Back to Pulo

The invitation from my daughter was very tempting. Already in my mind’s eye I could see Puló–the beautiful beach, with white sand fine like powder, the blue waters so clear that one can see the many colored little fishes swimming among the coral formations. I could almost feel the cool sea breeze blowing through the tall coconut palms and hear the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks outside the caves where a multitude of sea birds would be working on their nests.

Puló is the magic island which often appears with the many "moving pictures of my mind". Whenever I would get nostalgic for my childhood, I would talk about Puló, so much so that my husband used to tease me saying he married me for my island but in all our married life he never ever actually saw it, "I do not think that island even exists", he would say "Is there really such an island?" and I would answer indignantly, "Of course there is such an island, it is there, Puló is always there!"

Indeed Puló is always there, but now mostly in the mind for those of us who knew it as "Lolo’s Island" and could remember visiting it with our grandfather. Because now only the much younger, hardier members of the family actually go there. For Puló admittedly is no five-star fashionable beach resort. It is surrounded by seawater and fresh water has to be brought by motorboat from the mainland at so much per drum. There is no electricity and even now at night candles and old-fashioned lanterns fueled with coconut oil are brought out just as in our grandfather’s time.

The more enterprising of my younger cousins have built weekend houses on the family beach. Like all of us they love Puló, but they talk wistfully of having electricity and running water "someday".

When we used to go to Puló with our grandfather, there were none of those mo-dern amenities either but when one is young, one does not feel the lack of mundane comforts. One is too busy diving in and out of the sea, looking for shells on the shore, exploring the caves, drinking the sweet water of fresh young coconuts, eating the white pulpy bulbs that could be found in the more mature nuts, building driftwood fires on the beach to drive away the mosquitoes so one could sleep all night to the constant sound of the waves in the lambent light of the flickering embers and a golden moon.

Our love for Puló was well come by, because our grandfather loved his island. He had originally thought of it as a possible cattle ranch and every time a child of his was born, he would send ten cows and one bull to Puló, there to increase and multiply. Since he had twelve children, in a few years the cattle herd in Puló had increased considerably. It was with a great deal of proprietary pride that as children we would accompany our grandfather "to count your mother’s cows". That was always the highlight of our stay. After that ritualistic chore, we would hike through the winding dirt paths in the forest, trailing after our Lolo back to the old farmhouse of weathered wood.

Our grandmother would be there cooking the evening meal. It would consist mainly of fish brought in by the fishermen that very evening when they returned to the island with their day’s catch, grilled on a kalan over three rough stones and an open fire, eaten with newly pressed coconut oil cooked until flavor filled particles would form, poured hot over fragrant newly harvested rice cooked in a clay pot which seemed to enhance the delicious flavors. Nothing ever could taste as good for me since. Memory is, of course, the magic ingredient. One unforgettable midnight in Puló when I was about ten years old, I was awakened by a clear high tenor singing an old native love song to the plunking of a guitar. Perhaps it came from the fishermen camping out on the island, but I felt the song was sung just for me, a midnight serenade. For all the beautiful music I have been privileged to listen to all these years since, none has been as haunting as that song, sung by an unknown singer breaking the still of an island summer night. I hear it even now.

I saw my grandchildren off on their excursion to Puló. As I cautioned them against swimming too far into the sea, and told them to avoid the jelly fish no matter how harmless they looked, I felt a familiar pang, and I thought to myself, they, too, will be discovering Puló and some day it might be for them the magic place it is to me–a sort of Never-Never-Land where I can no longer go but is somehow always there, a place where one is forever young, forever enchanted by simple things, forever hearing a clear sweet voice of a stranger singing a love song in the moonlight.