Easter in Trinidad

It's Easter Sunday in Trinidad. The Trinidadians take their holidays seriously. Banks, shops, the boatyard, etc. were closed on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, plus today, Easter Sunday, and they'll be closed again tomorrow, Easter Monday. The other day, I asked a young woman in the boatyard office, a native Trinidadian and a woman of color, if the Easter Bunny comes to Trinidad and how she planned to celebrate. She said “No bunnies here. I'm going to sleep for four days. That's what you do on holiday.”

I later spoke with Tammy, owner of the B&B we'd stayed at. She's a Syrian who has lived in Trinidad for 50 years. She's a devout Catholic and planned to spend the holiday with her son and his family. She participates in all the Easter and pre-Easter religious and secular celebrations. She got her palms on Palm Sunday and bought Cadbury chocolate bunnies for her grandkids. She'd baked hot cross buns in anticipation of a big, traditional Easter Sunday ham dinner. She'd celebrate Good Friday in church and attend Easter Mass on Sunday with her family. The local mall, she informed me, had an Easter fashion show and local children would participate in an Easter parade, sporting their newly created Easter hats.

We listened to the Chaguaramas cruiser's net and other than announcing the weekly Sunday dominos game, there was not much going on to celebrate Easter. Winter and spring are dry here. April showers do not bring May flowers. We're told there's really not much noticeable change in this hot, humid weather until the end of May when the rains come … then it's hot and rainy.

I remember other Easters aboard. One time we were in Ecuador on the hard. I colored and decorated eggs with my Swedish friend, Ulla aboard Lovina. We gathered all the cruisers together on Easter Sunday for a huge potluck dinner and the marina accommodated us by setting up tables and chairs in the parking lot. Another Easter, we were sailing to the Galapagos and I cooked a canned ham en route. Yet another year, we were in a secluded anchorage in New Zealand's South Island by ourselves and ate mussels and fish. In Australia, there were chocolate bilbies, not bunnies. Down under, Easter represents the beginning of the austral autumn/winter season … not as joyous as the advent of spring.

We have always found a way to celebrate Easter. Though we're not religious folks, we do acknowledge the change of seasons and the coming of Spring, even if the change is negligible where we are. We remember the long, cold, hard winters growing up in Massachusetts and Colorado and the absolute joy (and relief) that Spring had finally arrived … even though there was still two feet of snow on the ground. We remember the thrill of waking to find Easter baskets on the kitchen table and later, the fun we had with our kids on Easter morning with scavenger hunts for eggs and treats.

So what's on our agenda for the day? We've only been back a few days and we're still learning our way around. Our fridge is not working (GRRRR!), so no shopping in advance for Easter dinner fixin's. But we've seen lots of old friends here and perhaps it'll be a good day for a cruiser get-together … a day for sharing adventures and tall tales and cold beer and just maybe … chocolate bunnies.

Taking a Leap - How to use an extra day

Every fourth year or so we pick up an extra day in our calendar and luckily 2016 is one of those years. Leap Day, February 29th, is a welcome addition to our schedule. We need some extra time to get our lives in order before we head back home in a couple weeks to Nine of Cups in Trinidad.

So how come we get all this extra time? According to Rich Exner at cleveland.com, it's a bit more complicated than I thought. “Most everyone knows that leap year is a calendar-balancing act, so our calendars don't get out of whack over time. A year, based on the Earth's orbit, lasts 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Put another way, that's 365.2422 days long. A normal calendar year is 365 days. Over four years, that would add up to 1,460 days. But, based on the Earth's orbit, we really have covered nearly 1,461 days. So, Feb. 29 is added in leap years to bring us up to 1,461 calendar days.”

But that's still not exactly precise. “The math-gifted know that four years on the calendar actually last 1,460.9688 days, not 1,461 days. A little difference can add up to a big difference over time. So every 100 years, we don't observe a leap year. There was no leap year in 1800 and no leap year in 1900. What about 2000 ... it was a leap year? Skipping a leap year every 100 years solves much of the problem, but not all of it. So every 400 years, there's another twist. There is a leap day in years ending with 00 if the year is divisible by 400. That made 2000 a leap year and it will be the case again in 2400.

But 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years. This system will keep us on track for 3,333 years.”

Whew … I was worried.

It was Julius Caesar, by the way, that introduced the first leap every four years. There ended up being too many leap years, so the Romans added an extra month every once in awhile to coincide with the change of the seasons. It stayed that way until 1582 when the Gregorian calendar, the one we use today, was introduced. Some calendars have leap months. The Chinese lunisolar calendar has 13 months every three years. The Ethiopian calendar (yes, there is an Ethiopian calendar) has 13 months

Now that we have the extra day, what are we going to do with it? Aha … I've got that all figured out.

I've scheduled our IRS tax prep that morning, as well as several other irritating little chores while David works on projects at the new house. There's still more moving to be done and stuff to be packed and subsequently unpacked.

Traditionally, if a woman asks a man to marry her on leap day, he must oblige. If not, he must pay a penalty. In some countries, a man who refused would provide the rejected woman with gloves to hide the embarrassment of a missing engagement ring on her finger. Since David obliged me ~30 years ago (actually he asked me...just to set the record straight), I thought I'd turn the tables and invite him out to lunch. MY treat (OUR budget). Since I doubt I'll convince anyone in the family to play leap frog, I thought I'd find a copy of Leap Year to watch in the evening. I know it's a chick flick, but while sipping extra dry champagne on our extra day, David will hardly notice.

Opposites Attract ... thank goodness!

David and I have been together 30+ years and we sometimes wonder why. I mean we're happy and our relationship is healthy, but we're very, very different personalities. We've tried to dissect what makes us compatible … what makes “us” a good combination. We suspect it's that old idiom “opposites attract” at work.

David's quiet and shy. Me? Quiet and shy? Not so much. I'm outgoing and usually pretty social. I love to dance and sing. I have to drag David onto the dance floor and he'll sing with me on occasion, but never in public. He's a good listener. I'm a talker. I'm the communicator of this twosome.

We're both hard workers. Neither of us ever complained about working 60-70 hour weeks when we owned our own business. We just work in different ways. He's a procrastinator extraordinaire. I feel compelled to get things done right away … in advance, if possible. I hate leaving things till the last minute (except sewing projects and polishing stainless). I'm a planner ... A plan, B plan, C plan. David plans projects, but usually he likes things to kind of roll out at their own pace. He's a “go with the flow” kind of guy. I prod and suggest (I'd hate to think of this as nagging???) to make calls, get haircuts, go to the dentist, get information in advance. This usually falls on selectively deaf ears. After all this time, the solution here is to make the calls or appointments myself … charge after him with scissors in hand for the haircut or ignore it and it'll take care of itself. He says “toh-may-toes” ... and so do I. See, there's something in common.

I'm compulsive about keeping things neat, tidy and uncluttered. When David is in the middle of a project, this is just about impossible and after three decades, I'm getting used to that fact. He's particular about his tools and where they go, but otherwise things can get out of hand … like his nav station, for instance, the catch-all for all things odd … screws, resistors, papers, notes, Spanish flash cards from five years ago and paper charts from the South Pacific.

I'm punctual. I like being on time. Punctuality is not in David's vocabulary. I'm the one who works to keep us on schedule, whether it be for a meeting, a visit, or a project. I've become a bit more relaxed about this over the years and David has become a bit more punctual. We usually compromise and end up being “almost” on time. On a boat, it's less important for sure. In fact, the word schedule is a dirty word!

If he procrastinates on some things, he is compulsive about others … like boat chores, maintenance and projects that he's decided are “must-do's”. I'm glad that he is because I'm not. I like a tidy, clean boat, but when it comes to boat chores, I'm the one who needs the prodding.

David needs to be doing something all the time. On the boat he's always got a project. If we're visiting my sister or his sister, he's always willing to tackle a project for them. In fact, he usually asks for the “David-do” list in advance. He likes keeping busy and I suspect he sometimes creates projects if there are none currently available … rare on the boat. I can sit and relax, read, play a game or edit photos. David is more physical and needs to keep moving.

He's deliberate, precise and logical. He's an engineer … what would you expect? I'm none of those things. I'm a spur-of-the-moment, sometimes illogical, “good enough for government work” kind of girl. It takes him forever to write a blog post. I can knock out writing assignments in a jiffy.

I've always tended towards being detail-oriented. Some folks might call this anal. David sees the big picture and takes in the whole scope of things. That's a good fit. It's hard to get from A to Z, without taking B through Y into account.

David fears nothing. He loves a new adventure. He's willing to tackle anything. He's a risk-taker whether it be in business or in everyday life. That's not to say he's reckless. He isn't. He's just willing to try things, push the envelope, think outside the box, run with scissors, color outside the lines. It never occurred to me to live on a boat and sail off into the sunset. If “adventure” was left up to me, we'd be living in a house with a picket fence and a paid-up mortgage. Thank goodness, the captain has a more adventuresome vision than I do. I'd rather be sailing around the world on a boat than knitting mittens like Beaver Cleaver's mom.

Actually, now that I think about it, he does fear, or rather dread, one thing: confrontation. Me, I don't mind confrontation at all. It gets my juices flowing. David's favorite saying when someone won't listen to reason: “Okay, I'm done being Mr. Nice Guy. Now, you have to deal with Marcie!” What a reputation to live up to.

I'm a complainer. I'm impatient. I'm emotional. I get all riled up over some petty thing, get angry, blow my gasket and then I'm fine. David is easy-going. He has the patience of Job and is even-keeled. He's not very emotional unless he gets angry. Then he seethes and the anger foments ... sometimes for days. It takes him awhile to work through it.

I learned that our Zodiac signs are the most compatible for each other: Scorpios and Cancers. They're both water signs, too. Hmmm... that's probably it … or not.

We've come to believe that our strength lies in the very fact that we are opposite in so many areas. My weaknesses are David's strengths and my strengths complement his more subdued personality. We belong to a mutual admiration society. Thank goodness we like us … 24x7 on a boat together could be a tenuous situation otherwise.