No wonder how long you wait for something, it still comes right up on you like a bedecked Christmas party guest you thought for sure wouldn’t show. But you knew it was coming. You planned it with mind-numbing care, you nursed it from a seedling over coffee, you budgeted for all its possible pitfalls, and you gave it all kinds of impertinent names with arm-candy adjectives like “grand”, “eye-opening” and “life-defining”. But even so, even slowly, it has prowled up on your plans as if uninvited, ready to spread its feathers, one at a time, and give you the adventure you asked for.
The day is fast approaching, with a signature New York City snowstorm precariously greasing its tracks. When my flight arrived at a frost-flecked La Guardia, flanked in dirty but determined snow drifts, I surprised myself by feeling nothing but displacement. Otherwise known as anxiety masked in pure confusion and denial. Six months worth of clothing, emergency medication, good luck charms, my own weight in feminine products and quick-dry-just-about-everything made the final cut and were rolled into a big red backpack. In true mammalian self-preservationist fashion, I spent the final days in Colorado obsessively labeling already labeled over-the-counter medication and counting the number of poisonous snake species in each country rather than telling my supportive friends and family how much I honored their presence in my life and how every word they said would hang in my head once I had crossed the border. My parents pasted over any fear or doubt they knew my hawk heart would be looking for and waved me goodbye, casually and quickly, with a “you’ll be fine” hug. My siblings saluted from their parting posts and in their own ways gave me the greatest gift of their unfaltering confidence. My friends turned up at every turn to tip their hat to a trip they knew would bring me back transformed, wholeheartedly willing to accept whatever version of me came back in my place. Meanwhile, I nobly focused most of my last week’s energy mentally bemoaning the small child howling behind me, squawking about hidden foreign conversion fees and fussing over the percentage of germs that competing hand sanitizers claim to eliminate. And all this, I have concluded, is what takes me successfully to the brink. Without it, I might flounder in those last days of comfort and familiarity, until I am flayed out over the things I might (and I will) miss - a rat asleep in a puddle of sweet wine.
Soon, its to the trenches… to the truth or to the trails that will lead us head-on toward the unexpected.
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