June 17th - the day the music died.
Confrontational by nature I have chosen to deal with this particular anniversary a bit differently. In October, when His birthday was upon us, I booked a trip to Southeast Asia and spent the 29th changing planes in Tokyo, so jet lagged and wanderlustful that it was easy to let the day go by, almost unnoticed. Now I have two separate days a year from which to escape - a welcomed excuse to travel, if not for the best reasons.
Today, June 17th 2015, I board a plane to Montevideo, Uruguay. I will arrive in this foreign land after touching down in both Houston and Rio de Janeiro - almost guaranteed to be too distracted with overpriced airport fare and restless upright slumber to see the sun rise and set on a day that changed my life entirely and forever.
I could talk about my father endlessly. From what I am told I always have.
Regardless of whether I was on a first date or on a transatlantic call with an old friend, my dad came up in nearly every conversation. He touched every part of my life in an incalculable way. Even when living 3000 miles apart it was he who I called to help me pick out an appropriate pair of running shoes. It was he who I forwarded inappropriate text messages from unsavory men to, hoping for some insight into the bewildering gender. He knew what I had had for lunch on any given day, because he was most likely on the phone with me when I ordered it. When someone is this involved in your life, their absence is felt in such a profound way that there is no safe place to hide.
Movies and books are simply things you want to discuss with the Shel Silverstein inspired missing piece.
Confrontational by nature I have chosen to deal with this particular anniversary a bit differently. In October, when His birthday was upon us, I booked a trip to Southeast Asia and spent the 29th changing planes in Tokyo, so jet lagged and wanderlustful that it was easy to let the day go by, almost unnoticed. Now I have two separate days a year from which to escape - a welcomed excuse to travel, if not for the best reasons.
Today, June 17th 2015, I board a plane to Montevideo, Uruguay. I will arrive in this foreign land after touching down in both Houston and Rio de Janeiro - almost guaranteed to be too distracted with overpriced airport fare and restless upright slumber to see the sun rise and set on a day that changed my life entirely and forever.
I could talk about my father endlessly. From what I am told I always have.
Regardless of whether I was on a first date or on a transatlantic call with an old friend, my dad came up in nearly every conversation. He touched every part of my life in an incalculable way. Even when living 3000 miles apart it was he who I called to help me pick out an appropriate pair of running shoes. It was he who I forwarded inappropriate text messages from unsavory men to, hoping for some insight into the bewildering gender. He knew what I had had for lunch on any given day, because he was most likely on the phone with me when I ordered it. When someone is this involved in your life, their absence is felt in such a profound way that there is no safe place to hide.
Movies and books are simply things you want to discuss with the Shel Silverstein inspired missing piece.
Decisions to be made, contracts to be signed. Ensembles to be purchased. With a relationship this intimate and a bond this unbreakable, like the strands of DNA coursing through both of your veins, there is no possible way to detach.
I have a very kind, if very dim friend who recently suggested perhaps it was time to 'let go' of him. Now, I know this gentle giant meant well, but he is an idiot. There is no way I could let go of my father without erasing my very existence; without destroying who I am. What I can do, is manage the feeling of loss and the reality of a new life. In recent weeks I have likened this shift to diabetes. A condition that is not fatal, but chronic. One from which you can never be cured, but hopefully, through trial and error, you can manage - you can live with.
Trying to live with it; trying to #keepwalkingkeepwinning is what I have chosen to do. So here it goes...
What better way for me, a bit of a travel junkie, then to pack up my bag and head south to visit a new land and mark a year of torture, ready to turn the page on a new perspective, a new life?
This new perspective was in no small way aided by a recent health crisis.
Three weeks before my scheduled departure to Uruguay, a country about which I know absolutely nothing, I suffered a bit of paralysis. This was scary, sudden and very very unattractive. This physical manifestation of a 12 months of stress, sadness, love and loss could have made me sink deeper into the pool of depression in which I have been more than wading for some time now. It should have pushed me over the edge, but for some reason, awaking to a face that only half functions and a right hand too jittery from either nerve damage in my once so efficient brain or the meds used to help quell that has left me, better...
When your body starts to scream at you. When it starts to turn on you. You have no choice but to listen.
So I did what any grief stricken, partially paralyzed young woman would do to deal with the world falling down around her. I grabbed my camera, packed a duffle bag, and foraged forward.
Travel has it's ups and downs. There are always the rude passengers and endless lines, but being seated next to a nice young Mormon man on the Houston - Rio leg of my journey south of the equator allowed me to have a conversation about faith, marriage and family with a total stranger and, despite the fact that he asked about my own personal timeline for marriage and children, started my trip off in this positive vein, on in which I am attempting to live.
Having long harbored a fantasy of being a Latina through and through, the Rachel Dolezal of Afro-Latin America (yes - that was for you and yes, you know who you are...), being mistaken for a native in Brazil - flattered though I may be, was fantastically awkward as I don't know how to utter a Portuguese syllable yet alone understand a series of phrases and/or questions thrown in my direction, intensifying in speed and agility the more contorted my already stroke induced face looks.
Wedged into the last seat on the plane, confined to a space few Americans could fit according to the most recent obesity polls did not in any way stop me from uncomfortably passing out before take off on the last leg of my multi-stop voyage to Montevideo. I was awoken by the sounds of a snotty pubescent both figuratively and literally. Spoiled brat seems to transcend language and when my empathy for the teary teenage quickly gave way to disgust once I realized her tears were not over Sean Cassidy or the Biebs, but over the fact that she was not pleased to be served a muffin during the snack coarse on the plane.
I have a very kind, if very dim friend who recently suggested perhaps it was time to 'let go' of him. Now, I know this gentle giant meant well, but he is an idiot. There is no way I could let go of my father without erasing my very existence; without destroying who I am. What I can do, is manage the feeling of loss and the reality of a new life. In recent weeks I have likened this shift to diabetes. A condition that is not fatal, but chronic. One from which you can never be cured, but hopefully, through trial and error, you can manage - you can live with.
Trying to live with it; trying to #keepwalkingkeepwinning is what I have chosen to do. So here it goes...
What better way for me, a bit of a travel junkie, then to pack up my bag and head south to visit a new land and mark a year of torture, ready to turn the page on a new perspective, a new life?
This new perspective was in no small way aided by a recent health crisis.
Three weeks before my scheduled departure to Uruguay, a country about which I know absolutely nothing, I suffered a bit of paralysis. This was scary, sudden and very very unattractive. This physical manifestation of a 12 months of stress, sadness, love and loss could have made me sink deeper into the pool of depression in which I have been more than wading for some time now. It should have pushed me over the edge, but for some reason, awaking to a face that only half functions and a right hand too jittery from either nerve damage in my once so efficient brain or the meds used to help quell that has left me, better...
When your body starts to scream at you. When it starts to turn on you. You have no choice but to listen.
So I did what any grief stricken, partially paralyzed young woman would do to deal with the world falling down around her. I grabbed my camera, packed a duffle bag, and foraged forward.
Travel has it's ups and downs. There are always the rude passengers and endless lines, but being seated next to a nice young Mormon man on the Houston - Rio leg of my journey south of the equator allowed me to have a conversation about faith, marriage and family with a total stranger and, despite the fact that he asked about my own personal timeline for marriage and children, started my trip off in this positive vein, on in which I am attempting to live.
Having long harbored a fantasy of being a Latina through and through, the Rachel Dolezal of Afro-Latin America (yes - that was for you and yes, you know who you are...), being mistaken for a native in Brazil - flattered though I may be, was fantastically awkward as I don't know how to utter a Portuguese syllable yet alone understand a series of phrases and/or questions thrown in my direction, intensifying in speed and agility the more contorted my already stroke induced face looks.
Wedged into the last seat on the plane, confined to a space few Americans could fit according to the most recent obesity polls did not in any way stop me from uncomfortably passing out before take off on the last leg of my multi-stop voyage to Montevideo. I was awoken by the sounds of a snotty pubescent both figuratively and literally. Spoiled brat seems to transcend language and when my empathy for the teary teenage quickly gave way to disgust once I realized her tears were not over Sean Cassidy or the Biebs, but over the fact that she was not pleased to be served a muffin during the snack coarse on the plane.
Off the plane and quickly ushered through immigration I grabbed some pesos, hopped in Angel's Mercedes cab and took what I only later realized as a $60 cab ride to Mercado del Puerto, the hotel at which I would be laying my head the next couple of days.
The drive in was at dusk and gorgeous and once I made an attempt to chat casually en espanol with my driver I settled into my South American sojourn.
Death, taxes and For Whom The Bell's tolls was left back on US soil, at least for the week, and the plan is to return, a woman reborn.
Wish me luck with that...
