"...a world lives in you."

I jumped out of the passenger seat and planted my feet firmly onto the rocky parking lot at the bottom of Weir Hill. Instinctively my arms went up over my head in that cat-like hybrid yawn-stretch that is at once both relaxing and energizing. Perhaps it was the sunlight trickling through the polychromatic leaves, or the way the cool breeze mingled with the warm autumnal sun that gave me goosebumps. But despite having hiked these trails dozens of times, something felt a little different.

Weir Hill, North Andover, MA

Life certainly doesn’t look the way I thought it would at 35 years old. My concept of a familial unit has shifted drastically just this last year. I don’t have the white picket fence and 2.5 kids found in my childhood daydreams, or even the wonderful life partner that I expected to grow old with. But in that moment, at the bottom of the hill I was sucker punched with a realization: I am truly not alone.

It couldn’t have been more than a 30-second visual, flashing in my brain like one of those montages from a Lifetime movie, and it didn’t manifest as a result of flying over oceans or transecting continents. I felt content, at home. Maybe even at peace?

That week singularly I was able to celebrate a birthday with a fantastic group of women, all like sisters to me; welcome a new baby into our remarkable circle of friends; visit and have dinner with one of my oldest friends; spend quality time with an amazing partner and human; enjoy a campfire with my in-laws and “sister”; plan a trip to NOLA with my Maple girls.

None of the aforementioned are copy/paste relationships, none of them are cookie-cutter, and none of them involve that white-picket fence ideation. But each and every one of those interactions left me feeling happy and thriving, and each and every one involved people that have chosen me, and I them, to travel through this life with.

If that isn’t family, I certainly don’t know what is.

"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you." - Frederick Buechner

Mi cielo.

“Thank you SO much for picking me up! I didn’t think anyone would accept the ride at this point,” I exclaimed to the Lyft driver, Jesús. I climbed into the back of his SUV soaking wet and discombobulated, having run from the entrance of the Museum of Natural Science to the waiting vehicle while lightning flashed, and thunder snarled overhead.

“Oh Kelly, you’re welcome. I was just about to shut the app off when your request came through. I accepted the ride because my house is close to your hotel. and I’m going home. My wife is going to start to worry,” he explained. Soft-spoken with a bushy grey mustache and weathered hands, Jesús reminded me of a vaquero from an old Hollywood movie.

A couple of hours earlier I arrived at the museum amidst a thunderstorm and some flash flood warnings. I had done my due diligence in checking the weather reports; Tropical Storm Imelda was hitting Texas, but the worst of the weather was forecasted to be east of the city.

Some favorites from the Houston Museum of Natural Science. 1) Trilobite; 2) Didelphodon (Cretaceous Tazmanian Devil); 3) Triceratops; 4) ammonite (w/sea-lizard bite marks); 5) araucarioxylon (fossilized triassic tree cross-section); 6) peridot and diamond necklace and earrings

I began getting emergency alerts on my phone while geeking over light refraction with a museum docent. It was a little after noon and I needed to get back to my hotel by 2pm to check-out. I allowed myself a few more minutes of optical mineralogy chatter before working my way down to the lobby and requesting a Lyft.  Jesús and I embarked on what would become, unbeknownst to either of us at the time, an epic 3.5-hour, 11-mile journey from museum to hotel, navigating through rising flood waters, abandoned vehicles, and a few tears.

After exchanging some pleasantries and chatting about the unexpected shift in the storm, Jesús explained that we had to try and get to the higher ground. Initially I thought he was slightly overreacting; I quickly understood the severity of our situation as we drove away from the museum and towards the highway. We were traveling slowly and as the water began to rise, so too did my stomach into my chest.

Jesús maneuvered in and out of neighborhoods, dodging already abandoned cars and utilizing his knowledge of Houston to find backroads and cross streets. We had been driving about 30 minutes when I realized the water was already so high the movement of the car was creating waves.

“Waves. Jesús, there are waves on the street.” We both chuckled nervously. We had been chatting the entire ride – about travel and Houston and food and family – but fell silent at this realization.

The F-150 in front of us came to a stop. We were on a heavily trafficked road filled with businesses and restaurants, so I assumed we had come to a red light or the visibility had gotten too poor for movement.

 “We have to turn around…the road is flooded…we have to get off this street.” Jesús was composed but I could hear the tension in his voice, and I frantically scanned the streets to determine the cause of this sudden shift in energy.

As we were turning around, I spotted a side street in front of us that was no longer a street. It was a river. And it was running downhill, right towards us. The fear set in and tears involuntarily welled in my eyes. I had never seen anything like it in my life.  

Jesús expertly finessed the car away from the river careening towards us and we began to hatch an escape plan should we need to exit the vehicle. We concurred that we would climb out the windows and swim/wade to the nearest structure.

“Jesús are we going to be ok? “ I finally caved and asked, having avoided the question for fear of the response I might get.

“Yes, Princesa, I will make sure of it.” And I trusted him.

His phone rang which snapped me out of my fearful haze and back to attention. The caller ID displayed the name as “Mi Cielo” – my sky, or my heaven.

“I have to get this, it’s my wife.”

Oof, my heart.

My stomach still in knots, Jesús turned the SUV around while consoling his wife, explaining our situation, and took an immediate left. Side roads were water laden but more navigable than the previous route, and we intersected another main road and decided to test it. Flooded.

We repeated this pattern – side road to main road to hard stop to turning around - for what felt like an eternity, all the while the water crept higher and higher.  

After close to two hours of navigating, Jesús said the highway was near. As we approached, we saw hundreds of cars and dozens of people outside their vehicles; the highway was flooded, too, and subsequently closed. We simultaneously sighed. While we were seemingly somewhat safer, we were no closer to being out of danger and no closer to being back to his wife, or my hotel.

Jesús didn’t take the exit onto the highway, and instead pulled hard to the right and back into the residential neighborhoods.

“I’m going to attempt to go north, onto this raised highway, and then go south to where we need to be”, as he gestured to the map on his phone.

“I trust you. You’ve kept us safe so far...I swear you’re my guardian angel.”

“Who, or what, is your cielo?”, he inquired. “Who are you trying to get back to?”

I paused, as I normally do when someone makes an inquiry that can only be answered by speaking your name, and I thought of you. About your calm, cool exterior and the way you comforted me always.

“My heaven is gone, but he’s always here”, I said, instinctively grabbing the necklace around my neck.

He nodded, understanding, and left it at that.

We were approaching three hours in Jesús’ SUV when we made it to the alternate highway. While there was an obscene amount of traffic, we were finally above the flood waters and my stomach released from my chest for the first time since leaving the museum.

It was almost another hour before we got to my hotel. I thanked him profusely and beseeched him to hug his wife for me, to tell her that I would not have made it out of the downtown area safely had it not been for him, and that he truly was my guardian angel. 

He nodded and laughed and agreed to do so, adding, “But Princesa, I think your heaven has been with us. I think he was our guardian angel today. I’m going to tell her that, too.”

Understanding exactly what he meant, I smiled, and left it at that.

Joker Face.

I had forgotten what it was like to laugh. Like, truly laugh. The guttural, almost painful, type of laugh. The kind that starts in the pit of your stomach and works its way up to your chest, rendering you breathless through all the snorts and chortles, belly cramping from compulsory muscle contractions.  

Of course, I’ve laughed since you’ve been gone. I’ve found things amusing, funny, silly. But the levity that comes with the aforementioned was missing; the feeling of weightlessness and vulnerability that allows a laugh to build from the core and escape the mouth as an exclamation of joy. Yeah, that. That was gone.

A few weeks ago, I found myself in Iceland with a group of women who changed that narrative.

I jumped onto the trip somewhat last minute. One of my dearest and oldest friends planned to go with a friend/co-worker, whom I had met once, and I wrangled a college friend to come along, too. On paper, we were a motley crew.   

Our first stop, the Blue Lagoon. Probably the most talked about tourist destination in Iceland, it has expanded quite a bit since I was last there. I knew the ladies would gobble up the relaxing atmosphere and we had 8 hours between landing and Airbnb check-in, so it was the perfect first stop.

The lagoon features two separate walk-up bars. One serves smoothies, champagne, beer, etc. and the other skin care; you can order a shmear of silica mud, lava scrub, or algae mask to go with your bubbly. We opted for the silica mask first and spent a few minutes lathering the thick, cold mud onto our faces, carefully avoiding our eyes, lips, and hairline.

 Faces sufficiently covered, we grabbed our drinks off the mask bar ledge and began our trek through the lagoon to a little spot devoid of other spa-goers. None of us had gotten much, if any, sleep on the flight and we were looking forward to relaxing in the hot water and cool air.

On our way to the cove we had scoped out, a woman stopped us. she and her husband were on their way to the mask bar when she exclaimed with a southern twang, “You all look so cute together! I need to take your photo – I have to show my girlfriends back home what they are missing!” We all smiled and acquiesced to her photo request. She offered to take one for us on one of our phones, and we in turn snapped a few of her and her husband.

“You ladies are just SO adorable. This place should plaster your photo all over their website”, she continued on.

 After exchanging a few more well wishes and pleasantries, the four of us made our way to the cove. We spent a few glorious hours in the hot water before retreating to the restaurant for lunch.

We began flipping through the photos taken in the lagoon while languidly enjoying our meal; passing around both our phones and ribs over how exhausted we all looked. The silliness came to an abrupt halt when we got to the photo of the four of us in the silica mud mask. We all stared in abject horror at what we saw…

THIS.

And then it started. One of us chuckled, and it spread like wildfire around the table. It wasn’t just our ridiculous faces that wound us up, but also remembering how excited and complimentary the woman who took the photo was.  

“No one will be persuaded to stop at the Blue Lagoon looking at this pic; we look like swamp monsters!”, was the gist of our table commentary.

One face in one particular photo stuck out as looking eerily familiar to a certain DC Comics villain, which in turn led to a rendition of “Joker Face” a la Lady Gaga. The laughing fits continued throughout lunch; faces red from lack of oxygen, stomachs sorely cramping, tears streaming down our cheeks. It became the running joke of the trip and elicited the same types of laughter each and every time it was brought up.

I’ve had to learn how to do everything without you. Brush my teeth. Make the bed. Grocery shop. Listen to music. Read. Write. Live. Breathe. Everything. all of it has been re-shaped since you’ve been gone. I just never expected to have to (or want to) learn how to laugh again.

But when your best friends’ face gets turned into a villainous instagram effect, how could i refuse?

The etherealization of experience.

I often see photos on social media that depict striking scenery from the perspective of a boyfriend, taking a candid shot with one hand while being led towards a body of water, or mountain range, or European square, with the other. You know the ones. Feeds are also flooded with photos of perfectly manicured lattes in cafes around the world, unspoiled sunsets, and smiling, unfettered faces. These posts are adorable but staged for perfection, utilized to elicit feelings of wonderment and perhaps even envy. And I am guilty of all the aforementioned. Well, except the social media boyfriend ones. Jason would have none of that.

So what about the gritty and silly parts of travel, the pieces purposefully omitted or brushed over so as to not lose that perfect social media aesthetic. The trudging-through-an-airport-with-a-broken-suitcase-wheel story, or the smell-so-vile-there’s-no-way-you-can-contort-your-face-into-anything-resembling-a-smile photo. 

These moments aren’t exclusive to a specific locale, or even to a specific type of travel, and they happen to everyone. So why don’t we hear about or see them?

It’s incredibly easy to etherealize experience and idealize places we don’t know, disillusioning ourselves by using travel and exploration as a form of unhealthy escapism. Everything is perfect and lovely and Instagram worthy. Once again, guilty.

So let’s not.  Let’s cut ties with this constant enchantment and allow those blooper moments to ground us and make us laugh. And let’s talk about them! Let us soak in experience for experience sake, not for likes or comments. Only then will our outlook on what travel should be – a perspective that exists because of cultivated social media posts - evolve into what travel can be – which is whatever you want.

in the spirit of the above and to kick-off the long weekend by hopefully eliciting a few laughs, i wanted to share some of the silly moments that my co-explorers and I have been lucky enough to have captured on camera.

That time we snorkeled…

…and our faces were so smooshed in our protective gear that we looked like, well, this.

…or that time we purposefully got Meta all over Iceland.

that time we walked towards the bloody gate…

…or that time in barcelona when my “bedroom” was an extension of an elevator shaft.

i would love to hear about, see photos/videos of, and commiserate over some of your travel stories and bloopers! comment below or use the contact form to email me. hoping you all enjoy and make the most of the long weekend, whether you’re traveling, exploring, or staying close to home.

Through the waves.

This isn’t the story I planned to share this week. I’m not sure it’s a story I ever intended to share but as we know all too well, things often don’t go according to plan.  

The story I had been working on (and is still forthcoming!) wasn’t 100% as of yesterday morning and I woke intending to make edits, add the photos, and share another piece of my journey with you. I got to the coffee shop I so often work out of, ordered a cold brew, settled in. And was hit by a tidal wave, threatening to take me out to sea.

I no longer count the hours and days since you’ve been gone, as they’ve now turned into months, and yesterday was nine months to the day. Anniversaries up until now haven’t really been a struggle and there was no specific visual or auditory trigger yesterday, not even a subtle nudge towards the grief that overcame my senses. It just happened. The phantom-limb feeling, guttural, visceral, desperate longing.

I attempted to finish up the edits, but it became very apparent upon proof-reading that my heart was not in it. So, I packed up and went home, feeling a bit defeated.

“Why am I having a day like this? I’ve been doing so well, moving forward while keeping you present, and not succumbing to the phantom-limb feels.” I went over these thoughts in my head for a bit, back and forth with no answer in sight.

So I gave myself grace. I took a nap. I reached out to my people and was transparent about these feels. I texted with people I love and I know love me. I spent the day with family and friends, and the evening sharing stories and shedding some tears and listening to live music.

I gave myself grace.

And through this grace I was reminded of something I’ve often told others but maybe hadn’t fully enveloped for myself; healing is not linear. Grief is not linear. There’s no straight line through this, just like any other journey we take in life. It is going to twist and weave and bounce around. It’s circular and cyclical and haywire. There’s no right or wrong, no good or bad.

Yesterday was not a step back, but if I had tried to fight that tidal wave it might have been. Instead I moved with the current; swimming so as not to go under while allowing myself to feel and process the ebbs and flows. It enabled me to awake this morning feeling renewed and energized, as if emerging from a dip in the cold Atlantic. Yesterday was another day on this journey. Filled with people I adore, both near and far, that didn’t try and rescue me - they swam with me through the waves.