San Pedro, Belize

Ms. Kelly has a broad, infectious smile that radiates through a room. This is her first trip to the island of San Pedro, Belize, yet by all accounts, despite being a resident in the women’ dormitory at the hostel for barely a month, she could be the mayor of this town. Young, old, local, and foreign, gather around her almost involuntarily. Despite being twenty-four years older than my 37-year-old, digital nomad son, they are inseparable. They down fireballs – a potent drink made of rum and cinnamon – in succession and are companions in sweaty bars and evenings out in the beach at sunset smoking local products with local people – they are fast friends. Young women confide to her about all manner of things that only women can share. Local men and women have absorbed both into their circles – businessmen, musicians, pot heads, hustlers, and ne’er do wells.

They seemed warmly welcomed into the community that is somewhat opaque to the young and old American, Canadian, and European tourists who sun by the pool and stay risk-free in each others’ company.

She is an attractive woman, not by the standards of magazines that cater to white women or unrealistically shaped women bouncing along a beach with handsome square-jawed grey men in post retirement brochures, but in a manner that draws people to her spirit, specially those who had once tasted the unconventional, and free spirited 60s and 70s. She was not particularly slim or tall, but her infectious laughter, indomitable spirit, and embrace of the unconventional drew incredulous admirers- me amongst them.

San Pedro is a repository for the unconventional American of that era that can be spotted amongst the more ordinary faux-adventurous. Extroverted, rambunctious, open, non judgemental, they serve as harbingers to things to come. These are the middle aged and older Americans escaping the all-inclusive resort tourism to places like San Pedro that have yet to experience the fate of Cancun, Tulum, and Cayman Island.

Miss Kelly has powerful motherly instincts. There are signs of suffering in the corner of her eyes and in her intonations when she speaks of her husband’s untimely and unexpected passing. But her four children and twelve grand children spread across Arizona and Michigan are her source of joy and to some degree serve as restraints to her otherwise passionate and wild nature. Her life spanned the deadheads of yore, folk music, and she once even co-judged The Cannabis Cup for rap musicians with Snoop Dogg – in which, by her telling, the first three entrants typically won because the judges were too stoned for the rest.

She is Americana personified – a unique individual from a unique moment in time that could now only be found in small enclaves like Asheville, North Carolina, Woodstock, New York, Ashland, Oregon, or Madrid, N.M. She is a gift of her time, and we will form an army that will tirelessly work to have her installed as the mayor of San Pedro if she were to run so we may preserve San Pedro’s rustic, unassuming charm.