From the moment I step on the bus and it pulls out of the
gas station and onto the highway I am happy. It has very comfortable seats and
free wi-fi. I spend more time texting friends or e-mailing them, here, on the
bus heading away from Deep River, than I did in the whole month I was there. It
is as if I am a dysfunctional teenager only able to keep up cyber
relationships. I don’t mind the wait at the airport. On the plane I have not
only a window seat but three whole seats to myself so I can either watch my own
personal real-time google-earth display pass below me or lie down snooze in
comfort as I so choose.
My room is not ready when I arrive at the hotel but that is
OK. I snag a rum-punch from the nearest bar and start to explore the grounds. I
will actually enjoying being here by myself… I do not have to worry whether the
gym is good enough for Fred or the food good enough for Geoff. In past I have
had the habit of fussing so much over others’ perceived happiness that I am
unable to relax myself until I know that everyone else is involved in an
appropriate activity. This week I will be able to follow my own schedule
unhindered. The beach is fine white sand and the ocean is that magical
progression of rich transparent blues and turquoise greens that hint at
fantastic snorkeling. The tang of salt in the air brings back a cacophony of joys
from beaches I have visited in past and the sound of the waves lapping reminds
me of my endless days as a child playing happily on the beach.
Then a woman who was on the same plane as me comes up to say
hi and her first question is, ‘Are you here on your own?’ I know she is just
being friendly but her question starts me fretting. Ought I have stayed and
gone skiing with Karen? I remember how much fun Alexander and I had spring
skiing one year. Ought I have taken the week to re-connect with those at home
who I am not seen since I got back? What, exactly, am I doing here, all by
myself? Is it really that weird? And once I have started worrying the questions
come thick and fast; will I enjoy this resort enough? how much damage have I
done to the planet’s environment merely through travelling here? just how odd
is it really to be happy when you are by yourself? and on and on… I spend an
hour with these questions and more hovering overhead but decide that I cannot
let them cloud my week. I will take things as they come and enjoy myself even
though I am ‘here on my own’.
And I do.
The resort it turns out, the one I spent all of 5 seconds
choosing Saturday morning, the one that still had rooms left because everyone else
who spent more time choosing chose somewhere else, is just fine. It is a large
sprawling place with well over 1000 guests in a variety of two story buildings.
It has three buffet restaurants and four pools, five snack bars and six a la
carte restaurants, seven bars and uncountable little nooks and crannies holding
gyms and spas and such like. It was not designed and built all at one time but
started small and was added to in a hodge-podge fashion with, it seems, no
thought to ‘city planning’, so there is no apparent rhyme or reason to its
layout but this adds to its charm. As you walk around you pass tennis courts
and playgrounds, mini-putts and hot tubs, and you continually think, ‘why
here?’ but it is all good. There are seating areas all over the place,
sprawling lounges with comfy couches and arm chairs in the extensive lobbies,
wicker chairs and tables in alcoves near the rooms, grouping of swing seats and
hammocks under the trees, and, of course, beach chairs round the pools and down
by the sea. Palm trees grow everywhere giving lots of shade and huge bushes of
bougainvillea provide flashes of brilliant colour. The beach has classic endless
sand stretching to the horizon in one direction and rocky headlands creating a
series of small intimate coves in the other.
I spend the week as if at summer camp. I join the biking
group that leaves at 8 am and does a 20 minute loop along the highway (4 lanes
and totally deserted except for us, horse drawn traps, and the occasional bus)
then through a small town and back along a road running right beside the ocean.
I do the stretching at 9:30 and the aerobics at 10:00 then race down the beach
to do the shallow water SCUBA dive that leaves at 11:30 each morning… in the
afternoons I go out on the catamarans, or go back out into the sea to snorkel,
or walk the boardwalk that meanders along in front of half a dozen other
resorts before coming to a small picturesque river where local fishing boats
are moored, or merely lounge in a pool stopping at the swim up bar to have a
mojito or two and chat with whomever is there. As the afternoon starts to cool
I retire to my room for a quick shower and change and then take my crossword
puzzle or my kindle and sit in one of the quiet coves as the sky turns pink. I
have dinner reservations at 8:30 each evening after which there are at least
two entertainment choices and then a disco that runs till 2 am (though I am
usually in bed before 2!).
As it is March Break many of the other guests here this week
are teachers and a surprizing number of them are also here on their own. We
bump into each other often enough that we all know each other’s names and we
tend to congregate into a group for a pre-dinner drink in the lobby with the
piano bar in that hour after it is totally dark but before the second supper
serving. We all agree that there really are some freedoms that come from
vacationing on your own (though the disadvantages remain unspoken).
And I am happy here despite being on my own but that is at
least partly because it is so definitely a week away. I am much more ambivalent
wrt if I could be happy on my own in the long term. I had an e-mail from Geoff
before I left saying that he hoped our weekly dinners together would turn into
more. I in turn suggested that we spend a trial month together starting perhaps
on April 1st (it seemed such an appropriate date for such a venture)
but he hasn’t replied back so maybe he meant less more than that. I assume he
knows by now that I am totally loopy and I sense that if we could put our
marriage back together it would be good for me. I feel very much like a
balloon, a helium filled balloon, and I fear merely floating up up and away off
into the sky. (Balloons expand as they go up don’t they, as the air gets
thinner, and then eventually, when they are so far away that no one can see
them anymore, explode?) I feel, if Geoff would take me back, that our relationship
would serve as a tether, holding me to reality. I feel I need a tether. I don’t
know, however, if I have it in me to provide whatever it is he might want from
a relationship. Here, while I am
away, it seems a good idea and I await, not without curiosity, both to see how
he replies and how the idea will sit with me when I get back home.
Meanwhile I check the weather – hot and sunny – and decide I
am dry enough to go swimming again.
I quite like this, living like a lizard, soaking up the sun.
And, as if it really were summer camp, I receive a
certificate on the last day for ‘most energetic aquafit participant of the week’!
How long ‘till next March Break?
