A Discovery

I had the sudden, exciting opportunity to go to Puerto Rico with some friends this last weekend.  I'll spare you the details, but I will say that every minute was bliss.  I had forgotten how spa-like it is to fly without kids!  The red-eye took us to New York, where we had time to go into the city and lunch at Norma's.  Cities give me energy, none more than New York.  It was surreal to suddenly by walking by Carnegie Hall on a regular Friday morning.

Puerto Rico was a tropical collection of blissed-out beach moments and frequent outbursts of uncontrollable laughter, interspersed with good meals.  The group I traveled with was funny and laid-back.  The perfect travel companions!

Two moments stand out for me:  While I am content to arrive early and stay late at the beach, lifting my head only to buy an occasional ice cream from a vendor, I can be coerced into actually doing something.  We went paddle boarding in a quiet bay surrounded by the city.  I was the last one to get a board and the guy said, "This is our longest board."  I said, "Oh good.  So that's good for beginners, right?"  He said, "No.  It's our expert board."

Great.  Nonetheless, I was able to stand and balance and paddle.  When my legs got tired, I laid down on the paddle board to meditate.  It was beautiful, drifting along admiring the clouds over San Juan and saying a silent prayer of gratitude.  Thus, I turned a potentially athletic activity into just a variation of laying on the beach.  I tend to have a knack for turning any form of exercise into something more akin to sitting in a Starbucks with a book.

The other moment was getting pummeled by waves in the warm Caribbean water.  At home, I am the mom who stays on the beach saying, "No, you go ahead.  I'll watch."  In Puerto Rico that day, I was the girl who jumps in, then dives in, then gets thrown to the bottom of the ocean, then goes back in for more.  All of us were that girl.  With 28 children between us, all of them safe at home with their fathers, we all forgot about the lifeguard-sunscreen police-snack dispenser-cruise director-vacation planner-mom part of who we are and tapped into the latent core of the carefree girl inside of all of us.

It's fun to access and discover who you are in a new place.  Some aspects of yourself, you hope will remain the same no matter where you go.  You have to be true to your values, and you carry with you everything you have learned and become.  Other aspects, though, are just a product of your daily life.  I absolutely love who I am as a daily mom, wife, teacher.  And I greatly admire who my friends are in their daily lives.  But it is fun to peel off the layers of responsibility and discover that, yes, there is still a girl in there who loves to run in the ocean, who cackles when she laughs, who can paddleboard, who can go to a restaurant without cutting anyone's meat.

My trip was bookended by two similar events.  First Day:  Alone on the beach early, I leave my bag with strangers and run, full of abandon, into the ocean, immediately losing my sunglasses.  Last day:  With my friends, I run headlong into the ocean, declare out loud, "I just don't want to lose my sunglasses," and promptly get hit in the face with a wave that snatches my new sunglasses off my face, as well as the elastic out of my hair.

So, no matter who I am, who I become, what I learn and what I shed in carefree moments, I remain the same:  A girl who forgets about her sunglasses when she goes in the ocean.  And I think I'm OK with that.