The Truth About The Last Page of Paradise

Or... Making space for magic

Midlife is the plot twist. Essays & guides for women reclaiming their identity, creativity, and agency. The structure of fiction is the structure of transformation, and we write through it together, one prompt at a time. Subs get FREE Heroine’s Guide.

I nearly cried when I saw the listing.

It's not like it was a surprise. We signed the papers with the real estate agent last week; he'd told us it would be online. But it was still a shock to see our living room, my ocean view bath, and the red patio umbrella, all in glorious technicolor with a price sticker on the front page.

I have to keep telling myself... Letting go isn't giving up. It's making space.

I remember the day we first saw Water's Edge. We had one week in The Bahamas to find ourselves a new home. One week. No backup plan. We were moving to a tropical island on just a whiff of a job for Mark, a loose idea of “slowing down,” and a kind of giddy optimism that now makes me want to pat 2007 me on the head and say, “You’re adorable. Also possibly unhinged.”

Our real estate agent hated us—not just disliked. He actively resented the fact that we wanted to actually see houses before buying one. The nerve. He complained constantly that he'd never had to show so many houses as he continued to drag us through cockroach-ridden, falling-down homes priced out of our reach, even if we would consider taking them on (can you say, "money pit" because for most of these homes, I could see our future).

As we crept toward our final day on the island, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I scoured the (deeply disorganized) online listings myself and came upon Water's Edge.

"We want to see this one," I told the agent.

He huffed like a sulky toddler, denied a packet of M&M's in the checkout aisle. "Okay. I guess."

The owner of Water’s Edge was no fool. He opened the front door, walked straight through the house, and took us directly to the patio.

I turned to Mark.

His eyes were screaming.... "Yes, I know. It's amazing. We must have it. Tamper down your enthusiasm so we can negotiate."

We stepped onto the salty patio, and the ocean stretched before us like a sigh, the expansive blue-green view anchored by a single palm tree swaying gently in the eastern breeze.

We bought it the next day, negotiating through our lazy agent (no one ever worked less for their 6% commission), while sipping celebratory cocktails in the hotel pool.

We lived there for five years.

And seeing the listing makes the memories cascade like those waves against the sea wall.

There's Emily crashing in through the side door, patting the cats on the head as she struggles to disengage herself from her backpack. She barely makes it up the spiral staircase to her room before she’s out of her uniform and into her bathing suit. She grabs her snorkel and flippers and is out the back gate and into the ocean before Mark has even put down his briefcase. I'd sit on the dock and watch her, and she'd bring me her finds (baby conch, shells, dead coral), and descriptions of her view - barracudas, stingray, and octopus, the occasional nurse shark.

There are a group of our good friends on their last night of vacation, taking a dip in the ocean under the midnight full moon.

There's me, building my business from a desk in the sunroom. The window is open so I can hear the waves tapping against the sea wall and the palm leaves whispering their secrets just beyond my hearing. In my peripheral vision, there's the distracting view of a distant Rose Island.

There's Mark paddling the dinghy through the glass-like warm water (Emily jumping in and out for a snorkel along the way), three miles down the coastline to our friend's house. We all jump out and run up their beach to escape the rain and lightning of the sudden storm that nearly swept us away into Nassau Harbour.

Eventually, we moved away and turned it into a vacation rental, but we still spend two months there every year. Our annual reset.

My parents haven’t had their annual visit in years (they’re not a fan of the outside heat anymore, and what’s The Bahamas if you can’t go outside?). Our daughter prefers the energy of the Brooklyn streets. It's a looong trip for our friends in the UK and Europe. The Bahamas expat community is a transient bunch, so most of our friends on the island have drifted away.

It hurts putting it on the market, but it's time. Houses on the water are a maintenance nightmare (it's not a money pit, but without the rentals, it would quickly go that way). Mark manages the house himself. All the rental listings, the customers, the problems, the maintenance, the on-the-ground team. It's... a lot.

So we’re letting it go.

And I'm grieving this house. We will never again have anything like it. It's a little bit of Heaven in the wrong place. But, if not The Bahamas, then where? You won't easily find views that expansive, water that warm or blue, or sun that constant and warming elsewhere.

But here’s what I’ve learned (several times now): You can’t start your next story if you won't turn that last page. I think I've been reading the last page of our Bahamas chapter over and over for a few years now.

Water’s Edge gave us a plotline we’ll never forget.

But now it’s time for the next scene.

We’re letting it go to make space. For the next wild idea, the next view, the next version of us.

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