The Tribune

IF you are not busy, stop a minute, please.

Find a mirror. Forget how your hair looks. Don’t worry about your collar. Pay no attention to the spot on your shirt where the tea spilled or the shoe where the little mischievous one decided your tennis shoe was as good a canvas as any and scribbled with crayon while you were cooking.

Go, go ahead, go to the mirror. Look straight at the image looking back at you, take a deep breath and see the person inside. What are you made of? What did you do today without even thinking about it that made someone else’s day a little better? That meal you cooked while little Joey was drawing on your tennis helped sustain the family. That homework you helped with, that story you read, the papers you got ready for the boss at work or the loan you approved for the first-time homeowner who walked out of the door singing – that is the person in the mirror. A hero.

As Heroes Day dawns on Monday, we struggle to name the larger-than-life figures who are heroes to us all, those whose profiles will go down in history or at least be worthy of a Wikipedia entry. We turn admiration into reverence, watching the incredible superhuman performance of Simone Biles this week doing what seems humanly impossible, becoming a floating, airborne pretzel with pizazz. We mourn the loss of Obie Wilchcombe, a visionary in tourism who never lost his humility or the ability to put the success of others before his own, a man who never wanted to steal the show, but wanted the light to shine on the next up and coming contributor to the greater good. We admire and our admiration turns to search for perfection and while we do that, we overlook the person next door who scrambled to wash and iron her children’s uniforms the night before, make them tuna and grits before school while getting herself ready to go to work at the resort where she will wait tables and hope for polite customers on this day and silently pray that the oldest boy who she knew was being bullied for not joining a gang will be safe at school.

She is our hero. The moms and dads and grandparents, the law enforcement officers who care and wear the uniforms with dignity, lending a hand, not using a hand, the volunteer who gives her time unstintingly never expecting a thing, the poor woman who struggles to make ends meet but reaches into her pocket to give someone even less fortunate a dollar.

Bless those who feed those in need. They are our heroes. Bless and thank those who teach. They are our heroes. Nod and recognize the nurses and medical staff and caregivers who treat those with bed sore or dementia and Alzheimer’s who throw books and shoes and whatever they can get their hands on at them. They are our heroes.

Look in the mirror. There may just be a hero looking back at you.

A shady sidewalk

Ah, for the shade of a tree over a sidewalk – that is, if you are very short indeed. A note of thanks to those who built the sidewalk on East Shirley Street. Thank you, thank you. Just one little thing. We are still walking in the road looking at that sidewalk because of the overhanging branches making it hard to walk without ducking and darting. We know you’ll trim it soon. We have faith even if our backs are bent. We do not want to sound ungrateful, but could we please consider bike paths for Nassau soon?

Turquoise Seas, A Tale of the Old Bahamas

Romance, heartache, peril and history are all rolled into one, a beautifully-written book that tells the tale of the struggle that pre-dated The Bahamas we know today and yet helped to shape our history. The nearly 400-page (in 12pt font) that starts in the early 1700s in the Emerald Isle where Irish Catholics defended their faith against the Church of England at the greatest of costs was written by Exumian Rosemary Minns. Fascinating enough to be the subject of a novel herself, Minns spent her career in financial services in Nassau and lived abroad enjoying the arts and the sophisticated life. For the past several years, she has enjoyed her own Chapter 3, life at a cottage she built on Minns family property at the highest peak of elevation with a panoramic, sweeping view of mainland Exuma. Inside that cottage, there is a little corner alcove, not much larger than a medium size closet, where she writes, an oil painting of a sloop at anchor above the keyboard. And there she has just finished her second novel. You can order Turquoise Seas, published in 2020 by Media Enterprises, on Amazon. It’s a great and fast read.