18th February, 2024

Free Bird

The sun was low in the sky, cueing the day’s end. It was time to go back to the dock. We were rocking and rolling with everyone’s favorite musician, Salvador, on our friends, John and Monique’s catamaran, Baja Fog. This was a fundraiser for the Barra schools. But it was the guests who got the real treat. Three hours of great music while at anchor in a small cove near the town of Melaque. We drank a little, ate a little, and swam a little. We visited with friends and met new friends. This is our third year of participating in this particular music cruise and it doesn’t get much better than this; sitting on Baja Fog as it sways gently, feeling the warm sun caressing my skin and a slight breeze running through my hair, and listening to the talented Salvador as his voice and guitar soar over the water.

We weighed anchor and motored back to the dock. I sat on the cabin top watching the sun set on the horizon. The slight breeze was now wind and rushed past my body with force. I was in my happy place and couldn’t help but smile, savoring the moment. Salvador finished one song and began another. “Free Bird” was his choice.  As music often does, the song “Free Bird” took me to another time and place. Cut to:

1975. South Miami, Florida. We lived in a trailer park. It was a nice one as trailer parks go. Our home was a double-wide trailer on a man-made lake. It had three bedrooms and two baths with green shag carpet. (Stylish for the day.) It was the era of Johnny Carson, and every night – if I wasn’t watching with them – I could hear my father and brother, Jack’s, laughter as it reverberated through the thin walls. Our back porch led to a small yard that sloped down to the lake. It was a new development, so the trees were young. I do remember we had a gardenia bush that put out a fragrance so strong, it reminded me of a woman who wore too much perfume.

It was my seventeenth birthday. I was on a raft in the middle of the lake on a beautiful March day. My boyfriend and I had an argument and he put Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” on the stereo and turned it up loud. I remember listening to it and acknowledging his not-so-subtle message. I have always been headstrong. So much so, that my mother once told my friend, Debbie, and me that we needed our “wings clipped.”

My parents struggled to make ends meet. Then we were moderately wealthy. Then we weren’t. I think of my father as a dreamer, always looking for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Those dreams took us to move ten times before I was thirteen. I inherited his dreams and his wanderlust. I wanted to live a full and adventurous life.

And here I am. All roads have led to here. Wow.

(The video below was taken on our motor back to the dock by Monique Boucher. It is not of “Free Bird” but is one of the many Santana songs Salvador sings.)

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