The keys to the house belonged only to us. We could use them whenever we wanted, and never had to coordinate our calendars with aunts, uncles, cousins or grandparents. The sign on our front porch read “Still Point,” and the T.S. Eliot poem from which the name took inspiration hung framed next to our front door. For five years, this colonial white cottage with yellow shutters was our “still point in the turning world.” It was our oasis from frantic city life. It was our first family vacation home.

Four miles long and three miles wide, the island boasted a shimmering beach of pink coral specks in its silky sand. A walk on the beach often felt like a foot massage. The salt water, which we mostly swam in at Christmas and Easter, was turquoise but often clear enough to see your own reflection. Unique not only for its color, the beach was also almost always empty. At times, the only thing cluttering it was seaweed. You could walk for twenty minutes without running into anyone. It’s the only public beach I’ve known that felt private.

Only a dozen cars roamed the island, usually driven by local workmen, and they were often abandoned next to leafy palm trees for the afternoon with their windows rolled down and the keys dangling from the ignition. Getting around on the island mostly happened on foot. But a fleet of golf carts offered alternative transportation to the wearier or the wealthier.

We inherited one of the island’s two Harley Davidson golf carts with the purchase of our house. It gave us more headaches than lifts to the beach with its exotic auto parts available only from remote Nassau. One year, after countless breakdowns, the island mechanic announced it was time to put our Harley to sleep. We kicked its tires one last time, and told the mechanic he could keep the dinosaur-lemon for spare parts. A week later, we saw him driving it around town, the vehicle’s recent, near-death symptoms left in the dust of its regenerated skidmarks.

There was almost always a breeze, a zephyr that tickled a sweaty brow, rustling the leaves of palm and fig trees like faint symbols in an orchestra. Roosters crowed early in the morning, furiously determined to wake up the indolent or the hung-over. Hibiscus flowers bloomed like apples in an orchard and ended up either as centerpieces of seashells at dinner tables or tucked behind wisps of hair at Sunday church. The pastel colors of front doors, shutters, and road signs lended to an innocence of this oasis of candy-like dollhouses. Only a few hotels and bars on the island had a television, and the closest movie theater was a six-hour boat ride away. You could practically hear the sea’s waves lapping against the dial tone when you made that rare call back to the mainland.

Life at the seaside in the Bahamas felt deliciously sinful. Long, languid swims in soupy water always left fingertips looking like prunes. Flip-flops were worn at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it was never unusual to find sand in between your toes before going to bed. Rain was rare, fog was non-existent, and a bad weather day might result from a passing cloud. An athletic day might be waterskiing for a couple of hours, or a motorboat picnic to a deserted island.

When we packed our suitcases for the Bahamas, we usually had one exclusively full of books. Every night, we had dinner together just the four of us in the back garden while fireflies danced in the dark. City life back home never allowed for many family dinners when my brother and I came home from college. Someone was always running out the door.

In the Bahamas, the pace was escargot-slow. Focus was on family. We lead our independent lives during the day. But, at night, we ate together and played cards or backgammon afterwards. There were no Ipods or text messages yet. We talked, and read, and talked about what we read. We had family fueds, too, and endured some growing pains. But everything always seemed to wash over with warm saltwater and a thirst-quenching Goombay smash.

My brother and I relied on these vacations to see each other since we were both away at separate colleges. We played pool over Bahamain beer that we drank under-aged in a lawless land while making new friends and importing old ones. He and I grew closer as we snuck cigarettes together or devoured conch fritters in front of sunsets.

It wasn’t easy when our family love affair with the island came to an end. Our reason for leaving the island and eventually selling the house may sound cowardly in the end. In short, we were robbed. My parents woke up twice to the sound of burglars crawling across the straw carpet underneath their bed and hiding in their walk-in closet. With the same lightening speed that the burglars wiggled their way out our back door, we wiped away our angry tears and ran away from the island. Nothing of value was ever stolen and, fortunately, no one was ever hurt. But we didn’t like the idea that we were being watched and, then, betrayed by the friendly faces of the island we had grown to love and trust.

What surfaced in these petty thefts was not a major crime problem on the island. Instead, what came to light were the racial tensions between the native blacks and the vacationing whites. The problems had always been there but when daily life looks like paradise it’s easy to be blinded.

The poverty was hard to overlook but everyone did anyway. Only steps from a hotel that sold a twelve-dollar Pina Colada stood crumbling shacks with outhouses. Barefoot children in ripped clothes leaped over rusty auto parts and roaming roosters in front yards. Arriving at the island’s dock you were always bombarded by herds of young children with bloodshot eyes eager to carry your luggage in exchange for small tips.

Many visiting the island had left their cities to escape the hardships that can make urban life depressing. But all of the same hardships were on this island — they were just hidden in the warm weather, reggae music, luscious landscape, and smiling faces of its locals.

What also surfaced were the tensions the house created in my parents’ relationship. My mother loved the house more than my father and had pushed him in their decision to buy it. It was hard to manage from so far away, and island-living often left us at the mercy of the natives who, like the mechanic, could trick us into fixing something as quickly as they could in leaving it unresolved.

But I still love that island, and, as I start my own family, I feel greedy for it. I want it back in our lives — and the lifestyle that it forced upon us.