West Wishes 0.5- A Summary

I know, I know, it’s absurd that I’m halfway through my trip to the western US without having posted any kind of update. It does not bode well for the discipline I’d like to have this year. But I’ve been busy, as one should be when one is seeing a new part of the world, and so, while you’re waiting for a real blog post, may I offer you these verbal snapshots, occasionally accompanied by actual snapshots? 

• Sitting with our backs against the terminal wall, just below the window, we hear the announcement that our plane’s delayed by half an hour. There are the expected groans from the gathered crowd but I rush to the bathroom to put on my blue dress because the blue dress is for Big Moments and you cannot deny that sparkling my way back to my gate past all the tired gathered people that airports hold was a Big Moment. 

• Because our connections were tight and we never got to stop between either of our multi-hour flights, for practicality’s sake we picked aisle seats on the flight from Dallas to Los Angeles, which we jogged through the terminal to catch. There was absolutely no way I’d have made it nine hours cumulative hours of travel without visiting at least one restroom. But when the seatbelt sign was turned back on as we approached LA, the girls beside me raised their window shade and I could see large, jagged mountains on one side of the plane and the ocean on the other and that, I thought, was something very new.

• Hanging out with someone else’s family always has the potential to be a tightrope walk, but when someone else’s family lives ten minutes from the beach with the sea breeze pouring in and they welcome you with open arms, friendly dogs, and generous food, the rope turns into a wide platform, the fear of the fall a mile away to either side. 

• There’s this gigantic metal statue of a nude surfer riding a wave on Huntington Beach. We walked a couple blocks out of our way to see it. For exercise. Gotta work off that wine somehow. #adulthood

• For the first time in my life, someone told me to put my phone away, that my friends could wait until dinner was over, and I was left feeling the need to explain that these relationships, my friendships, are enriched by the thirty seconds I take to pull my friends into this moment in my life, to immediately share the raccoon taxidermy holding a kitten or the recipe for the most American burger I will ever consume, and that this sharing isn’t something that takes me away from the table, it’s something that brings others to it. Instead, I hit send and slid my phone into my pocket, because that’s the polite thing to do. LOOK AT THIS RACCOON, THOUGH:

The internet needs to know.

• LOOK AT ALL THESE WIND TURBINES. 

• LOOK AT ALL THESE CACTI. 

• The first time I caught a glimpse of the Grand Canyon, I gasped.

• We decided to do our blue dress pictures for the Grand Canyon at Navajo Point and after getting most of them, we found a ledge. I intended to sit down on the edge and dangle a foot off into the empty space, but all I could make myself do was sit with my legs crossed a solid sixteen inches from the edge. From there, I could see so far forward and left and right and up and down that I knew I should be in awe, but all I felt was afraid. 

More positives and quasi-positives to come, my friends!