Robin Enright: Finding Home

Time to catch that train

In the hours before dawn on this lovely spring day, but before I could have known it would be lovely with the cool Colorado wind rattling my blinds and my naked shoulders loving the chill as the rest of my body lay warm beneath my down comforter, I awoke from a dream. The kind of dream we know we have had before, familiar and true, though we can not remember the details.

I was perched in a stairway high above the ground in a train station trying to figure out how to get to the ground below because the stairs ended hundreds of feet above the floor. I could see people below calmly going about their business, and there was talk of an elevator near me, but the elevator didn’t go to the ground either. I was panicking, and hoping my friend Seth had bought me a ticket. We were taking the only train available to somewhere, somewhere we had to be and the train was to leave in ten minutes.

I was terrified and stuck.

There is more to the dream, in all its vibrant color and geometric structure, the stairs more like a skyscraper on it’s side than an actual flight of stairs, and the blurriness of what was below versus the sharp imagery of where I was, but when I woke that is not what really struck me, hard, between the eyes.

What struck me was that I believed the universe was sending me a message in the quiet of my brain when I was too tired to argue, too tired to cry, too tired to do anything but receive the message; as if the clouds had rearranged themselves in the sky with words meant only for me.

Life journey’s are our most fascinating and epic travel experiences, and when we know and understand where we have been, we receive the potential to move forward with a lifted heart and powerful perspective.

The last ten years or so of my life have brought me an inner awareness and knowledge of my strengths, and alas weaknesses, and perhaps it’s because I am a writer, or perhaps it’s because I am driven to find the meaning in this gift we have been given, and perhaps it’s just because I’ve spent a lot of time over the years on a somewhat scratchy couch, end table placed just so with an ample supply of tissues, in a lamplit room, sitting across from the compassionate face of two extraordinary therapists (East coast, West coast).

Looking up, or back, to the east and the west while exploring what is beneath our feet provides an incredible awareness of journey and marker in space when we are on a hike anywhere. Life, too, is like that.

My dream was that proverbial slap in the face, that wake up call, that push over the edge, encouraging me to jump off those stairs and trust I will not die. I’ve traveled so far to come to this place, and the journey is far from over.

For sure this is metaphor.

But when I woke today, with the brisk air making me thankful for my warm robe, and Tigger shivering as he waited for his breakfast; there grew, in the brightness of dawn, a clarity, an awareness, a gentleness in my heart, a strength in my soul and a conviction of purpose I have not felt for some time. Cobwebs disappearing, fog receding, my feet beginning to stand firmly on solid ground once again.

I was being gently and lovingly pushed by forces I could not see. I decided to leap off the stairwell. I decided to trust in what I cannot know. I decided to become unstuck from that proverbial ridge and before I could change my mind, I leapt.

I decided to catch that train.

Shoes can make the woman

Earrings, yes; jeans, yes; cowboy boots, yes; hiking and running shoes, yes. Heels? No. No, I cannot remember the last time I bought myself a pair of heels. Well, actually, yes I can. I bought a pair of spectacular sandals, gray, to match a beautiful gray dress from Anthropologie (of course) to wear to my younger daughter’s graduation in 2010. The heels are super high, but have a slight platform so walking and standing is not impossible, though at the end of the day it is quite delightful to take them off and walk to the car barefoot.

Dresses just keep arriving in my closet this spring, multiplying like rabbits, waiting only for the consistent warmth of summer. Dresses that delight me when I’m not wearing my typical uniform of skinny jeans, or am hiking, cycling or rushing to yoga, and clamor to be worn.

In any case, it suddenly occurred to me that if I am going to the trouble of buying and wearing dresses, I also have to go to the trouble of finding the right footwear. Flip flops just won’t do, and cowboy boots are too hot in summer. So I ended up with three pairs of heels. This girl is not a regular Nordstrom shoe shopper, but after my experience at the ‘mother store’ in Park Meadows, Colorado, I am sold. I felt like Cinderella. Evan started with the shoes I had chosen and then brought pair after pair, patent leather, Italian flats with leather like butter, peek-a-boo toes, shiny red pumps and sandals surrounded my chair.

I don’t know how many pairs I eventually tried on, but I succumbed to three. A pink pair of pumps that I loved so much I bought them in nude too. Evan told me that those are the hot colors this spring so I felt doubly delicious. I bought a lower, more casual heel as well in nude with a bright splash of orange.

I wanted to wear the pink heels with a blue dress to a meeting I had in Texas, so I put them on when I got home, paired with my skinny jeans, and cleaned the house, wrote a killer essay, cooked dinner and eventually did the dishes before bed, with loud music making the task of clean up effortless. Why is it that we dance so much better in heels?

The only time I took them off before bed was when I somehow spilled my dinner, an entire box of rice, all over the kitchen floor. It just didn’t seem wise to traipse across a slippery floor in high heels.

And, when I tried those lovely pink heels on with my Holly Golightly dress, even I had to admit, ‘wow.’ It’s not often that I see myself in this light. It’s a rare thing to recognize that perhaps I clean up nicely. The heels elongated my leg, emphasized my calf muscles, a muscle I am proud to have developed from years of active living. My confidence spiked.

At the airport the next day, it seemed fairy dust had been sprinkled on the traveling universe. Denver International Airport is among the friendliest, but on this day, in the mile high city…well it seemed particularly high. Chatty TSA agents, barista’s, men in suits and women in heels, there was a glow on Terminal A. Men glanced, danced their eyes up and down, and smiled. Women too. All of us were doing the ‘damn I’m looking good today,’ dance. How fun!

I remembered that one cannot walk quickly in heels and that was a challenge for me, a woman who tends to walk faster than she should through life. I liked that I had to slow down. I learned that moving walkways were a tiny bit treacherous in heels and the slippery floor made my toes work hard. I wondered if I had made the best choice for my meeting which would involve store tours and visits and imagined I would be nursing blisters at the end of the day. I decided I would willingly suffer through any discomfort because I felt like a rock star and the confidence those heels gave me was powerful.

I had forgotten how much fun it was to feel feminine and bad ass at the same time. I won’t forget again.

Airports

I’ve been spending a great deal of time in airports as of late. Business and personal travel has sent me scrambling all over the U.S., and Denver International Airport has seen more action from me in my less than two years living in Colorado than a lifetime of travel from Logan. Mexico, New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Oregon, Salt Lake City, Dallas; the list goes on and on.

I am always looking for a story and during a recent trip, it occurred to me while I was people watching, that airports house the entire assortment of emotions and experiences inside those impersonal concrete walls. I’ve witnessed children tantruming, seen young lovers holding on for all their might, and overheard conversations I should not have been privy to. I have personally contributed every emotion from the kind of joy that comes from seeing someone you love arrive safely to utter heartbreak when you depart a place or person you love desperately and cannot be certain you’ll ever see again.

My first trip as a single woman was to flee town, get away from the impending marriage of my now ex-husband, and to celebrate the beginning of recovery from a heart so badly broken, I would say it was shattered into pieces that were completely unrecognizable as a living organ. I’m not exaggerating. Sometimes we just need to fall apart in order to put ourselves back together again.

I’ll never forget the hope I felt at the beginning of that trip when entering Logan, and the giddiness of departure before the average person had even begun to stir or reach for a snooze button. I’ll never forget it because while putting my belt back on after the utter oddness of undressing in front of strangers, I was standing next to a handsome man and we joked about this strange intimacy, and it was the first time I had felt attracted to a man in what seemed like forever. That little exchange in the midst of rectangular white containers of personal property and sleepily sock-clad men and women making their way through security was also a glimmer of hope. My first glimmer of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, life might not be over for me yet.

Once upon a time, I was afraid to be alone, never mind travel alone, but now the sound of my cowboy boots or heels clicking through a terminal, confident and unworried about navigating the unknown, serves as a marker in time and reminds me of how far I’ve come in this magnificent life. I think I even walk differently in airports, my back erect, my hips swaying, my walk filled with purpose. The successful navigation of the unfamiliar never ceases to boost this confidence.

I’ve cried in airports too. Yup, right in front of people. And while many might lament the unkindness of people in this universe, I can tell you that absolute strangers have shown me a level of tenderness that always restores my faith in our planet. Our world is a place of love and compassion if we just chose to see it.

Recently I said good-bye to someone I love, and I was doing my best to keep it together, trying to save the coming implosion of grief for the privacy of a restroom stall, when standing in line to check my bag, and the attendant simply asked, ‘did you enjoy your stay in our state?’ and I found myself in horror bursting into sobs, and saying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I just don’t want to leave,” when she said, “it’s okay honey. Maybe you’ll be back sooner than you think.”

I usually travel with delight and wonder in my heart and a childlike expectation of who knows what will happen this time, and even when I wake at 4 a.m. I leave with a smile on my face and always, always, hope in my heart.

I suspect if airport walls could talk, they would tell the entirety of human experience: the hello’s, the good-bye’s, the love, the loss, the excitement of possibility, the yearning for a hello, the desire to be in a lover’s arms, the fear, the hope, the exhilaration of knowing that something, anything is about to happen.

Something is about to change our lives, and we are flying to greet it head on.

Magical moon stories

Friday night I stepped outside to the most brilliant moon I have seen in months. The last time I remember noticing and feeling such an extraordinary moon was at a moment of magical personal transformation when I was headed home from a trip to Havasu Canyon in the fall of 2006. I had camped in the canyon on a trip with REI Adventures, and rediscovered laughter. I’m not joking: I had forgotten how to laugh.

We were landing in Boston at that musky moment just before dusk surrenders to the dark, on a beautiful October night, and the moon was enormous, looking like it was floating on top of the water; a moon from childhood, the kind I wanted to hold in my hands, if my hands were only big enough, the kind of moon that had stories to tell if only I could speak the same language. I had a window seat and when I saw the moon, I exclaimed to the quiet and lazy plane full of travelers, “My God! Look at that moon!”

The words exited my mouth unbidden because this moon, a Harvest Moon, so named because the brightness of the moon comes at the peak of harvest–was simply extraordinary and made me feel all was possible, everything I could possibly want was already in the palms of my hands, my heart already held all it needed to move to the next place, whatever that place might be. I wanted to share this incredible sight with everyone. Immediately. My trip had been a last minute decision, and was because of a need to get away and regroup, and let go of sadness, and, no lie, the journey had put me back together again.

And Friday, I exclaimed out loud as well. I was outside with Tigger right next to me, his last let out before bed and I could not help myself, “Oh. My. Oh. My.” I sighed over and over again and a smile as bright as this extraordinary moon could not be contained. And the magic happened again. I had one small moment where I knew everything it was possible to know. I had a moment where I thought my heart would explode in love for, well….for simply everything! I had everything! Why had I not see this before?

I thought of those I love and blew them all kisses….did you feel them? I thought of someone very special and whispered, good night, and wondered if perhaps he felt it, like a warm caress of summer air brushing across his cheek. The magic felt like lightening in my blood, there was a sensation of time travel of being here, there and everywhere, of knowing that life has no beginning and no ending, it continues on and on, because really how can it not? We just evolve into new places and things. I felt the power of the universe blow through my heart and I suddenly knew that all was well. All had been well for a long time, but I had neglected to attend to and recognize this beauty, instead allowing the silliness of uncertainty in tomorrow to occupy my mind and how ridiculous is that?

The Pink Moon smiled. I did not imagine this.

*I later learned that next month’s full moon will appear even bigger and brighter….

Water girl?

I may or may not have taken five baths in less than three days, though if you are technical and count my visit to the hot tub, I suppose that would make it six baths during my recent 2 1/2 day journey into the mountains.

Water has become my go-to source for comfort. First it was Tulum, Mexico in February, then a quick trip to San Francisco where my ferry ride to Sausalito, hair blowing crazy on the deck of a boat, was the high point of my weekend. I’ve visited friends with hot tubs and realized that when those jets turn our bodies to silly putty, they also reorganize the messiness in our brain and create quiet and calm.

When I meditate these days, I close my eyes and I am on the beach in Tulum listening to the waves crash. It is no exaggeration to say that when I do so, any anxiety present in my body begins to ebb, like the receding shore. How cool is that? I’m not even there, and I continue to receive the benefits.

This past weekend I was in Aspen with friends and while I got the bedroom with the kiddie twin beds, I had the good fortune to get the bathroom with the jacuzzi. I took two baths a day. One to get cleaned up, and another right before bed. I would lie in the tub in the evening with my eyes closed, my hair wrapped in a clip, and open my heart to the loving awareness of water’s role in my potential rebirth with the water caressing every pore, and worries being gently soothed away. When I would reluctantly step from the tub and head to bed, it was like I had just been inside nature’s loving embrace and was new once more.

I don’t really know how or why this works. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve always been a mountain girl, and I remain moved to awe by snow-capped peaks and can find myself in tears when I see a sunset in Rocky Mountain National Park. Water has always been an after thought.

Not any longer.

When I was in Tulum I found myself body surfing alongside a young mother and her adorable daughter and the giggles of her child had me giggling along as we both played in the waves. The day I was leaving, I ran into this mother and she did a double take at me fully dressed for the first time in days and said, “I didn’t recognize you out of the water,” and I thought to myself, how interesting because many of my friends would not recognize me IN the water.

Years ago on a winter hike to Mt. Adams with friends from REI, a girlfriend remarked, “You look like you belong on top of a mountain,” and I knew what she meant. I have always known exactly who I am when hiking in the woods, and that has never ceased to fascinate me. The moment my feet connect with the earth, I am whole. I don’t really know how this happens either.

What I do know is that I intend to take better advantage of all nature’s elements and let them soothe and inspire me. I can not take the power of either for granted.

For I have learned, I am not one or the other. I am not a mountain girl or a water girl. I am a woman who has learned to harness the power of both.

Evening at Anthropologie

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of my favorite all time movies; Audrey Hepburn is both breathtaking and timeless. Who among us cannot relate to Holly Golightly? We’ve all been hurt, we’ve all had pain, and we all delude ourselves at one time or another, just like Holly Golightly, that we can control such a thing by playing it safe.

I’ve never gone to Tiffany’s for comfort; and I’ve never been a woman who’s head has been turned by jewelry. Perhaps it’s because most of the lovely gems and baubles are so far out of my financial reach, perhaps it’s because my romantic relationships have never been the type that focus on providing me with adornment, perhaps it’s because of the loss of blue-box and white-ribbon allure after spending far too much time in Tiffany’s buying Bat Mitzvah gifts years ago. My bedroom treasure chest today does include a few extraordinary classic pieces of jewelry, that are not from Tiffany’s, but that I purchased for myself years ago and that have yet to bore me. I adore the pearls my Grandmother gave me when I was in my 30’s, but somehow they don’t suit me the way they did her. Not yet. Not today.

Anthropologie is my breakfast at Tiffany’s, though my comfort-seeking visits tend to be in the evening. When my days are difficult for whatever reason, I get lost in Anthropologie and the world disappears for a moment. I get lost in their creative and beautiful displays, I walk the store trying to find something to criticize or improve upon, I become enraptured in the experience of exploration. And I always, always, always feel better after.

I follow the same pattern, first stopping right inside the door and inhaling the lovely Anthropologie fragrance, then I move to the left and slowly, gently let my fingertips caress the colorful tops, see if the style is one I want to adopt, and admire the possibility in the outfits they have merchandised together whether it’s ‘me’ or not. My style is more classic, and I don’t look good in too much fabric, but every now and then, I find a dress, a skirt, a sweater, a something so very different, but so very much me that my excitement; the excitement we all feel when possibility rises in front of us; grows, and my spirits lift. I continue to move to the back of the store, thinking maybe I’ll buy those beautiful turquoise glasses, and how cute would that pillow be on my bed, and I’ll even pause at the buttery fabric sleep wear, but I don’t sleep clothed, so that merchandise does not get too much of my attention beyond the tactile sigh.

I’m looking for my diamond, the one extraordinarily Anthropologie unique classic style that when I wear it will not only make me feel far prettier than I’ve ever been or ever will be, but that will make heads turn and women ask, “Where did you get that beautiful dress?”

I have fallen in love with dresses of late, thinking Holly Golightly femininity, and unless I’m hiking, riding or taking a yoga class, have decided my signature style when not in my skinny jeans with boots, will henceforth be a dress. I want to spend as much time in dresses as I can.

And I found one last night. You might have walked right by it, or if shopping with me, might have said, “Really?” But it was the first piece that I picked up. The dress is made for me. A lovely fitted dress, the kind Audrey Hepburn might have worn, though I don’t think she would have approved of my cowboy boot pairing.

I walked into Anthropologie to distract myself and quiet my anxious mind, and it worked. Beautiful, well-trained, young saleswomen flocked around me as my hands began to fill with more and more possibility, and I felt like Cinderella as they clucked and admired first this outfit and then another, agreed with me on the unflattering overload of fabric in one dress for my frame, and I began to appreciate that while our insides cannot be healed by attending to our exterior alone, it sure as hell helps.

The dress I now own has lots of royal blue, a color that makes my eyes far bluer than they actually are and a demure neckline, but with an elegant v-shaped plunging back. I can wear it to work, I can wear it out for happy hour. I can add cowboy boots and a little sweater and I think, yes, this is me. This is me.

GG’s incomparable legacy, or her real obituary

She taught me how to plant pansies. We planted them around the rectangular patio made up of pink and white cinder blocks behind her house. I suspect we did the planting in a manner that causes me to cringe today; in neat little rows, with linear aisles, and nothing organic about it.

The funny thing is that this Grandmother, my father’s mother was not the one with the green thumb. My mother’s mother had the green thumb. But Grandma Enright is the one who handed me a shovel and set me free. I was probably around 7 or 8, but it’s hard to be sure.

Grandma and Grandpa lived in Clark, New Jersey and had an above-ground pool, about four feet in depth that I spent countless, endless, forever hours in, only departing the underwater heaven if lightening was evident. I fell asleep, it seems like always, chlorine soaked, with my too-small windows open, and smiling. To this day, chlorine pools smell good to me. Their suburban subdivision was what I would consider a neighborhood nightmare today, but back then the homes where all the backyards blended into one another and provided the most spectacular playground for every child in the neighborhood was heaven. This was long before pools had to have a fence around them to make sure no one inadvertently went for a swim uninvited and drowned.

Grandma made me poached eggs and taught me which side the fork went on when setting a table. She smoked for awhile, but quit when Grandpa had a massive heart attack and needed serious life altering changes, though perhaps she quit even before that, I just don’t know. I remember when they bought a car overseas, and I thought it was the coolest car ever because it was a Saab and had Swedish plates.

My mother became pregnant with me at 16, which resulted in marriage with my father. They were mere children. I was the one. My arrival forced and pushed so many people into places they might never have gone.

My parents brought me into the world to live with my grandparents. I still thrill to being in the presence of old people drinking cocktails, tapping cigarettes or cigars into ashtrays, alcohol-induced laughter and the loveliness of friends who gather, and danced the Cha Cha. I learned how to Cha Cha. I still remember how.

Grandma traveled with a handle of vodka. I celebrated her life the day she died with three vodka martini’s. I did not feel well the next day, but I did feel close to my Grandma. The price tag was not too high.

She loved her drinks. And when she was a widow, an old lady in her 80’s, and told me how she was told not to drink, I remember telling her, ‘shit, in my opinion if you make it to your age, you can do whatever the hell you please.’ She loved me for that, I think, and for so many other things.

I was loved by her inordinately. I loved her especially. She drove me out of my fucking mind.

My family located to Massachusetts when I was nine, but we made the drive to New Jersey on a regular basis to spend time with our family. As an adolescent, I only wanted to spend time with my aunt Beth, only a year older and my mother’s youngest sister. Grandma would always cringe and complain when I told her I was going to spend the night with my ‘other’ grandmother. I went anyway.

After Grandpa died, she became the visitor, and she would visit me sometimes for weeks at a time taking over my family and our perfectly organized schedules and wanting to come with me every where, even almost following me into the bathroom. Her greatest joy, though I feared for the safety of my house, was cooking for a family again. She would make brisket, gravy or spaghetti sauce and garlic bread, hors d’oeuvres (which we called horses ovaries when I was a child), and smile with purpose again. I hooked her up with the senior center in my town and she would spend afternoons there playing bridge, and flirting shamelessly, I am certain.

Grandma loved hugs and told me once that the worst part of getting old was that she no longer had anyone to hug. She loved big. Sometimes I only loved small in return. She had such an inordinate amount of need in her hugs, and I felt I’d drown. As her visits got lengthier, I would turn in as early as I could in the evening, close my door, turn on the television just to get away from her never-ending demand for attention.

Grandma was rarely appropriate. She tried to pick up waiters, gas station attendants, even the butcher, and she used language around my young children that made me uncomfortable. She told me to never ever wear sweatpants out of the house again when spying my car pool attire one day. She called a spade a spade and made no apologies. I listened to that one. She reminded me how much I was letting myself go as a young mother, and though it would be years before I fully appreciated her wisdom, she knew well how hard I was working to hold on to any kind of independent life.

She spent hours showing me all the things she wanted to leave me when she died ignoring my shuddering, because I could not would not imagine a world without her.

Grandma loved telling everyone that she was born the year the Titanic sank.

One of her last lengthy visits was when my daughters were quite young, Hannah perhaps in second grade. She had arrived with a cold and became sicker and sicker with each day until one day when I went in to check on her, I thought she was dead. Her pallor was pasty and breathing ragged and she barely moved when I asked hesitantantly, “Grandma?” I was terrified out of my mind. I brought her to my doctor then we went to the emergency room and finally back home. She had pneumonia and at one point said, “Robin I was so frightened. I thought I was dying.”

Grandma may have come for a few more visits, but after that I mostly remember going to see her when she was visiting my father. If caller ID announced her call, there were times, God forgive me, that I did not answer. Her cloying need to be loved was something I could not always handle. I am not proud of that.

Still we spoke on the phone as often as we could until she began to lose her memory and could only remember things from long ago, and not today. She often forgot I was divorced. It was painful, but I didn’t try to correct her. She was confused enough. My daughters always got on the phone with her and ended each call with “me too, me too!” in exclamations of love. She was GG to them, not Great Grandma.

Grandma gave me $10,000 when I was a young married woman, and told me to put it away, keep it for ‘mad money,’ for independence. She was a wise woman. Because of course, she knew only too well how a woman could be left with nothing at all to hold onto after giving everything she had to give.

Before Grandpa died, she was his primary care-giver, lifting him out of bed, getting him to the toilet, cleaning him when he soiled himself, and endless other physically and emotionally demanding tasks. When years previously, he had his massive heart attack, she told me that after so many years of marriage, “it wasn’t about love any longer as much as it was about a shared life, a shared history.” She was beside herself when he died. She mourned deeply when he died, feeling most upset because she could not sense him any more. She said she could not feel him at all.

Grandma was a devout Catholic and when I was a little girl, we all went to church together on Sunday. I even went to Catholic summer camp where we sang, “Michael, row the boat ashore, hallelujah,” but I was not fond of her church in Clark. As a young adult, I went to the student’s folk Mass at Bridgewater State College, trying to feel as if I belonged, but I never did. I always felt like an impostor.

I converted to Judaism about twenty years ago, and Grandma was the only family member who immediately embraced my choice, saying “I really don’t care what you believe so long as you believe something.”

My world is missing a complicated vibrance today. Grandma died three months shy of her 100th birthday, a tough old bird with lots of grit in her veins and a generous heart that never forgot how to love a granddaughter who sometimes couldn’t remember how to love herself.

She used to joke that she would haunt me when she left the earth. And I so pray that she does.

You begin again

Open your windows wide, and let the wind in. Feel the warmth of the Caribbean night, a humid breeze that takes your hair and curls it, that moistens your body with her breath, instantly dropping ten years from your skin, your life. Next, light a candle, gently place it on a table and then plant your bottom in a chair, where you must sit, I insist, with eyes closed. Listen. Hear the waves pounding the beach, not gently rolling in, but assaulting the sand and you will, I am certain, sigh in a way you haven’t in years. You are in Tulum, Mexico.

Wake in the morning after one of the best night’s sleep you have had in months (which may or may not have had something to do with the two margarita’s you had with dinner to celebrate your arrival, your giving yourself the gift of a retreat to this magical spot) and find that smile that lurks just at the corner of your mouth and that once arrives, remains for your entire stay, even if it retreats while you sleep each evening. Lie in bed wrapped in colorful wool blankets and breath in, breath out, finding yourself mesmerized by the way the white cotton curtains billow in the breeze, dancing gently in the air, and know there is no where you need to be, nothing that needs to be done, that time is yours this day and for the next four days. Sigh again.

You do not miss your Iphone that has been powered down since arriving at DIA, and that is now locked away in your safe, where it will remain until the day you leave. You do not miss the ritual you have when home, which is to wake, grab coffee, turn your phone over and check email, text messages and eventually Facebook. In fact, you feel a freedom you are surprised by without your phone next to you. You are free from whatever is happening elsewhere and able to, no required, to focus on you. Just you.

You have no idea what time it is because you do not bring a watch. You occasionally check the time on your Nook, adding one hour if you want to be certain.

You rise from your bed that is surrounded by lovely netting to protect you from mosquitos and that reminds you of all those forts you used to enjoy hiding in as a child, the ones created with blankets and the natural ones outside your Massachusetts home, where the shrubs would bend with snow in winter and create a hidden cave to retreat to and sip hot chocolate in. Smile.

Find your way to clothing, slip on sandals and then slip them off because you vow to not wear shoes whenever possible this week, and then put your journal and pen into your hand, get coffee and head to the beach where you are exactly one of five people in your field of vision. Sit on the beach chair and open your journal to write and then gently close it in reverence to the natural magnificence arrayed, right in front of your very eyes, that you see has been waiting for you. You feel tears at the corner of your eyes, so startled are you to discover how very much you needed this journey, how very much you needed the sea.

You sip coffee and watch the waves swell, then break upon the beach and the music they provide as they do so suddenly lulls you right straight back into yourself. You sit, quietly, watching one of nature’s greatest shows for a long time until your ass begins to get numb and you say, I need to explore this beach.

You begin to walk. You return almost two hours later, toes full of sand, legs salt sprinkled and wet from walking in the ocean and feet sore from working harder than usual, gripping the beach, and when your toes threaten to complain, you say, “shoosh now. You will be fine.”

When you return, you think, yoga might be a good addition to this day, though you are reluctant to leave the sea for even one hour, as reluctant to leave her as you might be leaving the bed of a cherished lover, but you do. Just because.

After being led through a gentle vinyasa flow, you once more take your journal to the beach, having changed into your bikini and you spend the next few hours writing, swimming, writing, swimming, sitting with eyes closed and listening to the waves. You are dumfounded how easy it is for you to just sit quietly and be. You wonder why you have not done this before. You promise yourself you will remember and do it more often.

Eventually you decide to seek relief from the sun and so you head back to your cabana and you shower, shaking as much moisture from your hair as you can before you let it dry naturally, only to find that, who knew? Your hair is quite wavy when it isn’t blow dried. You put on a sundress, moisturizer, some lip gloss, no shoes, and walk the beach again, finally resting somewhere along the shore to watch sunset. You stand in the sand, feeling the water pull the beach away from your toes and you remember how that fascinated you as a child and are delighted to discover it still does.

The sun sets. You have dinner. You return to your cabana, light the candles, and read until your eyes grow heavy and you long for sleep, rocked by the sound of the sea and you think, just before you drift off, of a recent lover, and you imagine yourself tucked inside his arm, and you smile in happy remembrance until like a child you let go and fall all the way.

And so the week passes. And so you remember all you had begun to forget.

You begin again.

Sending myself to the sea

Every life has its moments. The moments where you are startled by a bright light, no, not the kind that says your life is over, but the kind that says, “Sweetheart, you can’t run from this.” And while I cannot say this with complete certainty, not yet, I think these moments are very good for us.

Because while I freaking hate chaos, uncertainty, and the obvious discomfort that comes with such emotions, I must acknowledge that with every moment where my brain feels it is flying itself right into its own personal solar system, the aftermath is often so full of clarity and purpose, that I have learned to march, shaking hands and all, straight through the quagmire.

The truth is we all will have moments where we feel immersed in muck. If we are really among the living, that is. Our job is to find our way back.

So I head to the sea. And this somewhat surprises and amuses me because I have always been a mountain girl, but this sorting out is yearning for the ocean, the tide, the sound of waves breaking on the beach, the warmth of the sun, and more than anything, solitude and simplicity. I want bare feet, yoga and margaritas. I want a ‘do not disturb’ sign on my cabana door.

I am not certain of my life or love direction today, but I do know that I want to listen, really listen to myself. And, I want to hear.

My suitcase is carry on. I have a bikini, yoga clothing, sundresses, flip flops and sunscreen. I am headed to Tulum, on a retreat of sorts, to a resort run on generator power where there isn’t enough sustained energy to blow dry my hair. So I have also packed a flashlight, hair clips and pony tail holders.

There will be no computer, no cell phone checking, no television and the rooms have no alarm clocks or telephones. I will bring my journal and books and make believe I have no care in the world for five days. I will dine alone, run barefoot on the beach rain or shine and find my way back to me, and to that which sings to my heart.

We all have a song singing inside of us, and even when the tune changes or the tempo picks up, or perhaps slows down, this is our truth. I will be looking for my truth.

I will be thinking of you, I’ll be thinking of me, I’ll be thinking of those that are special to me. With every downward dog and each sigh as I slip into sleep with waves crashing nearby, I will get closer. I know this.

Life. Living. A return to that bad ass broad who flung herself west and began a new life 2000 miles away just shy of two years ago.

She has something to remind me, and I intend to pay attention. I’ll be practicing gratitude and patience with my toes in the sand and my face kissed by the sun. I’ll be handing over my worries to the sea and I’ll be deciding how I intend to live this one beautiful life.

I will take you along.