For My Travel Partners

December 12th, 2009.  Mendoza, Argentina

"We sleep on the grass, homeless in a country that is ours for only a handful more days.

We wash our faces. We brush our teeth in bus station bathrooms, stealing bits of toilet paper to have for when there is none.

We know the rhythm now. The outfits to wear in case the bus is too cold or too hot. I pop Benadryl and Tylenol to induce the sleep that alludes me on these long trips. The other two sleep whenever possible, curling into balls, but I am never quite able to do this. There is some part of me that's afraid of missing out, of missing an experience, a moment.

It's getting close to ending now. In a week I'll be home and thousands of miles away from here. Will I be happy, will I be sad? If I'm happy does it mean that I didn't make the most of my time here?"

(I'm writing an article that requires me to go back through my journal and find quotes and pieces of information that I meticulously collected and stored in a battered 250 page moleskin. I am missing those days today.)

Eyes

This is how I saw it, all in the eyes.

At some point, the words we were saying became meaningless and our communication became based in the occipital. Long stares and belated eye contact were all cryptic signals in our language. Avoidance born in down turned eyelashes and longing in one up and broken glances.

 A wink and I was dunked in ice water. Gasping, starving for air and only tasting the salty, cold sea. A hint of a smile in those mahogany eyes and I knew. And he knew. 

When I thought back, I realized we had always spoken this way. What was it that we couldn't say? Couldn't verbalize? Or what was it that I was afraid to hear?

While we spoke in the normal rhythm to friends and family, to each other the cadence of our eyes was a second language. Something brighter and darker, heavier and lighter, paradox upon paradox of meaning without definition.

But I knew in the war torn part of myself that it was not a language, only a filler for for something we were both searching for. And the haunting seconds where I was lost in another sense was only seconds.

And the sooner I broke the stare, the better.

Breathing Room

Mrs. Stewart's purse felt extra heavy today. The Italian leather strap was digging into her left shoulder and as she shifted it, she wondered why it wasn't stronger after nursing three babies, carrying three screaming toddlers and now lugging all three of their soccer gear to practice.

She grudgingly went through her mental checklist. Blackberry. Check. Adderall for Chloe and Dylan. Check. Jesus she needed to get that perscription refilled. Glue for Marie's science project. Check. Book on Menopause for sister. Check. Extra tie for Mark because he had spilled coffee on his this morning. Check.

What could be so heavy? The triplets were fighting in the back of her car now, and she suddenly realized she'd been sitting inert in the drivers seat, ignoring the screams of protests of her children still locked in the car. She hit the button on her door, and the van door slid silently open, the triplets tumbling out and leaving Mrs. Stewart in silence as they raced towards the soccer field. Her eyes darting quickly left and right, she jerked her bag off her shoulder and popped open the little orange plastic container. Yes, she thought, she would need to get another perscription.

The Big Win

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