facebook and your mind ends up somewhere else completely.
And I guess I am not unlike anyone else who looks back into their childhood and finds a great deal of pain and joy. But I have Panama and that is and always will be mine.
Again...still.
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