Mother's Day in the Gambier is called Fete des Meres, and in Rikitea it fills a hall. A mix of sailors and locals turned out for it, the cruisers a little unsure of the etiquette and the islanders entirely sure of it. I came with a camera and the vague plan of staying out of the way, which lasted about as long as it took the first plate of food to arrive.

What struck me was the attention. Not the balloons or the flowers, though there were plenty of both, but the way the whole room kept its focus on the mothers, of every age, all evening. A matriarch would come in on a grandson's arm and the room would quietly rearrange itself around her. The oldest women were not seated politely off to the side. They were the center of the thing, they knew it, and they danced.

There was a runway of sorts, lined with cut flowers, and a steady procession down it: women in Tahitian prints and wide hats, dancers in green and gold who turned the air into something you could almost see, the younger ones keeping time at the edges. Somewhere in the middle of it the food kept coming, Ma'a Tahiti by the tableful, and nobody was in a hurry to be anywhere else.

I have watched a lot of Mother's Days from the polite distance of a Canadian living room, a brunch and a phone call and a card. This was a different order of thing, a whole community giving a full evening of its attention to the women who held it together. I did not understand most of the words. I understood the rest of it fine.