A pelican glides by just offshore, there, out where the blue dolphins dance, emerging and disappearing into the sea. The kite hangs overhead, side-slipping in the ocean breeze, tethered to your umbrella pole by a gracile thread. You push your new sunglasses up on your nose and soak in the sun, the blue sky, the bleached sand; you hear the surf mumbling, “Stay.”
I could do it, you think, shifting in your canvas chair. “I could get a job renting beach umbrellas or maybe working on a fishing boat. In the evenings, I’ll sip margaritas and finish the novel.”
Your young daughter hands you a sand dollar from a plastic bucket filled with saltwater currency. “Let’s go cash this in,” you say. “We’ll buy this place.
The cast is perfect, a dry fly circling at the deep end of an eddy. There is a flash of silver and a tug that feels like you’ve hooked the river and it wants off. The trout streaks into the current, jumps once, twice, takes line, gives it back a reel-turn at a time. You stand in the riffle, gravel crunching, sliding under your feet. “This is a good one,” you think. Minutes later you net the fat rainbow, admire it for a few seconds, and release it back into the pool.
“I wonder what a piece of land on this stream would cost,” you wonder. “I could live here, deep in these dark woods, enjoying a life of fishing, solitude, and contemplation — become a wise old man.”
You’re sitting on the pool steps, waist-deep in cool water, deep in the steamy jungles of Quintana Roo, south of Cancun. The house is modern, open, with glass walls overlooking the pool on one side and the twisted green jungle on the other. Every morning, a troop of monkeys swings by, screeching through the trees as you sit outside with your coffee, marveling at the strangeness of it all.
“I’ve decided this must be a drug lord’s house,” your wife says from her chaise lounge, not opening her eyes. “Who else would build a place like this in the middle of nowhere?”
“They didn’t mention that in the rental brochure,” you say, “but whoever owns this house certainly knows how to get away from it all.”
Two grackles land near the diving board and begin dipping their heads in the water and shivering it off. They chortle and chatter like an old couple in the park. You slip neck-deep into the pool and they fly away, complaining at the intrusion.
“Hey, I’m thinking maybe we should look into property in this area.”
“Sure,” she says.
Two-hour layover in the Atlanta airport. You’re sitting in a bar that has a stupid name, talking to a man in gray — gray suit, socks, tie. He’s on his way to St. Louis, a software rep for a company you’ve heard of. You both watch as five men walk into the place — scruffy hair, tattoos, colorful funky clothes — obviously a band. You overhear them talking about going to the Bahamas to record.
“Nice work if you can get it,” says the gray man.
“I used to be in a band myself,” you say.
“Really?” says Mr. Gray. “Me, too!”
You sigh and take another pull on your beer.
How many times have you been tempted to start over, to ditch your life, your career, and make a big change? If you’re like me, those moments occurred, but were seldom followed up on, unless you count moving to a new city to take a job, which last happened to me in 1993.
Change is difficult, even when the goal is worthy and attainable. It’s much more difficult when it’s not worthy and it’s forced upon you, and when you’re not sure how to fight against it. That’s where we all are now, in the midst of an attempt to change how our country will be governed, to overturn our core human values. Democracy itself seems tethered by a gracile thread. I take solace in knowing we’re all in this together, and that that’s the only way we’ll get out of it. I don’t know how it ends. I do think that we’re well past the “have a margarita and watch the dolphins” stage. Courage, my friends.
