We have gotten older, but Couples Tower Isle has not aged with us. In 2008, it was shut down for a year, refurbished and reopened in April 2009.
Alas, such refurbishment is not possible for us. We look at our Then and Now photos and wonder about those youngsters, each only 21 years old, and marvel at their youth.
So on our 45th wedding anniversary we return and try to remember what the place was like those many years ago. The look is much the same, the lush garden on one side and the blue and turquoise sea on the other.
The beach has narrowed and the coconut tree where we had our photo taken by a fellow guest is gone (today a professional photographer can snap pictures for you on his digital camera; we had a plastic Brownie).
The small offshore island with the tower that gives Couples Tower Isle its name is today covered with vegetation. It had been bare (lacking vegetation) 45 years ago. While today there are trees, it can still be deemed “bare;” it is the designated space for au naturel sun bathing.
For that honeymoon week in 1964, we had no contact with our families. Making a phone call cost far more than we were ready to spend. Now, on our anniversary trip, there is a room full of computers and it costs nothing to email our children and grandchildren.
Grandchildren? How can that be? We have just gotten married, it seems!
As we look at the couples at Couples Tower Isle, we ask each other, Did we look that young?
We don’t envy them, though. Instead, we wish that they will always feel what they feel right now in this beautiful place and perhaps, like us, return to Jamaica to celebrate an anniversary.
It’s nice to come back to where we began our lives together and agree with the Louis Armstrong song that an entertainer sang on our anniversary visit: "What a Wonderful Life."
