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 Holly Winter Living The Life Of Holly June 6, 2003 I opened my eyes. It was useless. I couldn’t sleep. It was too bad there wasn’t anyone I could call. Darlin-man was still in surgery. I felt like bugging someone. Anyone. Gail in Boston. Mark in London. Steve in Alabama. Mindy on her cell phone. But. It was too late at night. And no time difference could help me out. Not tonight. I reset the alarm clock for three thirty in the morning. I reset my second alarm for three thirty three so that I could see repetitive threes. I got out of bed and got a drink of water, stopped mid gulp and filled my glass with vodka. Surely this would help me sleep? I took one sip of the syrupy alcohol and dumped the rest down the drain. Nope. I knew better. There was nothing that would help me sleep tonight. Nothing at all. I can never sleep the night before a big vacation. No. Not anxiety. I am not plagued with worries about plane crashes or boating accidents or trains that never arrive. Not me. In my dreams those things never happen. I always arrive in the nick of time and am carried off to another wonderful destination. Travel so excites me that I get an adrenalin rush from it. I know it’s strange. And the fact that I don’t have to go bungee jumping to experience this travel rush annoys my thrill seeking friends. All I have to do is go to the airport or a train station. Even a dingy bus terminal will wake up the wander lust in me. There are so many places to go and so many places to see. Will I ever tire of travel? Um. No. People who go away are surprised when they get to see a Holly who is more Holly than that Holly who likes to go to sleep by eleven at home and is fairly cautious about all endeavors. I’m not at all like that when I travel. I’m always quick to take the road less traveled because my undying curiosity NEEDS to know why nobody wanted to go there. I want the journey with the best story. I need to find the person with the worst woe so that I can hear it all. This shot of adrenalin kicked in over a week ago, so this was not the first night that sleep has eluded me. And. Here it was the night before I was due to leave. I needed a good nights sleep in my own bed. But. The last thing I wanted to do was lay down and rest. I didn’t want to. And since there was nobody around to warm up some milk for me or tell me a bedtime story, there was little hope that I would drift off to sleep any time soon. I pulled out my guitar and played every song I knew, one after the other, as fast as I could. Yeah. That took about five minutes. Ok. Fine. I opened up my suitcase and rifled through it again. Was I forgetting anything? Maybe I would want more protein bars. I added five. Anything else? Nope. Nothing else. I got out my photo albums from various trips that I had taken. I breezed through the flamenco dance clubs with Louisa in Spain again, celebrated Eliza’s wedding at the slot machines in Vegas, climbed a volcano in Costa Rica, ate oatmeal in Haiti with Lanie and some orphans, did a native dance on the Apache Indian Reservation, worked at a day camp in London, went horse back riding for a month in the mountains of Utah, lounged with Gail on a yacht in the Galapagos Islands, spun around in a tire swing on the lake in Toronto, had sushi in San Francisco, bought cheese at the market in Amsterdam, ate key lime pie in Key West, swam in blue water in Mexico, picked and ate my first fresh grapes with Ralph in France, and I will never forget getting to see Miss Peanut crowned in Dothan, Alabama. (She thought it was an honor.) Yeah. No. Looking at those albums didn’t make me sleepy. Because Darlin-man and I were about to go on our first adventure together. The Cayman Islands. “Do you know anything about them?” He asked. “No. Nothing.” “Good.” “Good?” “Oh. Nothing.” He smiled. Yeah. So. I did some research. They were spending the every week this year celebrating their five hundredth anniversary. Um. That’s a lot of celebrating. But. I especially liked looking up the weather report. It read: Today: 85 degrees, sunny. Tomorrow. The same. The rest of the week. The same. Hey. I could be that weather guy. No. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking up things to do. The websites spoke of shopping and dinning and beaches and friendly people. I was going to let Darlin-man be my tour guide. He had been there six times before. He knew the island. He knew the restaurants. And. He already had a plan, which suited me just fine. I had another sip of water and climbed into bed. I had three hours to sleep. I had to resort to my old trick. You know. Think about American History text books. It always works. Cause. Is there anything drearier than the war of 1812? I mean. When compared to traveling… And so while I tried to trick myself with threats of an all night study session, I let the possibilities of the only real Christmas morning unravel for me. A vacation. When I woke up, the best gift on earth would start. An adventure. One step at a time. And. Each moment for the next week I would be in a place where I had never been and talking to people I didn’t know and seeing new things that had nothing to do with my real life. I know. Thinking about traveling wakes me up. So. I relaxed into my can’t sleep mode and drifted in and out of knowing that there is nothing as exciting as the unknown adventure. Ah. Pure delight. ------------ About the author: Holly Winter is a teacher and a writer and a flight attendant living in Denver, Colorado, USA. She can be reached at her website or email: Holly@livingthelifeofholly.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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