On Better Late Than Never

It's just before 6 a.m. in Hawaii, and I'm sitting on my lanai (balcony) with a little tiny bird near my feet. Yesterday some birds flew into my hotel room, hung out for awhile, and then fluttered back out, all made up of calm and air and light. This morning I couldn't sleep because of the cacophony of the birds, the hundreds of these little singing featherpuffs living inside the tree near my balcony. This is sort of endearing, and sort of annoying, but mostly it's just different. I could curl up inside of anything different and live there forever.

So far, this trip has been sock-rocking. It's funny, I never want to go to places like Hawaii because I often feel they're overdone. Everyone goes to Hawaii, therefore, it's not special anymore, right? What a stupid, snobby way to think. Travel is the same (sometimes) as literature - there is a reason that certain places (books) are beloved. Maui is exceptional. It's so beautiful it's irritating. It's so joyously colorful and bright that it's stupid. I could live here forever and never grow tired of those mountains and that sea. 

The photos below, of me wearing a bikini on a beach, happened on day one, and I need to memorialize them here. I have wanted this moment since I was old enough to understand that girls are supposed to be beautiful and thin, and if they aren't, they have somehow failed at girlhood and should be whole-bodily ashamed. I absorbed that lesson young. Definitely before my teenage years, and possibly before I was 10. I have spent my entire youth loathing this body, instead of loving it.

I wish I knew at any point in time that the power to feel beautiful is always in your own hands. You can either find it by being healthy and fit, which then (as a little bonus) conforms you to certain societal standards, or you can buck all of that and just be confident with what you have, but either way - the power to feel gorgeous has always been inside of you. No one ever took it from you. You just gave it away. 

I'll be 32 in a few weeks. I had the idea that, when I lost weight, a svelte 19 year old body would pop out. Obviously, I've been wildly disappointed in that. My body is every inch of my age. But yesterday I walked on the beach for a few miles with my husband. Then I sprinted a quick mile in the hotel gym, then I lifted weights for an hour. Later that day I ate a big lunch, a huge ice cream cone, and drank a sugary tropical drink. Then I swam in the ocean. I feel bad about none of it. I felt alive and healthy and vital. Which is gorgeous. Finally. 

Pretty Halcyon Days

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned.
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done.

How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.

How pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the viking and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad at the shark;
If it's windy they sink;
If it isn't, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.

How pleasant the salt anaesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.

- Ogden Nash

Tomorrow I'm heading off to Hawaii for a little vacation with my lover, my dude, my main squeeze, my guy who makes the food and walks the dog. We are long overdue for this sort of thing - by which I mean, we have never before done this sort of thing. We travel hard and often, but we do not beach vacation. It's uncharted marital territory, this idea of "laying about," this concept of "relaxing." Who on earth will we be, in this crazy alternate reality?

For myself, I have extremely specific plans to drink all of the rum and to eat all of the things. I also will take lots of beachside morning runs and sit in reverent silence in as many patches of hot sun as I can find. I may throw myself gracelessly into a wave or two, but mostly I just want to wrap myself in beauty and color. I intend to leap face first into the first bush of tropical flowers I can find. This will probably be painful. Also, do bushes have flowers? I bet they do in Hawaii. I want to absorb tropical flowers into my tired soul. I want to sleep forever, but not in a death way. In a delicious comfy pajama-ed windows open to the night air kind of way.

Mostly, I just want the rum. And speaking of delicious things, this poem is fracking delicious. It begs to be read aloud. Do it, now, wherever you are. Who cares if you look ridiculous? Read this poem, now, with flair and dramatic import, and get thee to a rum-based beverage immediately afterwards. Your day will immediately improve. I promise.