Doubles are a street food you can get in Trinidad and Tobago. It’s a flat bread wrap full of channa, which is potato and chick peas in curry sauce. The first time I had it was the only year we were in T and T for Carnival.

We left to go back to the States Carnival Monday or Tuesday, and had a few hours in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to walk the streets before our flight. That year, we had three kids, and the youngest was a baby. Soca music was pounding. There were crowds. I was concerned about the kids losing their hearing with the music blasting from every direction.

The day was a little overwhelming, but I had two favorite moments: with all the floats covered in speakers, one float came past with no speakers at all, just a group of pan players. Its lovely rhythm and subtlety of sound was a welcome change from the ear splitting music that was the norm. I loved the sound, and I loved that there was a group who dared to be different.

My other favorite moment was my first taste of doubles. The messy and inexpensive little meal was so good, I went back for more.

We kept going to Tobago nearly every year and I never thought to have it again.

Fast forward. Now we have seven kids, and the baby I wore in a beach wrap tied to my chest that day during Carnival is ten. This year during our trip, on the way to the beach one day with family, my nephew wanted to stop for doubles. We pulled over in the parking lot with the doubles van, gave him our orders, and he walked over to pick up the food. He came back, hands full of bulging, greasy, paper bags. He eyed the bags, then distributed them. I started eating mine, and it wasn’t exactly what I remembered. It looked the same, yellow sauce dripping down my hand and soft, steaming flat bread. But my mouth was ON FIRE.

My lips were swelling. My eyes were streaming and I was gasping. I figured they must have gone overboard on my order of “slight pepper” and just kept eating, face flushed and eyes watering. When I was finished eating, my lips were so red it looked like I was wearing lipstick.

We eventually discovered that my nephew had ordered extra pepper. When the busy lady from the doubles van had given him the orders, she’d mixed up which one was his and so he had passed on her mistake and had given me the extra pepper.

While I wasn’t eager to try extra pepper again, all of us had fallen back in love with doubles. We realized as our stay went on that the doubles van parked in one place in the morning and in another in the afternoon. If you were trying to find them in the in between time or too late in the day, they wouldn’t be there at all.

Many days we found ourselves chasing the doubles van. Our success rate between both locations was probably around 50%.

When we got back home, we discovered that not far from our house was a new little place that had Trini food, including doubles. We committed to giving it a try, but a couple of months passed before an opportunity presented itself. On a whim, the Chaplain and I decided to stop by on our way home from errands recently.

We cautioned each other as we climbed out of the car and started walking toward the place that it might not be open. I became sure it was closed as we got closer, even though the sign said they were open.

When we walked up to the storefront, we looked sadly in through the dark windows, past the mistakenly left “open” sign, then turned to go back to our car. When we went online, we found out that the day we’d gone was one of two days each week when the local place is closed. We agreed to try another day. And we laughed that we’d come full circle and were chasing doubles here in the U.S.

The photo was taken right after I finished eating the doubles with extra pepper. The Chaplain’s shirt is big upping my birthplace while we visited his.