Essential Travel

Suitcase in hand, you head to the station. No threat of danger will stop you. Right or wrong, you are heading out and there is a song in your heart.

As you walk, you think. As you think, you smile. But no one can see your delight. The light blue paper mask hides that. Unless someone were to look beyond your glasses, into your eyes. Then, they would see the new life. The new life sparkling there in the time of this new and rolling death. 

Should you be so celebratory within your heart? Singing a song as the reaper and ill-willed fate swirled, dervish-like through the days and months, sending blackness to this person and that, by the thousands.   Was celebrating life now inappropriate? Because celebrating you are, inside. The little kick to your step might be a hint to others of your uplifted spirit. The frolicking love you had craved to accept for so long, suddenly seems ripe for the picking during this wave of epic epidemic and economic tragedy. The lift in your foot roll is happy. There is no doubt in your mind that while so many tides have turned black and turbulent, yours has turned bright ocean blue, stretching out ahead, jubilant and alive, bobbing with life.

They told you not to go. So many had said that it was not safe to travel. You expected to spend a month of sleepless nights pondering the pros and cons of heading out. Instead, ever since you spoke to him, you have had a sure and quiet certainty that you would embark upon this journey. You have your mask. You have your hand sanitizer. You have your beating heart. You have your dreams.

Into your powder blue valise, you have placed only what you need. At the core is a serpentine coil of lingerie, all lace, elastic and small metal clasps. Twined together is a black silk garter belt, an ivory pair of thigh high stockings, a navy pair embellished with flowers, and a black set of fishnets, a sheer black bralette with appliqued roses, a gray cotton, lace-paneled bra, and a white embroidered push up. One pair of green suede high heeled shoes and an arctic blue cotton robe with kimono sleeves you had gently added to the items within the well-loved, boxy leather traveler given to you by your mother. Five pairs of cotton, lace panties in wine, midnight, white, dusk and ocean were what you included next, folding each one into a small, neat square. One white Dotted Swiss dress and your toiletry bag you had set on top. In one side pocket, you put your gold leather sandals and in the other one a book by Nabokov, another by Didion, and a third by Foster Wallace. A silver-embossed notebook and mechanical pencil you took off a bookshelf and put into the book pocket as well. 

You ruffled your hair and looked at your packing. As far as you are concerned, this was a fine bag of items to take on a last voyage out, if that is what this was. The thought of a last trip struck you as more exhilarating than frightening. Essential even more, this trip, if it were to be your last. You did a little box step to the classic rhythm and blues playing off your phone as you pulled the top of the suitcase to meet the bottom and clicked the silver clasps down in a satisfying snap of completion. You had placed your packed bag on the tile floor just inside the door.

Essential trips only were what were advised by governors in most states. Leave the house if you have to, was the message sent to the people of the land where the pandemic raged. You would have thought you might have had more of a conflict within, calling this trip “essential.” But, surprisingly, you do not. Inside, you know that this is the most essential trip ever. For you.  

Say, you were asked by security to open your bag for a random search, you reflect. Those who explored its contents may judge you harshly. They would find the items suggested a trip of pure pleasure and carnal delight. What they would know from the collection of lingerie is that, yes, pleasure, play and rest were the focus of the essential trip you had planned. You shrugged your shoulders back and rested your left hand on the top of the smooth, black patent leather purse hanging from your shoulder. What they would likely not know was that it also was essential for your heart. When had essential needs of body and heart been rent apart? When a trip was essential to the body, surely it was essential to the heart. You nodded your head to the imagined critics. For your creativity. For your love and your life to flourish. What could be more essential than that?

Your eye settles on a red, vermillion flycatcher that has darted down to a statue in the small park you walk by on the way to the station. A red flash of life – six-legged death in its short, sharp bill -- flits up to perch on a thin branch of a mesquite tree that had leafed out freshly in the impossibly vibrant green of spring. The smell of life, water from the sprinklers in the small plot of grass, perfumes the air.

Then your attention shifts to notice the smooth handle of the 1950s luggage fits your right palm perfectly. Your footsteps are light on the pavement as its morning coolness surges up through the thin rubber soles of your sneakers. The quick steps you take are from excitement rather than lateness or panic.  The shuttle station is your first stop. You will board a van headed north from the border town to the airport in the desert. You will fly to an island surrounded by sea and you will revel with your love. Yes, revel in the days and nights spent skin to skin, lips to ear, hands to heart, heart to heart. You will kindle a spirit of love that you followed through the dangers of life. You will do this no matter the risk. No matter the cost.