For Whom the Bell Tolls

Key West was lovely, even with an entire Friday spent in a downpour and getting a splotchy, tender sunburn on Saturday due to my haphazard application of sunblock.

The girls I met on the trip were hilarious and wonderful - which, of course, I should have known they would be since my friend, the bride-to-be, has been hilarious and wonderful since the day I met her all the way back in 1999.

It will come as a surprise to exactly no one who knows even the tiniest thing about me that personally the absolute highlight of the trip was Friday afternoon, when we made our way across town during a break in the storms to visit the home of the greatest American writer of all time. 

I'm not sure if my ecstatic glee comes across as completely as it should in this photo.  Make no mistake. I was as giddy as giddy can be - walking blocks ahead of the other girls not because I wanted to beat them there...but because, well, I didn't even realize I was walking blocks ahead until I turned around and noticed them lagging behind.  The excitement!  I cannot even begin to tell you.

As I wandered around the gift shop after our tour of Papa's home, I noticed this quote along a wall of books - "It has been said of Ernest Hemingway that half the writers of the twentieth century have tried to imitate him and the other half have tried not to." 

I think his work has been often imitated, never duplicated.  To me - and a great number of other people in the world - he was the finest writer in the 20th century.  And I don't care that he had a reputation for being a womanizer or that he was known to imbibe a bit too much too often.  If I had ever been given the chance, I absolutely would have let Hemingway seduce me - there is no question in my mind.   

If you've read this blog long enough, I imagine that I don't really need to spend too much time telling you what an experience, what a thrill it was for me to spend a few hours walking in and out of the very same rooms that Hemingway once did.  (Hemingway!)  I won't belabor the point other than to tell you that it is something to stand on a porch and take in a view knowing it was the same exact view that a man you admire so very much did during his own lifetime.  

On Saturday, my friends and I went out on a day long water-adventure boating excursion.  The day dawned grey and overcast, just like Friday had been, but thankfully cleared up by noon...leaving plenty of time for someone like me, whose skin hasn't seen much sunlight since last September, to get a nice red toasting to bring home as a souvenir.

The boating trip included an hour of snorkeling in the morning, as well as an afternoon of rotating water fun "stations" which included jet-skiing, para sailing, kayaking, and the like.  Before Saturday, I had never snorkeled before.  Not because I didn't want to but the opportunity had never really presented itself.  So I signed up for this trip excited, knowing I'd get the chance to try something I'd never, ever attempted before.  New experiences!  New challenges!  I love this stuff.

But I won't lie.  As we sat on the boat, attending "snorkel school", moving further and further away from the shore line, I began to get a little nervous.  My friends kept telling me I'd be fine...that it was easy once you got the hang of it.  I had a moment though, as I was pulling on my wetsuit and selecting the right size flippers, when I really wasn't sure about the whole jump in the water, breathe through a tube, while you float thing.  I love the outdoors and being active as much as the next person, but I will tell you, as I fumbled with my equipment and silently tried to calm my nerves that tI haven't felt like that much of a stereotypical "city girl" in a long time.

Never let it be said that I can't adapt though.  I spit into my mask with the best of them and stepped forward to have the instructor give my equipment a once over before jumping off the side of the boat:
"I've never done this before."  I told him.

"Oh, yeah?  How do you feel?" He asked.

"A little nervous.  Excited.  But nervous."

"I"m not worried about you."

"Ha, thanks.  We'll see..."

He gave me a nod, a thumbs up, and then, just as I was getting ready to make my leap into the third largest barrier reef in the world, he said something that will long stick with me: "My Mother, she used to tell me that the fears you don't face are the ones that will be with you for the rest of your life."

And with that, I jumped into the water.

It'd be nice if I could tell you that from the minute I landed, I was in heaven, with calm nerves and all, seeing thousands of fish right beneath me, not a care in the world.

But instead, I will tell you the truth.  I panicked for a moment right when I bobbed up to the surface of the ocean.  I couldn't quite catch my breath; I had at least three people asking me immediately if I was okay, if I could see anything below.  My wetsuit felt tight, I was trying to remember to stop breathing through my nose.  Of course, like anyone would, I wanted to appear as cool and as calm as a cucumber; despite the fact that that was not at all how I was actually feeling. I pumped my fist on top of my head - the okay signal our instructor had taught us - and swam away from the boat.  As I moved out of the crowd of other snorkelers, keeping my friend Kristy in my sights, I remembered the most important rule in snorkeling and really, almost all things water related - to relax.  Just relax.

And you know? After that? Things suddenly calmed down - in my head, in my body, in the ocean around me.  There's something rather magical about experiences that remind us of our place in this world; of remembering that in the great big scheme of things we are but a tiny blip on this great, awesome planet.

It is equal parts humbling and awe-inspiring. And it puts a lot of things into perspective.

Later, when I climbed back into the boat, the instructor came over and asked me what I thought.  "I loved it!" I told him, sincerely.  He smiled, gave me a high-five.
 
"So that's not what we call a last snorkel.  That's a first."

After all of the excitement and nervous energy I'd spent on snorkeling, my other first for the day - para sailing - was a total and complete breeze (literally).   

You know how they say you should do one thing every day that scares you?  Well, I figure I'm ahead of the game getting two in in just one day last week.  (This means I can relax a little bit now, right?  I've got my star for the month of April?)

In all seriousness though, I think, for me at least, that this year - four months strong - has been about saying yes.  Simply saying yes...for better or for worse.  When I initially set out to make 2013 the year of the heart, I was thinking about it in the sort of terms that meant only doing the things I already know and love; the idea of staying true to them.  And there are a great many of those things - dreams, ideas, goals, and experiences - that I am doing my best to pay attention to.  But there is also this - I think sometimes, following our heart and paying close attention to what our soul is telling us, involves taking a leap of faith.  Even - and maybe most importantly - when we are scared to death.

I was 22 when I first read this quote by Ernest Hemingway.  It's one I think of often, almost daily.  On Saturday morning, as I took my literal leap of faith into the barrier reef along the Florida coast, at the Southernmost point of the United States, I like to think I might have made ol' Hem proud.  How fitting. 

"In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused."