So, as I stand in line at our new convenience store and wait for the calm and easygoing Marshallese clerk to ring up each of my items, I almost blow a blood vessel in my head thinking of what I could be doing with the excruciatingly long process of her taking her time with each item. It’s the first time in a long while I have felt the blood rushing to my head as I think of the many things I could be accomplishing, errands I could be checking off my list, etc., while she lovingly and painstakingly checks out each item. I think she is actually turning each item over on each of its sides and studying it before scanning it. Doesn’t she know I have to be home to make my kids lunch? Doesn’t she know that in the States, the clerks are so unfriendly and check things out so fast that half of the time I have to drive back because they overcharged me or forgot to bag something? It’s a modern obsession--multitasking and cramming as much as you can do into a minute--and apparently I haven’t fully shaken the “bug” even being on “island time” already more than a year.

And bless her heart, she is an Islander. She has likely never stood in line at the U.S. post office in a metropolitan suburb close to the holiday mailing frenzy. She has likely never tried to get a latte at the Starbucks drive-through or “just five things on her list” at Target before racing home in the car to get a kid off the bus, just to rush them to karate. She knows nothing but the slow, steady ticking of a clock, where time matters little, and it passes whether or not you accomplished 20 things on your list or just slowly checked a few people out in line. She was doing her job. She just wasn’t doing it the “American way.”

I was slightly ashamed of myself after that episode. I never revealed my frustration or impatience with the typical body language (looking at my watch, loud sighs, shuffling my feet). She did not know about my sudden blood pressure rise, and I never took it out on her, but I briefly disappointed myself. I want to be more on “island time” out here. Yes, I know when I return to Boston, I will go back to my culture and will fall back into the long return lines after Christmas, the hustle to get through the Route 2 rotary at rush hour, the multitasking of giving one kid a snack, while checking homework, while putting lipstick on, while making sure three child seat belts are fastened, while starting the car (not while driving the car....I do NOT believe it is okay to multitask behind the wheel). But, while I am here, I want to breathe in the deep, easy moments of taking my time. I want to bike for enjoyment, not to race to a school meeting. I want to smell the plumeria and stop and talk to a friendly face or two (unless I’ve already done that multiple times that day...and then I will retreat to my “introvert’s cave” for a while). I want to say, “Hey, Guys...do you see the man climbing that palm tree and knocking the coconuts down? Do you see that lady weaving a basket from palm fronds? Do you see the fishermen collecting the fish in their net, pants rolled up over their knees, on the lagoon-side beach?” I want to stop when the hermit crab or its distant cousin, the super-ugly coconut crab, cross the road. I want to not have anywhere I have to be right at that moment. I want to thank the clerk for her help. I never want my American identity to be squelched in any way, because I love being an American and am always grateful for that, but I wouldn’t mind adopting a little more of an “island time” philosophy while here.

I wish I could bottle some of this life and give it out for Christmas this year. Just a “relax and take life as it comes” bottle of love and calm to give to people back home. I may never get it in this way again, so I want to suck it in with a straw and draw a very very long breath of island air. It is not utopia here (if you want proof, consult my earlier blogs that document my long adjustment process), but we do see amazing beauty here, and we do take life one slower moment at a time. My kids are still growing way too fast, as they were back on the U.S. mainland, but they don’t talk about Happy Meals or the latest toy out in the Toys R Us advertisement. They don’t ask why they can’t have Lunchables and other products marketed to children anymore? They come home and tell me:

“Mommy, look at these pandanus tree seeds! I  found eight of them outside our door!”

“Is this a breadfruit?”

“When I was coming home for lunch today, I saw a HUGE hermit crab crossing the road!”

If you figure out how I can capture this in a bottle forever, please e-mail me! I may take a while to reply, however. I’m on island time now.