Year of A to Zen

Sitting at a gate in an airport, waiting on a connecting flight to Seattle, I almost don't care if the upcoming plane falls from the sky. Almost. The only reason that I care if it happens or not is because my son and mom would also be on the plane. If it's just me, and the plane goes spiraling to the ground it would have gotten no more than a fleeting 'yeah, this tracks' and shrug.  

In the past two years, I had lost my marriage, lost my husband of sixteen years, my son’s father; first to circumstances and then permanently upon his sudden death. I had been led by a situation to sell our family home of thirteen years, buy a condo under construction in a new county, and move my son, myself, and our dog in with my mom while waiting for the condo to become ready. The week we moved into my mom’s attic our dog passed away. Just a week later, here we are sitting at this airport, waiting on the flight to Seattle. 

None of us feel like taking this trip. My mom is feeling flustered with two family members moving into her house and bringing so much darkness and weighted air. I'm in a very dark place. The only reason it matters if I live or die is for my son's sake. I can't bear the thought of him being made an orphan. My son, being forced to leave all he ever knew, and start a new life in a new school was angry and bitter. The son currently sitting a couple seats away, pretending to ignore me. He was angry at the world for taking his dad. Angry at me for uprooting his life. It was for his own good, but he didn’t care. Wasn’t convinced that I even knew what was good for him. We sat separately. Together in our misery. 

I made an important decision. If I was going to live, then I better start making the most of it. My son was watching. He deserves the best of me and wasn't getting that. It is a phoenix out of the ashes story that I'm craving. Needing. Grabbing a notebook, I began making plans. Starting now, it would be the Year of A to Zen. Seems like a good play on my name and seems like a good way to restart my life. Little did I know the jump start that was about to happen. The plan was to try something new, different, or scary every day for one year. The goal was to open up my life to experiences, dragging myself out of this dark hole in the process. We were merely surviving, my son and I. It’s time to start thriving. 

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I would change the course of our lives for the better. Rewrite our life. That was the goal. A grand goal for a depressed, grief-stricken, anxiety-ridden mom and her hurting teenage son. 

Honestly, I was hoping it was something that I could keep up with for longer than a couple of months. That sunny July day, it seemed possible. Everything seemed possible in that hopeful moment.  

  

The Awakening

Fifteen years. All it took to get me here was fifteen years. Plus an hour and a half plane ride, a two-hour car trip, and a five-mile bike trek. Turns out it was so easy that I wondered why it took so long. Walking down that sandy path towards the Atlantic Ocean the only thing that kept going through my head was a scene from the last episode of "The Office". It's Pam's last interview, and she's telling the camera how she sat a few feet away from Jim, and it took her years to get to him. Inexplicably, that's the scene my brain kept playing for me. Even as it registered cacti growing up out of the sand (didn't expect to see that here in Delaware), crab tracks making their way down the sandy path, and the sound of the waves calling for me to come closer. Even as everything around me registered in a surreal sense, I kept hearing Pam's voice saying how it would make her heart soar if someone learned from watching her.

 And, I thought, 'guess your heart isn't soaring cause it took me 15 years.' 

Then, my toes met the ocean and there was no more thinking. There was only feeling. What; I don't know. The brain switched from scenes of a t.v. show to simply absorbing. Absorbing the sound the waves make when they meet the boundary of land, the silent stretch of beach, a lone bald eagle soaring above, and the sight of dolphins breaking the water's surface before diving out of sight again. It didn't seem real. And yet, here I was seeing it all with my own eyes.  

A couple of weeks later, driving down the road, a song by Mumford and Sons called 'The Cave' would come on the radio, and only then would it hit me that's what I was feeling that day on Cape Henlopen Beach. Feeling like I just walked out of a cave, walking upside down on my hands. And, the world outside of that cave responded with, 

'she's here! Cue the waves, cue the eagle, cue the dolphins, she's here!' 

It was like we had all been waiting a long time for this moment. Longer than fifteen years, maybe.  

That morning, I wasn't thinking of a song. I couldn't name the feeling. All I know was it took a long time to get where the Atlantic Ocean meets the sand at Cape Henlopen, at the terminus of the American Discovery Trail. Knew that something more than just a leg of the ADT was beginning. 

We stood there that morning, my friend Kim and I. Stood at the beginning of something unknown. Kim is the friend that is just adventurous, crazy, and loyal enough to say yes to this quest I've dreamt up. Would we make it through the whole leg? Would we cross the state of Delaware? Or, crap out after the first day? I couldn't wait to find out.  

Cape Henlopen, Delaware
Terminus of the American Discovery Trail