15—Through the Rainbow

To: Friends and Family

Subject: Through the Rainbow

From: walden@intermind.net

Greetings All,

So many wanted me to let them know how the trip went that I decided to keep a log. Because of the cats, I’m limiting the driving time each day, and we’re taking a longer route through California and up 101 to avoid snow. 

Dec. 25: Modesto, CA

We left Vegas as planned this morning. The cats slept all the way to Motel 6 and find our room way more interesting than I do. As I walked around the neighborhood, people were coming and going with shopping bags full of gifts and food. They appeared more busy than merry.

How many gifts will end up returned or at Goodwill? Peace on Earth and Goodwill to shoppers. Why not simplify the season—we each buy something we really want or need and pretend it’s from everyone who loves us. What did Joseph and Mary do with the sheep, gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold—good choice. But sheep? And all that perfumy stuff? I wonder if Jesus had allergies. 

While enjoying a dinner of reconstituted vegetable soup, fruit, and bread, I watched the Christmas choirs on TV. I felt relieved to be free of the holiday busyness. Free but alone, like a lingering soul.

•••

Dec. 26: Eureka, CA

As we cut across California before heading north to Eureka, our drive through forested hills and valleys was quiet and uneventful. Except for the rainbow. 

14—One Week Before Departure

December 18, 1998.

Anxiety crawled over me like ants. 

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I told my therapist.

“Just go,” she said. “Have fun.” 

“Fun?” I snapped. “Fun is for people who can afford vacations. I thought I was supposed to be on some big damned quest.”

This woman who was more annoying to me than anyone I knew stopped scribbling notes, set aside her big yellow tablet, and looked me square in the eyes.

“Just what is it that you want from life?” she asked. 

“Magic,” I quipped sardonically.

“Magicians are merely masters of illusion,” she observed then looked at her watch.

Time was up.

As I was leaving, she patted me on the shoulder.

I wanted to slap her.

•••

Later over lunch, my friends kept referring to my trip as “the grand adventure.” Easy for them to say. I mean, on Christmas Day, there they would be—safe and merry in their lovely homes, snugged up with their significant others, surrounded by family, and secure in their jobs. And there I’d be—a small, fifty-six-year-old woman with no prospects setting forth with two disgruntled cats for a month alone in a dank cabin by an inhospitable sea. Why hadn’t anyone even tried to stop me? 

This wasn’t a quest. It was an act of precarious and escalating delusion.

•••

Back at my apartment, I phoned my father in Pennsylvania. Dad had always despised and even feared travel. What’s more, he’d started warning me as early as first grade that my “nonconformist notions” put me on a “collision course.” Clearly, he’d been right. 

Surely Dad would support my decision to accept reality and finally do the sensible thing. 

13—Against All Experts

I sat back on the sofa and watched from behind a book. Curiosity would soon draw the cats out of hiding. Then once they discovered the new carriers with treats, catnip-scented towels, and toys that jingled and bobbled, getting them inside would be a cinch.  

Half an hour later, cd approached, interested but mistrustful. She sniffed briefly at the $91.72 worth of gifts selected for the finest in feline travel comfort, returned to the top of the cat condo, and for the next two days skirted the carriers as if they were traps. MITTS didn’t even bother to sniff but rather dashed past them to the kitchen for a quick bite of food then bolted back into hiding.

Analyzing the problem, I decided that since none of us was much for casual play anyway, we should just skip ahead to Dr. Sam’s reassuring but confident stage. I sat on the floor between the carriers and, to my amazement, was immediately joined by both cats, at which point, my problem turned into a dilemma. This dilemma was the cats themselves. 

12—Old Cats...New Tricks

Within minutes of entering Safeway, I’d filled my cart with all the organic tea, beans, soy milk, whole-grain pasta, tomato sauce, brown rice, oats, buckwheat, quinoa, and other staples not likely to be found in a village with a grocery store whose three-foot by four-foot produce cooler lay in the back corner behind the wine, cracker, candy, and cupcake sections. With provisions enough to hold a vegetarian special-forces unit for a month, I rolled my cart into the first-aid and hardware sections where I selected items for coping with every physical or automotive crisis not requiring a surgeon or mechanic. I then picked out a set of storage containers to keep my purchases orderly and dry during transit. Secure in my preparedness, I felt my confidence mounting—until I stepped into the pet-supply section.

Both my cats were such confirmed homebodies that driving a mile to the vet took us to the brink of meltdown. After adding a blue travel-sized litter box to my cart, I began to imagine what 1,300 miles in a car and two over-nights in a motel would do to them. 

cd 

MITTS

But then as fate would have it, words of hope sprang out at me from the magazine rack in the checkout line:

11—Quest-ionable Zip Code

Making my way through the clang and jingle of slot machines back in the Las Vegas airport, I rejected the idea of returning to the ocean. The terror, I concluded, was just a temporary insanity brought on by stress. My final blissful moment with the sea was a release of that stress. I was now ready to write the book that would inspire Americans to demand better schools for our children. But after several dismal days at the computer, I couldn't sleep at night without waking up from the same nightmare to the sound of my own scream—I was standing alone in a large white room, looking out through a wall of windows at the wide blue sea, in no danger, but paralyzed with terror. Even after I woke up, several moments would pass before I could move.

“What’s happening to me?” I asked my therapist.

“What do you think is happening?” she asked.

I wanted to rip her office apart.

Outside, I sat in my car, staring at the cement block wall at the end of the parking lot.
I’d sworn to never touch my emergency fund but my mind was deteriorating rapidly into a state of emergency.  
Back home, I phoned the two rental agents in Oregon. 

The first property manager sent a lovely colored brochure with pictures of an apartment in Oceanside. The apartment featured a tiled bath, wood floors, and a recently remodeled kitchen. Phone and utilities were included. 

The second option was a house in Netarts. There were no pictures, just the verbal promise of a wood stove and a view of the ocean. The place had a phone jack, but I’d have to bring a phone and arrange for the connection. I would also pay the electric and be responsible for the final cleaning.