Sprung At Last

Over dinner that evening, we swap our phones back and forth, admiring the pictures from our adventure in between trips to the buffet. I remind The Child to send me the photos I like: The one of her holding the giant iguana, the one of us together, and she says she will.

We finish dessert, and decide we’re not done exploring, so we wander up the beach, pausing to watch hotel staff set up a dozen or more tables for romantic lobster dinners by sunset. At the end of the sandy strip, there is a narrow channel and then a rocky island, with a few rocks in between, as well as a couple of determined snorkelers.

We’re both wearing flip-flops, and holding our phones in our hands, so when The Child suggests we hop across the rocks, I suggest we go tomorrow instead. When we’re dressed for it, I say, and don’t have to worry about dropping phones in the ocean.

I’m going anyway, she replies, jumping to the first rock, then the next, but not the next because she misses and lands with a splash in water that is unexpectedly deep. I reach in to grab her but she says, I got this, and reaches to pull herself up, bringing the phone down with a whack on the ground.

I hand her a towel, and as she dries herself I take her phone and dry it with my towel, removing it from the waterlogged case, trying to find each last droplet before they get inside. I inspect the phone for cracks, but find none, so I hand it back to her.

She powers up the phone, and shows me the lock screen. See? No problem.

We head back to the hotel room, where we she chats on skype while I peruse the photos I purchased on the flash drive. I remind her again to send me the photos from her phone, and she says she will, but she’s busy with her conversation. A little while later, she looks at her phone, then complains, The battery is still dead. I think that outlet doesn’t work.

The outlet worked earlier, when my phone needed to be charged, so I suggest maybe it’s the cable, and give her mine. She plugs it in, but nothing happens, then moves to another outlet, where nothing happens. We let it sit for a bit, and check on it here and there, but the only thing the phone is capable of doing is very briefly flashing a symbol saying it needs to be charged, even though it’s plugged in.

She returns to her laptop and starts watching movies on Netflix.

I return to my laptop and try to troubleshoot her phone.

I ask if the photos are backed up on the cloud, and she says she doesn’t think so.

I google again, looking for the one website or chat thread that will tell me we haven’t lost the pictures of us being happy together for the first time in such a long time, but there isn’t one, or if there is, I can’t find it, and finally my frustration explodes.

God Damn It, why couldn’t you just have texted me those pictures when I asked you to?

Saying it doesn’t make me feel any better.

After a few minutes, The Child lets out a barely stifled cry and runs out of the room.

We bask in the sun and the warm sandy shade, taking pictures of palm trees against a background of clear blue sky and sparkling blue ocean, reading books when we drain the batteries on our phones. The hotel photographer stops by daily, taking photos of The Child next to someone in a giant red Valentine Heart costume one day, glamour shots on the beach another.

We take breaks to explore the resort’s various buffets, which offer a seemingly endless variety of food that turns out to be exactly the same, but we don’t mind, and I see The Child eating more food, and more variety of food, than she has in a very long time. Each evening, we return to our room, where we are greeted by towel sculptures and neatly made beds, and order room service and different pillows to nestle against as we relax with Netflix and a book.

We take pictures of the towel sculptures each morning, before we disassemble them to use.

By the second afternoon, we are done exploring the resort, and ready to explore Mexico. We borrow bicycles from the hotel and head into town, where we discover people frolicking in a marina with dolphins, and photograph a billboard for a tour company called Local Quickies, but there’s not much else, so we return to our hotel. We check with a travel agent, and find a tour that suits both of us: A morning exploring archaeological sites, followed and an afternoon snorkeling and ziplining in seaside caves. Then we head for the spa, where I reserve massages for the day after, to help us recover from the snorkeling and ziplining and history.

The bus picks us up at the hotel, and we are joined by an Australian couple on their honeymoon, who are friendly and chatty, and a group of American college students, who aren’t.  We wander among the Mayan seaside temples, and The Child is mostly bored, until I almost step on an iguana, which prompts gales of laughter. She borrows my camera and takes photos of the ruins, and later, we stand together on a cliff above the ocean, and she organizes a flattering selfie of both of us, together.

She runs ahead of me out of the archaeological park, and I find her at a monkey sanctuary just outside the gate, feeding bits of tortilla to lemurs and snapping pictures with her phone. She shows them to me excitedly as we walk back to the bus, but as we approach the parking lot, we are stopped by a couple, who hand The Child a massive, colorful iguana to pose with, and allow me to take her picture upon payment of five American dollars.

Please text me that picture, I ask her, and she promises she will, but now we can see everyone else is already waiting at the bus, for us, so we run to catch up.

Getting into the caves is more frightening than The Child expects, and ziplining is less frightening than I expect, but after a bit of encouragement, we help each other into safety harnesses and coast over the treetops, splash land in water, and smile for group photos with people we don’t know any better at the end of the day than we did at the beginning. At the end of the tour, we sit in a tent for a homemade Mexican lunch.  I desperately want the recipe for the spicy chicken and empanadas that The Child devours two helpings of, but in the end, I have to settle for offering compliments to the cook through an interpreter.

As we leave, I stop to purchase photos of the day, dozens of them on a flash drive, along with video proof of our brave adventures. The Child asks if she can share the video with her friends, and I say Of Course and remind her to send me the photo of the iguana and the selfie on the cliff, and she promises she will.

Twenty years ago, I impulsively went to Mexico: Winter was full of snowstorms and ice and a broken heart, and my pocket was full of just enough cash to pay for a trip to a sunny, sparkling beach, so I went. The first evening of that trip, I found myself dining at a table of young Americans and one young Dutchman, an English-speaking island in a sea of German pensioners.

For a week, I snorkeled and touristed and drank bottomless blender drinks, and when I got home, after an exchange of long letters, found I’d replaced my lost love with a new one, The Foreigner.

For twenty years, there were too many memories to return to that spot, so we simply went elsewhere in search of sun when we had the money, and nowhere when we didn’t.

This year, though, an idle conversation with a coworker led to a recommendation of a resort which led to a travel website and an impulsive return to a different spot in Mexico that promised to be as beautiful as the one before, and certainly as sunny. There wasn’t enough cash to pay for it, but there was more than enough credit, so instead of waiting until the tax refund arrived and it was too late to reserve a trip, I planned the trip and hoped there would be enough to cover everything.

I told my coworker I’d booked a trip there, and he seemed pleased that I’d taken his suggestion. The Child was not pleased, but then again, in mid-October, before the hospital and psychiatrists and prozac, there was not much that was capable of pleasing her.

By the time February rolled around, she was excited to go: All the other kids have already been to Mexico.

By the time we arrived at the resort – after two lengthy flights and one lengthy shuttle bus ride that was made even lengthier when the driver was pulled over and ticketed for driving a vehicle on a pedestrian-only street – she was thrilled.