The Three Weird Sisters Go to Panama

Saturday, December 6, 2025

I write from the Copa airline flying me to Panama. My sister Twig is by my side. Across the aisle is my sister Lexie and her husband Scott. These are three of my favorite people in the world…

…and now we have an immediate digression. Thirty-eight words in and already I’m distracted. That’s what happens when the Uber is coming at 5:15 in the morning so of course I woke up at 1:15 in the morning and lay there thinking about how horrible it was to be awake that early and for so long.

And dang—lookit that. A digression in my digression. I definitely need more sleep.

BACK TO OUR REGULARLY-SCHEDULED DISTRACTION. I was talking to Regina, the astonishingly capable and clever therapist at Body Dynamics (in Falls Church, VA, and if you’re in the area, you’re lucky for they are awesome) (Damn. I did it again. MAKE YOUR POINT, PRUDENCE.)

I was talking to my therapist, Regina, about my innate fear that I’ll suddenly start eating sugar again. She posited the need for some emotional flexibility (isn’t that a honey of a phrase?), meaning if the day came when I snapped like a twig (not my sister Twig) and started wolfing down Little Debbie snack cakes, I needed to know that the dam hadn’t burst; one fall from grace is not a guaranteed ticket to hell. You eat the stupid cookie and go back to not eating sugar.

I tend to have an “all or nothing” philosophy, so the idea of acquiring emotional flexibility was very interesting to me. “How do I get that?” I asked.

There are many tools, said the amazing Regina. Some people think that if you form relationships with every single member of your family—especially the far-flung ones—you have no choice but to develop emotional flexibility.

I frowned over that. Couldn’t you say the same if you have a wide circle of friends? Does it have to be the children of the cousins who moved across the nation decades ago and thus slipped over the horizon into obscurity?

No, said Regina firmly. Not at all. There is a common heritage among family members—more, there are legacies from previous generations that you might not recognize (like, I cut my pears the way my father did…where did HE learn it? Might we not have an ancestor in our past who cut their pears that way and taught their kids and now the children of my cousins are out there in Oregon carving their pear cores into tiny mandolin shapes?)

I was intrigued if less willing to travel to Oregon…but (and I’m about to bring this whole thing back to those first 38 words) I really relish and enjoy my sisters and their husbands. They support me and care for me and care about me. They give me emotional flexibility (or something like that) and the idea that I’m getting to spend nine days with them (after which point we’ll all probably have had more than enough of each other and disappear over the horizon for a while) is GLORIOUS.

It's very, very nice to like my sisters. I feel quite fortunate. Not everyone does like their siblings. So I guess I’m feeling a little smug.

Therefore I shall introduce them to you in somewhat greater detail.

Twig is now the leader in our family; once our parents died and we became the generation in charge, it’s been Twig who pulls us together. She was the one who said “Let’s all take a trip together.” (Actually she said “We need to get Lexie and Scott to go on a trip with us,” since Twig and I went to Peru two years ago and to the South Pacific last year.) And thus, here we are.

Twig is kind and smart and is my pole star when it comes to taking care of my health. She’s inspirational. This is how Twig and I differ (other than the size of our asses, which duh; obvi): Twig loves to work out. She feels pumped and enthusiastic when she’s finished with a workout; all I want to do is sit down immediately and complain.

Twig also believes she’ll feel bad if she indulges in something she shouldn’t eat. This leaves me awe-struck, since I NEVER feel bad for over-eating; I enjoy feeling full. And it shows in my sit-downery. And hers! But there is no judgement in Twig; she forgives me and supports me. Love.

Lexie and I can (and do) carry on entire conversations exclusively in movie quotes. From epic cinematic masterpieces like “My Chauffeur” to the films (like “Night of the Comet”) that shaped a generation, Lexie and I share a strong affinity for really bad 80s movies. (When Lexie reads this, she’ll get to “My Chauffeur” and she will either singsong the words “Hey Hitler can we walk a little slower” or she will make an expansive gesture from her mouth while crooning the word “foam.” For “Night of the Comet,” she’ll probably go with “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis,” or possibly “this isn’t date night in the barrio, Hector.”  And she’s laughing as she reads this.)

Actually, the one place all three sisters come together like a Venn diagram is in the ability to quote “Deadwood.” Including the immortal lamentation of “Oh lordy, they done ten-pointed Bummer Dan.”

Scott’s placement in the family pantheon is based on his ability to handle all three sisters all talking at once without obviously wincing. He has a quick and sly sense of humor and understands tech at the cellular level, which is enough to make him beloved just for that alone. Scott’s other claim to fame is that he actively enjoys heat and humidity, which means he’s looking forward to Panama at the end of the rainy season. This puts him in a plane seat, while Twig’s most excellent husband Harry opted to stay home in the tender embrace of winter’s chill. I’m sorry about that; I traveled with Harry on the South Pacific trip and he’s an absolute sweetheart…but his absence means I get to room with Twig. Solo travelers on the Lindblad/Nat Geo excursions can book a single room, but they NEVER have lovely balconies, and I crave that sliding glass door—so I miss you, Harry, but thanks for loaning me your wife!

I am aware that I’ve spent too much of this post quoting movies. Sorry. As I said—woke up at 1:15. And really, nothing has happened yet. We arrive in Panama this afternoon around 1pm and check into our hotel. Twig wants to go see a Frank Ghery bio-something museum, which seems very cool; I’ll go with her if I’m still awake. Then we meet up with the cruise people tomorrow (conveniently) at our hotel at 2. They put us on a bus for about 90 minutes to the Panamanian city of Colon, which is north of Panama City.

Panama is really oddly shaped. Think of a globe. North America is—aptly—in the north and South America is (guess?) in the south, so you’d think the land bridge of Central America would follow that line, right? Like—to the east is the Caribbean, and to the west is the Pacific.

BUT NO. At Panama, the entire place jukes suddenly to the east, bending so far over that the Caribbean is in the NORTH and the Pacific is due South. It’s very bizarre, and has been sitting there like that all my life. I just never noticed.

MY POINT: We go north by bus to Colon and get on the Nat Geo Quest. Then we putter around the Caribbean briefly before turning around and heading south through the Panama Canal. I’m reading David McCullough’s book about the creation of the canal, which is named something like “The Path Between the Seas” but I can’t quite remember…and the big lesson in the first three-quarters of the book is GOD DAMN DON’T GO THERE. Malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, they even had a few cases of the bubonic plague, I mean DAYUM. I intend to use a LOT of bug spray, I must say…

Right. Itinerary. Through the canal and then a few days in the Pacific. Pearl Islands and the Darien forest. Then back to Panama City where we’ll spend another day and night at the hotel WHICH WOULD BE A MUCH BETTER TIME TO GO TO THE GHERY THING, RIGHT TWIG? I really think a nap would be beneficial…

Okay. I’m brain-dead now. More later.

Whoops—now it’s later and I’m still braindead. HOWEVER I’m braindead in Panama, and that’s pretty cool.

The minute we walked off the plane the air was tropical. We’d flown in over crystalline waters of emerald and sapphire, ringing tiny islands edged in white around dense forests. Huge freighters are lined up in the Panama City harbor, waiting to transit the canal. They look like giants obediently waiting their turn at the barber shop; it’s oddly adorable.

We checked into our hotel, by which time it was 3pm—WAAAY too late for lunch. But we hadn’t eaten since the breakfast at 9-ish, so we had one of Those Travel Moments, where temper tantrums are being stiff-armed and held at bay through dint of “I really don’t mind—whichever you like the best,” which was wearying until Scott and Lexie remembered that they’d spotted a place out their hotel window. We ended up there and our good tempers were restored by a curious assortment of food. Twig ordered some Brazilian dish that came in five dishes and she and Lexie enjoyed that. (Beans cooked with pork, and then some pork cracklings, and rice, and some kind of greens, and some casava…it had a pleasingly exotic name, but alas the name leaked out the large holes in my skull.)

I had a hamburguesa de pollo, which was a huge piece of fried chicken between two hamburger buns. It was highly edible. I drank my bottled water straight from the bottle, avoiding the ice provided in the glass under the theory that now would not be a good time to upset my digestive system…but then I ate the lettuce and tomato on the sandwich, so if I’m wiped out, that’ll be what did it.

Scott ordered empanadas, but there was a mistranslation somewhere and he got a sort of deconstructed empanada—beef and onions, no fried surround. Surprising…but good. We all ended up in far better moods, and now we’ve gone to have naps. We’re meeting at 7 for dinner, because we’re SUPPOSED to have dinner. We’re all very full and dinner in three hours seems contraindicated, but we are here and will follow through damn it!

Photos of my family and of some tropical waters that didn’t photograph at all well but are proof that I was in a plane over a beautiful sea.

Oh yeah. It’s nap time.