I ran away to Mexico with my lover today. Doesn’t that have an exotic sound? The very words taste delicious when I roll them off the end of my tongue. The reality of it verges on intoxication. We got up at o’dark thirty, the first hint of fuchsia sunrise in the east, and fled into the friendly skies. We winged our way at 37,000 feet to palm trees, warm-your-bones sunshine and the certainty there was a world of possibility waiting at the Guadalajara airport to welcome us to our new life.
Preflight, as we prepared for takeoff from PDX, securely cinched into our seats, the pilot kept apologizing and explaining the plane was “undergoing difficulties”. In my excitement at finally launching into our new adventure, I heard it only as background noise, completely missing the nuances of possible problems getting into and staying in the air, and had not a twinge of concern.
Ordinarily, I’m an eager flyer. Relish that magical instant the wheels leave the ground and you’re launched into the wild blue. As a student pilot, I adore being in the air, but the longer we sat on the tarmac, the sound coming from the the plane engines was getting pretty unnerving. It sounded like the old Ford truck we used to have on the farm when you tried to start it on a hard-frozen January morning. Grumbling and reluctant to turn over and wake up. As they towed us away from the gate, it continued to growl, and I wasn’t sure the pilot was going to get it started in time to takeoff. Did I say unnerving? The pilot now had my undevided attention! If my car sounded like that when I tried to start it in the morning, I’d tow it, too. To the nearest mechanic!
Just in case it was more serious than simply getting started, I sent a last minute text to my two sons, saying how much I loved them. Lightly mentioning that in case we didn’t come back, where our stuff was stored, and that they should divvy it up and throw a hell of a party celebrating a life full of pretty great adventures. No regrets. I can only imagine their reaction, since the flight attendent glaring down at me forced me to turn off my cell phone for takeoff. The big silver bird finally grumbled and lumbered it’s way off the ground into the air towards Guadalajara. Engines rumbling away smoothly, just like they were supposed to.
As the flight attendant went through her safety spiel, she instructed us that, due to security issues, we were required to use only the toilet in our own zones. It was obvious bullshit. I’ve been traveling for a really long time and toilets have never had anything to do with security. Not that kind, anyway. There were four toilets on the plane. Two in first class, serving twelve people, and two in the very back of the plane, serving 138 people. You can probably see the only potential security problem here and it was a sanitary issue not a safety one. It was simply another reminder of the privileges of money. Even in the air. Who knew money would buy you better bathroom privileges?
As we slipped along the jet stream south, I looked back at what had gotten us this far and recognized that it wasn’t revolutionary. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve made it more and more a way of life to follow our hearts and then jump in with both feet. It’s never been predictable in our twenty years together, but it’s always been full of life and new juice. Juice – you can probably tell I’m really liking that analogy. We’ve become familiar with how one small, committed step has a way of leading to unexpected adventures.
There’s a powerful quote from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition of 1951, where W.H. Murray wrote, “…Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!” (Published by J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.).
It’s powerful, because if you do it, it works. Seriously. It does.
We’re walking away from so much. Hoping for so much. Anything is possible in this foreign country where we’re going – where we know nobody, don’t speak the language (yet), don’t know the value of the currency, and have no idea where we’re going to sleep tonight.
Our fifteenth wedding anniversary is less than a month away and we’ve run away together like two giddy youngsters going on our honeymoon. Anything can happen. Our money is sparse, our hopes are high, and we are together on a crazy, open-ended adventure.
I can feel the juice starting to drip off the end of my chin.