First Memory

 I lived in Panama as an Air Force brat.  My dad flunked out of pilot training; he had bouts of claustrophobia and that made him too easy to torture, so my family left Reno, Nevada for a stint in Panama, the Canal Zone.  My dad will tell you it was the best job he ever had: running the Officer’s Club. 

I was a toddler, the youngest in our family.  I remember ... being afraid of the bats that lived across the street in the mango trees, the trees that lined the runway on the Air Force base where we lived in family housing.  Making luminaries, pouring sand in small paper bags with candles, to line our street for a special occasion.  Kittens that were in a box under the stairs.  Playing “duck, duck, goose” with my sisters in the backyard.  The sloth crawling into the neighbor’s garage.  The neighbor’s golden retriever that we always petted.  My mom’s friends coming over in the hot afternoons for cold beverages.  Following my mom through crowded retail stores with strange people always wanting to pet my blond hair. (“Hay que linda!”was confusing because I thought they knew my name.). A huge pool. The kitchen at the Officer’s Club where my dad worked and the barels of huge lobster that looked like monsters in depth of a dark sea.  

My favorite memory was of the iguanas, hiding in the hibiscus plants, eating the red flowers.  (One day, my mom had enough of them eating her flowers so chased them away with a broom, screaming like a crazy woman.) 

We only lived in Panama for two years. My dad left the Air Force and we moved to Miami, then Ft Lauderdale to be close to my grandparents. At my grandparents’ house, they had lizards, which I thought were baby iguanas.  I can  see my grandmother, who we always called Nana, laughing at my error.