Project Runaway

My son is in Japan. My older daughter is in the Cayman Islands. My soon to be ex is in Arizona. And my youngest is heading to France in a week. It is time to dust off my passport.

This weekend, I am going to take a break from house-on-wheels hunting and spread out a map of the world on my kitchen table, start throwing darts. At the map, of course. And no, I will not be drawing voodoo doll type pictures on it, mostly because I can't draw. My bags will be packed, and I'll be ready to go at a moment's notice. My luck it'll be the South Pole in June, but no matter what, I'm outta here. Hey, I've always wanted to see the march of the penguins in 3D.

I used to love airports. Sitting in the gate area, gazing out the large windows and watching the planes take off at two minute intervals, noiseless but for the baritone vibration from the revving of the massive engines. You can see the air molecules churning as the giant birds take off, enveloping the tiny heads in the tiny windows in a surreal haze. Blurry and faceless people, all going places. Escaping.

Lately, when I go to the airport, it's generally to drop a kid off or pick one up -- a vicarious thrill versus a real one. Either way, I still enjoy the sight of the airplanes taxiing off to exotic destinations (even though I know full well Newark, New Jersey is likely to be one of them; not that there's anything wrong with Newark, New Jersey), and I still duck as I catch sight of the belly of a frighteningly close airplane coming in for an approach. Maybe it has nothing to do with escape or return or trips of a lifetime. Maybe it's just about being on the move, folks pulling up roots, if only for a moment.

The older I get, the more I realize how much things are not as they seem. The lines on our faces offer hints about our pasts -- the laughter, the sadness, the worry, the pride. But the layers run deep, and no amount of botox can help anyone escape the history, the years of good stuff and bad shit that has happened, the stuff we should either try harder to remember or the shit we try really hard, usually in vain, to forget. The botox may hide it, the exotic airplane rides may offer up a brief respite, but the histories are here to stay, for better or for worse.

Recently, I asked someone how it is possible to love again after suffering the worst kind of tragedy, the loss of a child. He explained that even though a chunk of your heart is gone, permanently gone, love is infinite. We humans have an amazing capacity -- to love after loss, to be happy after indescribable sadness, even to be sad despite years of incredible joy. We keep moving. We never escape, but we never remain quite in the same place either. Or at least we shouldn't. Wingless, we were born to fly.

Just ask the emperor penguins. The journey, year after year, is arduous, but the ones that survive keep going. By summer, their tuxedos look as fresh and pressed, and, well, ordinary (if there can be anything ordinary about a penguin to someone who lives in the northern hemisphere) as the day they were made. Like us, though, each penguin has its own history. You just have to know where to look.