Hurry Up And Wait - MSP To DIA

I still have an hour before my plane starts to board. I’ve been sitting here for one hour already, trying to get the wireless signal from my phone to tether itself to my computer, but apparently the airport has a blanket over all wireless so that you have to pay for theirs. Oh well.

I have my ear buds on to block out the symphony of an overhead tv, people talking on cell phones and a man in the chair across from me snoring like there’s no tomorrow. It’s actually quite impressive. I don’t have any music streaming to my ears, so the small sound blocker really isn’t working.

My head is itching. It’s slightly frustrating, because the itch is coming from the area of my head that is still numb, so scratching doesn’t do anything. Apparently the itching is from the nerves growing back, which will eventually bring the feeling back to the circle of numbness, but in the meantime, it’s quite irritating. I want to scratch!!

Goodbye Prelude To A Shower

At seven am, Remix To Ignition started to fill the silence covering my bedroom. Starting quietly, it grew and grew, like a weed with tentacles that reached out with a crescendo. I stirred, sleep fading from my eyes, dripping down to be absorbed again by my bed. I rolled onto my back and began to mouth along the lyrics, adding improvised hand motions to illustrate the words being sung (“Give me that toot toot, give me that beep beep” eliciting a train whistle and a honking horn).

When the song was over, I slid the “Off” button and climbed out of bed. I had more packing to do, but first, a shower. Mom and dad’s shower is nice and big and roomy compared to mine – both mine in the house and mine in my apartment – so obviously I wanted to use theirs for my Last Shower. I grabbed my towel and padded down the hallway in ripped plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt that advertised my milkshake as bringing all the boys to the yard. I crossed the familiar threshold into my parents’ room, the room I’d crept into countless times in the middle of the night as a child. This morning I felt like a child again, missing my parents already.

“Ca’I use your shower or do you need it?”

My mom looked at me, makeup done, wearing a black suit skirt under a pajama top, her hair still damp. Dad sat in bed with a cup of coffee and the Journal. Mom’s eyes had the glass and the sad, proud, conflicted smile that only a parent can wear. She stepped forward and hugged me to her, both of us trying not to cry. “I’ve loved having you here. I’m gonna miss having you around.” Her arms stayed around me, no intention of letting go. “You’ve really taken your place in this family, and I hope you hold onto it. We’re gonna make sure you do.” I’ve thought about that many times, wishing hard that the three of us hold on to the closeness we’ve found and being nervous that we’ll lose it. “I love you so much and I’m so proud of you.” The mom look of love threatened to pull tears from my eyes when she stepped back and held me by the shoulders. She went on about how proud she is of me and how much she loves me and all of the other things I try to hold on to and remember so that one day I can treasure them when she’s gone. Even writing about it makes me sad.

Her hair was still damp as she instructed me to call her every day. One more kiss and I turned around the way I’d come to wash up in a shower the size of my whole bathroom.

Packing Tired Cobras

It's my second to last night here before I move back to Colorado. I'm sitting cross-legged under the yellow striped duvet that covers my bed. The left side of the bed is covered with scarves and t-shirts that still have to be packed and two legal pads that I need to find a home for. This morning dad and I picked up some cardboard boxes I found free on Craig's List - three long, skinny boxes with handles, two big boxes and one small square one. I won't need all of them, but as I put everything together, I'm surprised at how much stuff I need to get back to Colorado. Since I'll be back here a couple times over the next few months for weddings and doctor appointments, I'll be able to collect and bring back whatever I leave here, so right now I'm only taking about half of my things. Still, half is turning out to take up more space that I would've guessed. They're all things I've used though, not just superfluous junk, which makes me feel better.

Today I found out that COBRA has decided to reinstate me. I can't begin to say how amazing I feel. A current of nervous electricity ran through me as I opened the email and read, "Hi Erica, I got you approval for reinstatement". An enormous weight was lifted off of my Atlas shoulders. I started laughing in my car, parked in front of my therapist's office, looking, I'm sure, like a total nut job, not quite sure if I should welcome or blink back the tears that waited just behind my eyes. I picked my phone back up and my hands shook as I typed my reply on the little slide-out keyboard. Everything has gone so much better than I could have ever hoped - the surgeries, the follow-up, the insurance - everything. I guess I must've done something right!

I feel like there are so many things I want to write about, so many little experiences, feelings, thoughts that I want to word, like a river inside me that transforms into a sparkling, sunkissed waterfall as it leaves my mouth and flows onto the page. I want to write about packing and the conflicting emotions it brings, knowing that it's the right time for me to go but already missing my parents and my aunts; how I can look in a mirror and like what I see and not feel all of the insecurities I felt in the Bahamas; how I started to use my body again as I walked to the Sea Center (or whatever it's called) in the Bahamas for nine am yoga, and how I almost passed out more than once during that first class but every day got better and better as the young instructor taught patiently in both English and French, ("inspirer, expirer" = "breathe in, breathe out"). I want to write about them all, but not tonight. My heavy eyelids are drooping over the eyes I got peach-scented soap in when I washed my face this evening, which I take as my cue to go to sleep.

Goodnight

Pretty

Bahamas, Day 6

I'm finally at the point where I'm interested in society again; interested social endeavors and interested in people. But now that I'm noticing other people, I'm noticing myself and how I might look in their eyes, and I don't really like what I see. I stand in front of the mirror, finished product, my makeup done, my eyes sparkling, and I think to myself, I'm the wingman's target. My hair is short like a boy's and curls where it shouldn't; a far cry from long and sexy. It accentuates the zit on my cheek, the way my clothes don't fit quite right, the body that's squishy from lack of use - all the things my long hair used to hide. I don't feel pretty. Why would a boy hit on me when all of my imperfections are so blatant, so glaring? I catch guys looking my way, but when I look back I see their gaze just a little bit off center, their smile being returned by someone else. I used to be that girl! Despite my old insecurities and neuroses, I hardly ever paid for my own drinks. Not that I can drink now, but that's not the point. The point is that now that I'm ready to get back in the game, no one really cares. I'm the target market of the wingman.

I used to feel pretty. I want that back.

Bahamas Day 2 - Sailboats and Sandy Feet

My chest, stomach and chin (which is not covered by my sun hat) are getting red, so I dragged my chair into the shade. The new view shows two sailboats gliding toward the pier before making perfectly synchronized pivots and heading back out to sea. The boats are cairried on the wind by their striped sails: red, yellow and blue standing out against the turquoise shore, the deep blue open sea and the light, blue-grey of the horizon it meets. Much better view than the topless Frenchie from earlier today. The crashing waves and rustling palm tree soundtrack is much more suited to sailboats and rolling water than maked people on blue beach towels.

Two more sailboats and two light blue windsurfers have joined the water. The breeze feels nice on my neck. When I reach out my legs, stretching them away from the rest of my folded body, my toes reach the sun. I wiggle them, happy of my choice of gold toenail polish. The tops of my feet are covered in fine, light sand. I do't look, but I'm sure the bottom is worse. The backs of my legs are spotted with sand kicked up by the flip flop of my flip flops when I walked down the beach. My heels are red and dry. I'm not sure why, but I'll put some coconut-lime lotion on them when I get back from the room.

Bahamas, Day 2 - Awkward View

The sound of the waves crashing to the sandy shore mingles with the wind rustling the palm trees and blowing in my ear. The music of the beach soothes and calms, no instructions or breathing exercises necessary. The water in the kind of turquoise that looks like the ocean was touched up in a glossy magazine. The waves roll gently, the water lifting and curling over itself. A thin layer of white foam forms on the crest just before it slides up the new one like it wants to be included in the crash that sends it up onto the sand and over the feet of a little girl playing or a young couple holding hands.

From my standard-issue lounge chair of blue mesh fastened like a canvas to a white plastic frame, I only see the ocean from my periphery. Jill and I pulled our chairs through the sand, leaving drag marks in our wake, to face the sun. We'll be damned if we get uneven tans. The only problem is the view: rather than the Bahamian ocean that changes colors like a mood ring depending on its depth, I'm awkwardly facing a French woman tanning topless. I'm really trying not to stare, but topless tanning is not really something I see back in the puritan U.S. of A. and it's distracting! Her huge, very white knockers kind of make me want to copy her. I have a sudden strong desire to boldly untie my frilly black top and fling it recklessly into the sand, but my parents are three umbrellas down, so I'll control myself... for now.

Virgin Pina Coladas

I have a song stuck in my head, but the waves are drowning any desire to put it on. The rhythmic crash as they hit a reef or the shore. The tympani crescendo as they near their fatal final destination builds to a clash of cymbals as the white cap overtakes the rolling turquoise and echos as the salty water spreads over the sand.

Since arriving in the Bahamas and settling into the paradise that is the sandy beach, canvas umbrellas over blue mesh lounge chairs, yoga in the sea breeze every morning, 100 SPF sunscreen on my scar and a shaded porch overlooking it all, I’ve only taken one dose of Tylenol. That would be this morning.

Right now I’m at a tall, wood table with a tan, canvas umbrella over me at the Snack Bar. I know it probably has some kind of clever name, but I couldn‘t tell you what it is. As long as they keep making me virgin pina coladas, I don’t actually care.

They’re playing some kind of beachy music punctuated every few minutes by blenders. I did see an older man in a Speedo order a cup of coffee, which I thought was crazy since it’s so exceedingly hot out, but maybe it’s an older Frenchman thing. Apparently all of the French people here leave tomorrow, so tonight there’s a big beach party, where I’m assuming everyone will get hammered except me, since I’m only allowed one drink per night. Very unfortunate since I let myself be a lush on vacations to hot beaches. Oh well, it’s good for me, both physically and psychologically. This way I’m still able to make it to nine am yoga every morning.