point me...in the direction of albuquerque - sunday 6/18/06

i sat at this computer a year and a half ago with pam, making hotel reservations, mapping out where we were going to go, renting a car. but as i was typing, i knew somehow that i would not get to go on that trip. i was right. instead, pam ended up taking her mother while i languished in st. mary's hospital recovering from complications from the gastric bypass surgery that i had had four months before. it wasn't meant to be then, and i knew it.

well, i lived to plan another day. and so, a month ago pam and i sat back at this same computer and plotted and planned again. this time, i knew i would make it, although everything in the world seem to be working against me psychologically to get there. i got myself through the end of the school year and all the other things that were sucking me dry, to find myself at one in the morning trying to sleep with a retarded cat (kee) who meowed and dug his claws into me whenever i moved. no matter. i was going to new mexico...

the last time i flew was in 2001 before 9/11, and on the plane i realized that it had been since 1999 since i had been on a vacation or away for a week without austin. a lot has changed...i have gained a lot of weight and lost a husband. i have lost a lot of weight and gained a perspective that i didn't have before bebo decided to get gone. basically, it has been a quest to find me, and i think i finally have by having gone on this vacation. i went to get healed, and i did.

you can't do those things by yourself sometimes. i had pam, possibly the only person in the world who could put up with me for all these years and travel with me. she is about the only person in the world i can completely be myself with, and boy, is that scary. but with pam, it isn't. it's safe, and that means the world to me.

what a combination we are: beauty and the beast, thelma and louise! i didn't think it was possible for anyone to have that much beauty stuff and she didn't think it was possible that anyone could have that many t-shirts! she is a skinny mini, and i am...large-boned. the camera loves her and i run screaming as if my ass was on fire when i see one (cameras shun me for good reason.) and my hair...let's just say that no matter what she does with hers, she looks put together. me, on the other hand...well, when i got off the plane it looked like BUCKWHEAT GOES TO ALBURQUERQUE. we spent the first three days trying to deal with my hair, resulting in orders from pam that if i was feeling the compulsion to touch the hair, i had to tell her. NO TOUCHING THE HAIR! as it was, i collected soil from four states by just standing around...

and then there is linda, who was the only person in our youth who had the guts to tell me what a shit i was and how she didn't want me around anymore when i drank. at the time i was really pissed off. how dare her tell me what to do! however, i parked my butt in her condo 30 years later, so i guess you could say she may be one of the reasons i am sober still after 25+ years. she has a great heart packed into that little, hiking body, and she still has no qualms telling you what to do...just sit in the backseat of the car when chuck is driving and linda is giving directions...:) she is also my oldest friend, having met me in 1971, and she has seen it all in 35 years, good and bad. you can't put a price on that kind of friendship, and i value it, and her greatly.

so we made it to the airport, ditched the car in the C lot and dragged our next week's lives into the airport as the day started. by 7:30 we were on the plane, situated with pam next to the window, an on our way. and as the plane got further and further into the sky, i felt lighter and ligher, like god was taking off my winter coat of blues that i had been wearing way too long after the season had ended. i turned to pam and said "i feel like a grownup" and she couldn't imagine what in hell i meant by it, but i explained it. for the first time in seven years, i was on my own, up in the air, with no responsibilities for anyone but myself. no kid. no parents. no students. no wacky friends. no reason not to get myself cleaned up and cleared out.

there was a constant chain of angel pennies strung together over these many hard months, all of them making a path for me to new mexico. my faith has been tested a lot, but i believed that those angels, and god, were going to get me to my "excellent adventure." i just had to believe.