Here’s what I’ve been Googling recently:
-”caribbean relocation information”
-”belize real estate”
-”best island relocation place”
-”Caribbean education system”
-”find a literary agent”
-”lady gaga pictures”
-”Costa Rica villa for sale”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been happy,” I told Hot Firefighter Husband in bed last night. We were watching The Daily Show. I was wearing my father’s old boxer shorts and t-shirt and I was flossing my teeth. Two days, two workouts, no shower. Yep. I’m that gross.
Husband doesn’t understand. “You have so much to look forward to,” he said. And because I’m a glass-half-empty kind of gal, I immediately thought of making school lunches, struggling over math homework, folding socks and chopping up raw chicken breasts, which totally skeeves me out. “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I occasionally take stock of my life, and measure it against whatever dream life I’ve conjured up at that moment.
I realize that I live a dream life: upscale home in an oceanfront suburb; adoring Hot Firefighter Husband who cleans bathrooms; the most gorgeous children on the planet; and a Keurig coffeemaker.
Forgive me, fate, but lately I’m finding myself wanting a more…organic existence. Hence the ridiculous Googling. Suppose we sold our house and moved to Costa Rica, and lived in a thatched-roof cottage by the sea, and my children grew up like Brooke Shields and that cute boy in the movie Blue Lagoon? I mean, except for the part where they ate the poison berries and fell into perennial comas. But work with me here: would that be so bad? If we had less stuff but more life? No soccer and dance, but surfing and fishing?
I’ve got the suburban blues. I don’t like the safety of this life, the predictability of not just the days, but the months and even the years. I want to go camping, but I’m scared of being uncomfortable. I want to cancel the cable, but what in the world would we do with no television? I want pull the children out of school, sell everything and travel around the world for a year, or at least spend the summer in an Indian ashram.
My neighbor has a rope swing, a big long stretch of rope attached to a towering oak branch. I like to climb up the makeshift ladder attached to the tree trunk, take a giant leap and land on the narrow wooden plank, and go soaring over the yard. My heart jumps a tiny bit each time I do it, and it makes me feel intrepid and fierce. Is that me? Or is it just my shadow, teasing me with what could be?
I wrote a short story once that was critiqued by the great Dorothy Allison. She liked the story, but she expressed concern that the narrator – me – wasn’t decisive enough. The main characters were unable to make decisions, she said, and so it was imperative that the writer of the story have a firm grasp of where the story was headed.
Her observation hit me like a pie in the face. The writer was me; the main character was me; the problem was….me. I am that indecisive voice, the person unable to make the tough decisions, the woman who simply lets life happen and wearily whines about the aftermath.
So I find myself here: organizing school supplies, worried about credit card debt, lusting after iPads and anticipating the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy. Holy shit, who am I?
My kids sit happily beside me coloring pictures of mermaids, blissfully ignorant of having a mother who’s feeling unfulfilled and bored.
But now here comes the Tyrant. She softly touches my arm. “Can I just sit in your lap for a minute?” she asks, and she twists her berry-brown limbs around mine and rests her sticky hair under my chin. She lifts her chin to kiss me, and burps in my mouth. I breathe in the milky sour puff of air, turn momentarily decisive, and kiss her sweet little lips. For now, it’s enough.
