More Than a Good Time
By Patty Somlo
The first thing I notice after leaving my room is how different the air feels, warm, but not hot. Early February and it’s cold back home in Northern California. There’s a damp weight to the wind, recalling my early childhood in Hawaii.
After turning the corner into a narrow passageway housing two large vending machines selling drinks, chips and energy bars, I’m out in the open where, unlike mine, each room has a patio, with two white wooden rocking chairs in front. Beyond the rooms, the sparkling pool is surrounded by royal blue lounge chairs. A thatch-roofed bar sits behind the pool. Beyond that, a second pool awaits.
The place I have landed following yesterday’s flight to Miami is unfamiliar to me. I have come, in part, for that reason. At this point in my life, I feel a need to travel where I’ve never been. Perhaps this stems from having lost so much that was familiar and comforting, in such a short period of time.
I am here at the northernmost tip of the Florida Keys with a group of strangers. We have come from both the East and West Coasts. Three of us have journeyed here alone.
***
If there’s one thread that has run through my life, it’s travel. My earliest memories originate from the summer before I turned six. In the first, I am with my parents and two sisters at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s summer, so the air is crisp, and damp with fog. We are outside eating fresh Dungeness crab.
The next memory finds me following my oldest sister Barbara, as we step down the metal stairs next to the plane. We have just flown from San Francisco to the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. At the time, I wouldn’t have been aware that we were going to live not far from Pearl Harbor for three wonderful years. I also couldn’t have known I would never live anywhere that long until many years into adulthood.
Passing the pool this morning headed for breakfast in the dining room, I am taking in the sights, along with the feel of the air, something I’ve done since those early years of my life. As a military kid for whom picking up and moving to an unfamiliar place was the norm, I developed a system for quickly getting to know the new environment where I’d just landed. Familiarizing myself, whether in a town or home, school or neighborhood, or a beautiful area I was visiting for a few days or a week, became second nature. I wasn’t aware until writing this that I was acting out an old habit here in South Florida.
***
In childhood, I had no say over where my family lived and for how long. Since I was forced to let go of friends, schools, bedrooms and back yards, and instantly adapt to wherever I next ended up, I tried to find something in that nomadic existence to ease the grief over never-ending loss. Regardless of what I was forced to leave behind, I looked forward, hoping to discover something to fall in love with, in the new world to which I hadn’t yet arrived.
Some people repeatedly uprooted in childhood later settle down in one place and never leave. The opposite happened to me. Not only did I move from apartment to apartment and job to job, but I also left cities for other cities and states, moving on, always assuming the next place would be better.
In middle age, I met and married a man I loved. Finally, I began to stay -- in a job and home, and, of course, in the relationship. But I never stopped traveling. I also never quit viewing travel as an opportunity. More than a good time, a break from work or a chance to relax, I always hoped the trips might shake up my life, and maybe even transform me.
***
On our second morning in Key Largo, we ride a short distance in the bright white van to another Florida key, Islamorada. We are each assessed for size, then handed long black wetsuits. Though I’ve been swimming in the ocean since I landed in Hawaii at the age of five, I’ve never entered water chilly enough to pull on one of these rubbery contraptions.
Some of my fellow travelers are having trouble getting into the legs of their suits. I’m surprised when I start pulling on mine that it goes on easily. Though snug once I get both legs and arms in, there’s a bit of extra material, which I’m guessing is what made the task not as hard.
Once we’re suited up, one of the two-person crew, Samantha, invites us to board the boat. We couldn’t have asked for a better day, sunny and warm, with light wind. Sunlight hitting the boat has warmed the seats. I grab one in the middle and silently scold myself to calm down.
We’re on our way into the Atlantic Ocean to snorkel. I’ve snorkeled numerous times in enclosed bays on the Hawaiian Islands of Maui and Kauai. But only once, off the Island of Lanai, have I snorkeled where the water was deep, and I couldn’t touch.
***
A little over two years ago, my husband Richard passed away. For four and a half years before his death, he and I, along with his team of doctors and nurses, did everything to keep him alive. The moment we received the terrifying news that he had stage-four cancer, the life Richard and I had lived up to that point, filled with hikes on mountain trails, paddles across remote lakes, and, yes, snorkeling in warm, clear Hawaiian waters, began to go away. As he grew weaker, that life mostly receded to one of memory.
I travel on group trips now. Though I initially hoped to bring back some of the life Richard and I had shared, after a half-dozen tours, I’ve come to accept that I can’t. These trips instead allow me to step away from my solitary life, as a childless widow. Before landing at an unfamiliar airport, I am never sure what I will find.
But here I am, in a boat, with sunlight sparkling across aquamarine waves, and I’m drenched in a contentment that doesn’t come often these days. Speeding across water, I’m learning, makes me feel temporarily free, taking flight from the grief that can drag me down.
***
The boat is anchored, and we’re offered flippers, life vests and pool noodles. Even though I’m a strong swimmer, I ask for flippers and a noodle. Knowing I will have something to hold onto in the deep ocean makes me feel less afraid.
For years, I have suffered from what a therapist diagnosed as generalized anxiety. When she gave me that diagnosis, I translated it to mean that I worried about everything.
During the four and a half years I was Richard’s sole caregiver, most of my worries were about him. From the start, we knew his cancer, while treatable, couldn’t be cured and that one day it would kill him. No matter how many times I scolded myself that worrying would do nothing to help, I couldn’t quit. For months after he was gone, I couldn’t erase the thought that this terrible thing had happened, so disaster was just waiting around the corner to strike me.
Now that some time has passed, I am able to invite in more rational thoughts that help soothe me. But in new and unfamiliar circumstances, the old unfocused worry appears.
Actually, I’m not afraid of drowning. If asked, I couldn’t say why I’m fretting, as I wait to enter the water.
Without another thought, I leave my seat and tiptoe across the wet deck toward my fate. After sitting down, my legs dangling over the water, I slide on each flipper, lower my mask, and drop my wetsuited body into the ocean.
***
After pushing off from the boat, I sink fast, then pop back up, the ocean surprisingly bracing. I lower my face into the water and start kicking, moving over to where multi-colored fish are clustered.
I haven’t been swimming in recent years, so I’m surprised to suddenly feel as if I’ve come back to myself, after being gone a long time. I’m hit with a radiant bolt of bliss, too often absent in my life since Richard’s passing. I don’t dwell on it but momentarily reflect on the effort it takes to live in the world alone. Having a partner who knew and loved me deeply assured me that someone would be there if I fell. To know I am it, the person who must pick up the pieces and put myself back together, keeps my nerves at a pitch. Yet, here I am, letting water hold me up, as I’ve done many times in the past.
***
The second day we go out on the boat, I'm feeling calm. I already know from our first snorkeling adventure that I will love the ride, especially that moment after we slowly edge away from the dock, then pick up speed and begin to fly.
Sometimes I question why I come on these trips. Moments such as this provide a happy response. I know when I return home, and likely for years to come, this ride will be permanently etched within my storehouse of memorable times.
As someone who has suffered from low-level depression, known as dysthymia, for decades, along with anxiety, I’m used to my thoughts bouncing around, focused far away from the present. Riding in this boat under a cloudless sky, my mind is right here, with no inclination to wander off.
***
The water is much shallower at the reef where we’ve anchored today and light streams through in sword-like rays, as if a crowd of tourists were shining their flashlights down. A wall of coral attracts crowds of fish, who gather there and hang suspended. I float on the surface and gaze down, mesmerized by the species I’ve decided is my favorite, the parrotfish. These fish could easily be characters in an animated film for children, cute and pudgy, flashing all the colors of the rainbow, their round protruding eyes a most astonishing turquoise.
Watching these living collections of color brings me a quick injection of delight, like spotting a rainbow as the sun emerges out of a tropical downpour. The parrotfish often swim in pairs, and I follow, trying not to stir the water and frighten these colorful creatures away.
I was drawn to come on this trip to be immersed in nature, which I have always found healing. Here in Florida, I have learned from our wonderful guide, Tom, and a lecture at the offices of a nonprofit dedicated to conservation about the complex, fragile, and increasingly threatened connections amongst coral, the ocean, and the fish. It’s one thing to receive information from a lecture or a book but quite another to find myself part of the environment. I am enjoying watching the many-shaded fish swim past and a sense of freedom floating in the water. But I can’t help but acknowledge that some of the pleasure comes from recognizing that I have become part of this watery world. To experience a connection with the fish, the water, and my fellow travelers, is perhaps the real reason I should have come.
***
I’m warm in my windbreaker, savoring the dark hot chocolate Samantha handed me after I climbed the narrow metal ladder back onto the boat. Although my time in the water felt effortless, I am pleasantly tired. The handful of men and women on the boat were strangers a few days ago. Having shared details of our lives and the happiness we experienced, floating while admiring large nurse sharks pass below us in the deep ocean, we feel tied to one another, what would take months to happen with strangers in our regular lives.
Since losing my spouse, I’ve had the sense that my life will only be worth living if my days have purpose and meaning. As I sit on this boat, traveling through water I’ve now seen is home to countless astonishing species, I understand something that has eluded me in this widowed life. When I enter the cathedral of wonder that is our natural world, I have the rare opportunity to shed the belief that I am separate and apart from all that exists. So just as I end every one of my thrice-weekly yoga classes, I press my hands together at the heart, bow my head, and whisper namaste, in gratitude for all I have left to cherish.
END
Author Bio: Patty Somlo’s books, “Hairway to Heaven Stories” (Cherry Castle Publishing), “The First to Disappear” (Spuyten Duyvil) and “Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace” (WiDo Publishing), have been Finalists in several contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Delmarva Review, Under the Sun, The Los Angeles Review, and over 40 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the J.F. Powers Short Fiction Contest, and had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays.