Islands, I’ve found, are good for dreaming, and Tobago is a doozie. It’s a delightfully surreal montage of lush, Rousseauesque flora, with basketball-sized papaya, avocado and coconuts, the sky above a canopy of evolving pastels, colours of hallucinatory richness. Cunning geckos, squeaking insects, crowing roosters, warbling birds …
Tap tap tap . . .
And oh, a woodpecker, calmly probing the trunk of a faraway palm.
Tap tap tap!
OK, a not so faraway palm.
TAP TAP TAP!
Hey, lighten up, pal. Come to think of it, what’s a woodpecker doing in this dream anyway? Woodpeckers are northern birds.
BAM BAM BAM!
The darnn thing is hanging on my door now.
“Allan!”
A talking woodpecker? How does he know my name?
“It’s time”
The woodpecker is starting to sound like my next-door neighbour, who’s known as McGuyver.
“Ann Marie is going to give birth.”
It’s McGuyver all right, a rude intruder on the dreamscape, mumbling some nonsense about –
“Can you give us a ride to the hospital?”
I’m awake now, at least I think I’m awake, and groping for my pants, but I’m all tangled up in something, a spider’s web it feels like, and boy do I hate spiders. No, it’s the mosquito net over my bed. Thrashing and stumbling, I make it to the door and throw it open, pants half on, no shirt, the shards of my mosquito net trailing behind.
McGuyver is standing on my porch smiling apologetically. A few feet behind him Ann Marie looms in the moony halflight, dainty little Ann Marie, big as a house now, holding her swollen belly.
“Ann Marie,” I manage to say, hastily buttoning up my pants. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, Allan,” she replies calmly. “But it’s time.”
“Well, then,” I say, not so calmly. I’ll have to find my car keys.”
“Yes, Allan, that’s right.”
In situations throughout my life where cool-headed, decisive action is called for, I do two things in quick succession. First I freeze up, then, when that doesn’t work, I panic.
“Allan! ” McGuyver is still standing calmly in the doorway as I start a wild-eyed ransacking of my rented house.
“Not now!” I reply, rummaging through the refrigerator. “The keys are around here somewhere!”
“The keys are in the car,” says McGuyver. “I checked.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” I respond impatiently. “Let’s go! ”
With McGuyver and Ann Marie safely bundled up in the back seat, I fire up the car, back into the chicken coop, then plough headlong through the tomato patch. For some reason I’m having a difficult time finding the driveway.
“Maybe you should turn on the headlights, Allan,” McGuyver suggests.
“Good idea,” l croak, hitting the switch. “Yes, yes. That’s much better.” As we hit the bottom of the driveway and careen onto Black Rock Trace, I glance uneasily in the rear view mirror, wondering if Ann Marie and McGuyver have noticed that I’m a trifle nervous. Ann Marie, God bless her, reaches out and touches my shoulder reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, Allan, you’re going to be just fine,” she says.
“I hope so,” I respond, my voice cracking. “I really hope so.”
Later that night at Scarborough Hospital, Ann Marie gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Allan Weisbecker, a frequent visitor to Tobago from New York, is also doing fine.