A Micronesian teen gave us a welcome dance

Fijians don't have a word for stress.

I just watched five strong men bury a gigantic fish and packages of breadfruit bound with coconut bark in a pit of hot stones, then cover it to cook under huge leaves of the elephant ear tree. When they finished, they all cried, "Bula!" which is the Fijian word for hello and about everything else joyous. 

This "lavoro," or feast, is given in my son's and my honor, because this is our last night at a friend's home in Fiji. It's our last night for this year. If it were our last night forever, I might be crying instead of writing.

I've spent a month in Fiji this year and it's dangerous.

In Fiji, anything is an excuse for a party. Someone always has kava -- a ceremonial root beverage that tastes like a foot bath after the feet come out and makes your face numb. Someone always has a guitar. People who don't know each other call each other "my brother." People who have never met can harmonize when they sing. To make our meal more festive, someone else has picked great stalks of red ginger and tied them around the poles in the house and spread the most comfortable matting.

Tonight we feast. Tomorrow, we get into a plane and travel a total of seventeen hours, back across the International Date Line, accreting worry and responsibility like layers of mother-of-pearl as we travel. My son is in a regional theatre company this summer. I have a book proposal due. There are decisions great and small, vexing and simply time-consuming, that wait for us.

I will learn to wear shoes again, and wash my hair every three days and stay up late and check the board for the times of the trains and the planes: Planes in Fiji leave sometime around the time for which we have a reservation and if you cry out, they'll stop and wait.

A year ago, I would never have imagined myself (a prissy person) casually picking the tiny ants out of my tea -- or not. I would never have imagined trading heartfelt greetings on a dusty street, buying fisherman pants from a woman who cheerfully told me that I have a big rear end and passing around a smoothie from person to person without benefit of straw.

I wouldn't like to have brain surgery here on this island.

Everything else is just fine.

I need so much less than I think I need.

 I long to set my brain like a clock to remember that. I can wash the same thing over and over and over until it falls apart and then sew it and wash it three more times -- or not. I want to believe that forever. I know I won't.

I know that my brain will go back on American time in 40 hours and I will confused "want" with "need" and waste things and "need" Starbucks and stop singing when other people enter the room.

And so I will leave part of my self here -- in SavuSavu -- where I have seen ordinary magic.

 One night, my nearly-grown son choked one night on a piece of seafood shell and, long after the situation had gone from annoying to alarming, an acquaintance casually mentioned that his friend, Judy, came from a tribe that specialized in healing choking. Judy was just a few feet away.

While my son tried to get his breath around the pain, Judy stroked his throat once, with three fingers, and walked away. A moment later, she returned with a glass of water -- not even having waited to see if the obstruction had gone away, but knowing it had. Marty sipped the water and stared in awe at the young woman who had somehow loosened what panic and bread balls had failed to do. She smiled and refused the tip.

In Fiji, I'll leave perhaps the best part of me, the part that willingly accepts and believes such things.

And I know that, like my t-shirt on the closet shelf that I haven't really neglected to pack in my haste, it will wait for me until I come back.