Finished

When we spent our winters on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the shops were not fully stocked as we were used to in the U.S.A. That's because everything on the island, and I mean everything, except maybe chickens and some fresh produce, had to be brought in by boat.

All of us expatriates survived anyway. In fact, I think that doing without, changing plans, and making do taught us a lot about flexibility and tolerance, which retired people sometimes lack.

I remember how, one December, there was no brown sugar on the island - not in any of the five or six grocery stores. No one had seen any for a couple of weeks, and it was time to bake Christmas cookies.

When I first noticed the lack of brown sugar and asked a grocer about it, he said, "dat finished," the Montserrat way of saying, "we're out of that." I asked when there might be brown sugar again, and he said, "when de boat come."

The boat brought everything

Word spread quickly through the population of 11,000 when the container ship showed up.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" became my mantra. If I was planning to have some neighbors over for dinner, I learned that planning the dinner menu ahead of time would only lead to frustration because the Idaho potatoes or the raw carrots, both of which were imported, might be temporarily "finished." I learned to buy yams and local green beans - or whatever else was available - instead.

One time, we went to a drugstore to buy aspirin, and it was in such short supply that the pharmacist was parceling them out six to a customer.

As there was not much in the way of new furniture for sale in the shops, and what there was cost twice as much as it would have in the States, many people did their own re-upholstery. We did too, even though we didn't know what we were doing. A lot of the island's furniture was ruined in Hurricane Hugo, so that seemed the only answer.

We heard from a neighbor - we all learned from each other - that foam rubber sheets in various thicknesses sometimes were available, but only in one small shop in Plymouth, the capital. The neighbor said we could use this foam to bulk up a sagging seat or repair a lopsided chair back.

When I visited the shop, I was told the foam supply was "all finished," but the boat was expected in a week or two. That was optimistic. I kept calling or stopping by for several weeks, but the foam, called "sponge" by Montserratians, hadn't arrived, and we were due to return to the United States for the summer. At last, the sponge arrived on the island, but it was "in customs" for two weeks after that.

By the time we flew home to Indiana, I had finished just one chair out of the three I hoped to. I will have to say it wasn't too lumpy.