Yesterday evening, while on layover at George Bush International Airport in Houston, I was in the men’s room wondering whythehell they always put mirrors over urinals, when it hit me: I am now a person of melanin.
Really. I haven’t had a tan like this in I don’t know how long. We’ve been to Hawaii several times in recent years, but I always hid under a metric tonne of sunblock and came back as pasty as I left. Not this time. Carol and I just returned from a long-delayed expedition to the same resort (or what remains of it) where we stayed on our honeymoon in early October 1976. 38 years had not been kind to the resort, much of which was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The surviving beachfront cottages were sold for condos, and we rented one for the week.
We used sunblock sparingly. I actually sat out in the sun on our back deck in Colorado the week prior to the trip to get a little color. It was an experiment in mood management. This ugly frigid long winter had me in a bit of a funk, and I wanted to know if some vitamin D would improve my mood. I’m guessing that I got a serious load of vitamin D. Did it help my mood?
Well, my mood certainly improved. But between frolicking on a deserted beach with my transcendentally gorgeous forever girlfriend, flying kites together, drinking pina coladas at Rum Point, almost running into Baron Barracuda, and not doing much else of serious consequence for almost nine days (including not checking Facebook at all), well, I’m sure I don’t know.
The two photos above of Carol flying kites are at almost precisely the same physical location, just 38 years apart. Did 38 years matter? Sure. We know and love each other immeasurably better than we did on our honeymoon. I’ve traded some hair for muscles I didn’t have when I was 24, but Carol, well, she hasn’t had to trade in anything at all.
Tomorrow: more stories and photos of The Week Without Either Air Conditioning or Facebook.
