My mom usually takes some time to warm up to an idea, so when I suggested a European cruise for the destination of my grad school graduation trip, she balked. Us? In Europe? For the first time? Alone? She told me she'd think about it, but when she had suggested a trip, she was thinking on this continent. I'm fairly certain she didn't give it another thought.
Until, that is, I delivered an $800 check for the airline tickets, which was when she knew I was serious. The deal was I would pay my airfare and my parents would cover the rest. (And unless we were going to a NASCAR race, my dad was more than happy to man the house while we "gallivanted".)
So after months of meticulous planning and many nights deliberating between different cruise lines and researching different port cities, we set sail.
We left my nervous father with extra long hugs at the tiny Marquette airport and set off for Rome by way of Chicago. I followed my nervous mother through baggage check. Eight port cities waited for us on a 14-day cruise.
In departing, I was also leaving behind a quasi-relationship, a "relationship" with air quotes, one in which I was an anxious ball of energy, so wound up and turned around that I was not behaving like myself. He was constantly alternating between declaring his desire to be "casual" and leaving me charming voicemails (as constantly as someone who waits two weeks and then calls three days in a row can do). We were a tangle of misunderstandings, mixed messages and fear. If we'd had a song, ours would have been measure after measure of staccato played in different tempos. (Staccato, an Italian word meaning 'detached', indicates that the note is to be played shorter than notated, usually half the value, the rest of the metric value falling silent.)
We had a pattern: he would warm up to the idea (of what? of me? of us? of love? of his own worth?), spend a few days leaning too closely in the bar or giggling the morning away in bed, and then disappear for a week, two weeks, a month. He greeted me after an ER trip with an intense kiss: "I'm so glad you're okay! I need you to be okay!" We watched movies and laughed on the couch while he healed from a snowmobiling accident. We had lengthy conversations about the things that lovers talk about: politics, family, fears, dreams. He once disappeared for 5 weeks and then called me on Valentine's Day, sure that we'd spend the following night together. (We did.) After a week of checking my phone constantly, he called me the night before my birthday, sure that, despite me having friends in town, we would meet up that night. (We did.) On the night of my actual birthday, he showed up two hours late to a party I had invited him to weeks in advance. He was drunk after dinner with his friends, and looking for cake. My friends gathered in my living room the next day and listened as I cried my trademark tears. I was being reeled in slowly and then cast out to sea, but I always had my eye out for the hook.
I was miserable, and I had no say in the amount of time we spent together. Yet I ate it up, making myself available and squirreling away jokes to tell him in an effort to keep him longer. He was often sad or drunk, but making him smile made me smile. Just as suddenly as he would decide he needed to see me, he would drop away.
So I left the States in the way I usually leave relationships: with knots in my stomach, filled with uncertainty and general unease. I never returned his last phone call, and then I awoke to a 5am alarm and boarded a plane: The proverbial double barline. In other areas of my life, there is nothing I hate more than misunderstandings and unfinished business, yet this is my typical relationship exit style: I have to hurt you last, and then I need you to disappear forever, or at least long enough for the lesson to set in. (I'm working on that.)
This chapter in my memoir will be titled "Barlines".
On the third day, a small group of us traveled to Sorrento, a small town in Southern Italy. In an 80-passenger bus, we wound up narrow roads and zipped past pedestrians sauntering happily down the sidewalks. From up on the cliffs, we looked down into a canyon of houses and shops, the entire hillside peppered with a stark contrast of trees and stone buildings. Everywhere you looked, there were polka-dotted lemon and lime trees. Once our bus parked, we darted in and out of shops and finally settled down to lunch with wine in a little cafe overlooking the sea. The endless water impressed the others, but it only reminded me of home.
The passerbys looked so happy, so youthful and strong, so incredibly content. I watched intently, looking to glean wisdom from these people, whose lives looked effortless and full of love.
Suddenly, I realized what I had done. It was the first time in my life that I saw my relationship-with-air-quotes pattern so clearly--not just the how, but the why. I had been settling for way less than I was worth, agonizing over boys to whom I was an afterthought (if they even thought of me at all). I had been doubling over, clawing at something I wasn't even sure was a good fit, just for the sake of having something, someone. As I was nearing the end of grad school, I knew I was gearing up for something. Yet, I was terrified to go it alone.
It dawned on me: I was creating my own misery. I was all but inviting the misery in, asking whether it prefered water or soda, and fussing over it while it contaminated the great life I was building myself. I let that sink in as my mom and aunt obsessed over which gifts to buy for whom. When the waiter checked in, I used the only string of Italian words I had bothered to learn: "un altro, per favore" ("another, please."). As I sipped on the preservative-free (and therefore hangover-free) wine, I felt my jaw loosen for what felt like the first time since we boarded the little plane in Marquette.
I took notice of a woman walking by. She was easily the boldest woman I'd ever seen in person. Her dark glossy hair was tied up in a twist and her wrist was wrapped in a red silk scarf. Her cat-eyed sunglasses were a tad too big for her cherubic face--but glamorously so. She was wearing a chic and refined outfit, so quintessentially European she was almost a caricature. The expression on her face was unreadable, but there was no doubt she was confident. She was going somewhere, and the crowd in front of the cafe, likely another tour, seemed to part for her.
A man in tan pants, a loose white top and suspenders (!) suddenly came running after her. Compared to the men in suits sitting at the cafe on this airy Sunday, he looked sloppy, uncouth. "Celia," he called out, then a cascade of desperate-sounding Italian I couldn't understand. He grabbed her arm, she turned only for a second, long enough to say, "Ciao-ciao" ("Bye-bye") and then walked away, looking unaffected. The man stood for a second, shoulders slumped, and he snapped his fingers as if to say, I am such a fool, and then turned back to where he had come from.
(In the coming days, we would hear "Ciao ciao!" all around us. It seemed it was the chic way to say goodbye, almost as if to say, "bye bye, baby!" with a certain attitude. It became a joke in our cabin--"I'm going to the loo, ciao ciao!")
I imagined myself walking away from anyone, let alone a handsome man in suspenders, so calmly, almost flippantly, willing myself to believe that I had it in me. It occurred to me that maybe Celia wasn't walking away from the boy. Maybe she was walking away from who she was with that boy, or even countless boys before him. (It occurred to me later that maybe wine made me a little dramatic.)
I looked around at the rest of the people in the cafe, at my mom and aunt who were still discussing the proper size of limoncello to give their co-workers. I looked after Celia, but she had rounded a corner.
"Grazie," I told the waiter as he set down my meal. I glanced in the direction that Celia had gone. I said a silent "Grazie" to her as well.
I let the moment linger, waiting just a while longer to begin eating, which in itself felt very European. I felt the warm wind on my cheeks, let it toss my hair wildly, slapping it against my forehead. I said a silent "Grazie" to myself for good measure, for getting myself to uncharted territories, for not letting fear hold me back, for finally letting go.
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