Dia Uno

I have a horrible memory.  Even as I write this post, three weeks after Nathan and I's trip to Cozumel, things are fading fast.  First go the names of people and places, slowly followed by their faces and the color of the coral.  After reading a recent blog post by Carol about her cruise ship adventures, I began to reflect on my Honeymoon, only to realize that I didn't recall much.  Snorkeling.  Jesus.  Iguanas.  Mayans.  Nathan.  Sunset?  What day was it when?  I messaged my husband.

"You have to help me remember."

And he did, day by day.  Here is Day One.

We awoke with the drunken stupor that comes with 4:00 a.m.  In a half hour our ride would be coming to pick us up and take us to the airport--Nathan's friend James who, when hesitantly asked, responded with, "No problem!  I just won't go to sleep."  What a man.

What was even more impressive was when James returned to the airport twenty minutes after dropping us off, because Nathan had called him, because I was exclaiming "My hat!  My hat!" in a pathetic girlish tone.  Not one of my prouder moments.
[I was referring to my sunhat, which I had purchased two months before our honeymoon, which I had wanted to purchase the first time my family went to Mexico, to which my mom said something like, "You don't want one of those hats," to which I submitted, to which I spent the rest of our trip to Mexico wishing I had a big sun hat like the girls in movies [what movies?] had, and I WAS NOT GOING TO GO TO MEXICO AGAIN WITHOUT A SUNHAT.  I had left mine in the back of James' van. "You're going to forget that hat in Mexico," Nathan said, after a care-free James returned to the airport for a second time.]

Nathan and I spent the majority of our flight to Denver reading copies of Fahrenheit 451--a novel that neither of us had read before but I owned two copies of.  We finished the books somewhere between Denver and Cancun, and each started our adventures through our separate reading choices.  I brought along Everything is Illuminated and The Bell Jar for my enjoyment; for Nathan I picked out The Time Machine and Catcher in the Rye.  There is nothing sexier than a man who will spend half of his honeymoon reading on the beach with you.  Willingly.

After getting off the plane in Cancun, getting our passports stamped, and transferring a little bit of money, we signed up for a shuttle heading to Playa del Carmen in ten minutes.  One hour-long shuttle ride later, I stepped into a memory.

[My family had vacationed to Playa del Carmen back in 2010 a month after a very difficult breakup with one hell of a liar who will make a great pastor someday.  Playa del Carmen in 2010 was filled with numbness and healing.  I didn't spend the trip wallowing so much as I spent it deep in life's contemplations.  If you've ever been dumped by someone, you know that there are certain places that hurt to go back to.  Memories are interlaced through locations; they breathe on you and wrap themselves around you if you return.  But with that comes a newness; a new memory; a baptism.  No longer will the last time you went to a certain place be with him.  I remember the baptisms of the movie theater, a national park, and, oddly enough, Chipotle.  Playa del Carmen was reborn to me with the newness of marriage.  There is nothing Erik can take from me.  I continue to win.]

The memory lasted for a split-second; the moment I stepped off the shuttle and onto the cobblestoned streets of Playa's marketplace.  Except, this time, instead of walking with my parents listening to my dad's sarcastic retorts to the street vendors' hecklings, I was walking toward the ferry dock with my husband.

We boarded the ferry behind a couple who were from San Fransisco, enjoying a week in Cozumel away from their crazy, wedding-planning daughter.  They were in their fifties, very pleasant, yet more college-at-heart than the 22 year olds they were chatting with.  They bought us each a beer in honor of our marriage while we listened to the husband talk about how he played frontlinequarterman for the University of South California Football Team.  He gave us the play-by-plays of his biggest football moments from thirty years ago.  He raved about rivalries and class reunions.  He owned a house on an island in the San Fransisco bay.

About halfway through the ferry ride, a Mexican man began to sing at us while a lady played the scratchy-fish.  They asked for tips.  We did not tip them.

As soon as we arrived in Cozumel, we found a cab driver to take us to our resort (for those of you playing along at home this is now our 6th method of transportation in 12 hours).  By the time we got to the resort, checked-in, and unpacked, there wasn't much left to do except collapse on the bed and order room service.