Mother-Daughter Fun Day

When your daughter is almost 28 and she hasn't lived at home since she was 18 (other than a few summer months in college) it's hard to know how to relate to each other.  Not only has she been living away from home for 10 years, but for 4 of those years she's been living in the Caribbean doing missionary work.  She is currently doing prison chaplaincy in Guadeloupe and she's not exactly on vacation while I'm here.  So it's been a little tricky to figure out what we can do together that will still allow her to do some work.

Yesterday we decided to go to Deshaies  (pronounced like Day-yay) on the northern side of Basse-Terre.  It took an hour to drive there and we decided to go to the botanical garden even though it was really hot and neither of us felt like walking a lot.  I guess I should say that our expectations for fun were kind of low.

But right inside the entrance is a koi pond with huge fish.  There was a machine that dispensed fish foods so Beth decided to feed the fish since there weren't many visitors at the garden.  Apparently the fish were really hungry.  Or they really liked the food.  Watch what happened.

A little further on in the park we entered a tropical bird exhibit where you could also purchase food for the birds.  After our experience with the fish, we were not excited about the idea of being swarmed by tropical birds. But Beth did try to make a new friend.

We laughed and took photos and looked for the prettiest, most colorful flowers.  Mostly we enjoyed the beauty around us and one another's company.  And the path was shaded with lots of benches for resting.

After an hour, however, Beth was concerned that her sunscreen was wearing off.  So she did the unthinkable - she agreed to wear the extra sun hat I packed  (I always carry a spare).  She does not have my taste in fashion so she was not particularly happy about wearing my colorful sun hat.

Already feeling relaxed and goofy, we drove to downtown Deshaies to see the filming locations for one of my favorite shows - "Death in Paradise" by the BBC (available on Netflix).  They aren't filming at the moment so we didn't see any stars,  but I was still enough of a fan girl that seeing the locations made me giddy.

There was nothing profound or productive about our day.  And yet, it felt special...memorable.  Maybe it just felt like, for one day, we weren't the pastor and prison chaplain but we were just mother and daughter again.  It was a really great day.