Sunglasses Always Fit

Everyone has a morning ritual. In this long six-week summer between teaching jobs, I’ve cozied into very different morning routines than from when I’m teaching. Those were usually “AH!/Coffee/get dressed/teeth/out door/try to not forget anything/forget something/AH!” mornings. But Vacation-Rachel is a different person altogether, and it starts with the mornings.

Vacation-Rachel’s awakening process is low-key and tech-heavy. First, I wiggle around to see if the dog is still with me or has sneaked off the twin bed we share, and then engage in a full-body stretch. I sync my Fitbit to decide if I agree or disagree with its assessment of my sleep profile and heart rate. Then I systematically get rid of every notification on my phone because I am allergic to red bubbles.

Then there are four different email accounts of new messages to read through, delete, or flag as important and promptly forget about. The bank accounts to make various faces at. There’s checking into Candy Crush for my daily bonus (level 5265 and climbing!), keeping Duolingo’s stupid little owl off my back, and then comparing the weather forecast in every place I’ve ever lived and where my sister and best friends are. Lately, my next step of doom-scrolling on Twitter (come for me, Elmo, I will never call it X) has been replaced with “hope” – scrolling for the first time since 2015, which is a gorgeous change. My heart is full.

Of all of these morning check-ins (and more, I’m underselling it so you don’t realize how chronically online I am. Like when the doctor asks how much you weigh and how many drinks you have a week and you give numbers from high school.) the Facebook memories function is one of the most endearing yet confusing ones for me. 

Today, for example. According to memories I posted myself, a year ago today, I was at a wedding in Vietnam for friends from Hong Kong. Two years ago, at a wedding in Los Angeles for friends from my church days in the Bay Area. Four years ago saw me ending my first two weeks of Covid quarantine in my apartment in Hong Kong, cutting off the GPS tracking bracelet. Seven years back, I was crying in the visa department of the immigration building in Hong Kong, having just arrived with faulty paperwork. 

Eight years ago to the day – I was going to nine hours straight of beach volleyball at the Olympics in Rio. Twelve years back, on an epic road trip with my dad, sisters, and brothers to Florida, where my idea to write a children’s book about pirate jokes was born. Fourteen years ago on, I was gleefully sneaking Coronas into my great-grandma’s old people home for a cheeky visit and posting it with the first Instagram filters there ever were.

Years from now, if I look back at this seemingly mundane moment, I’ll know I was sitting in my parents’ backyard at dusk, wondering when I started getting so interested in birds, as I’m tracking the woodpeckers and hummingbirds at war with each other in the trees and feeders. Listening to Chappell Roan, smelling citronella, ordering Harris/Walz merch, in overalls I love but keep accidentally dropping the straps into the toilet when I pee. 

And, importantly, trying to come to grips with the fact that in a few days, instead of my usual 15 hour flight back to Hong Kong at the end of summer, I’ll be moving to my fourth country – Guatemala. 

I’m not going back to Hong Kong. 

After nearly six weeks of family, puppies, pool time, lazy trail walks, Mexican food, IPAs, reading, and main-lining the Olympics, my brain is ready to work and go do the things involved in a new school year – but it hasn’t quite caught up to the reality of where I’m going to be working.

. . . I’m not going back to Hong Kong.

My +852 number no longer works, I’ve gotten the flat deposit back (and a nice selfie that my landlord insisted on), and canceled my HK credit card. I’ve ordered Guatemalan quetzales for what is a cash economy, booked flights and transport (3+ hours from the airport to my new abode, this will take getting used to!) and culled through clothes and classroom stuff and started packing clothes for cold weather. I switched my Tinder account to Global so I could see what the pickings look like in Guatemala (decent). I’ve been brushing up on my Spanish.

Because . . . I’m not going back to Hong Kong.

The backyard is my favorite place to write – I can hear crickets and a deer rustling and my dog is tucked up next to my side and inexplicably, for the first time in my life, I just got shat on by a bird . . . God does love comedy . . . so I am zen and I am grounded and humbled but . . . but this next big move in my life is just still not totally real. 

I’m not going back to Hong Kong. 

On a walk today, I’d finally been alone enough to acknowledge – I’m a bit scared. Which. BIt late for that. Bit late to be thinking about how I backpacked through Guatemala for two months in 2008, so I’ve technically been there and remember. Remember how big spiders and cockroaches are, and there’s Zika and malaria and dengue and any manner of ways to die by insect.

And I love California home and how soft it makes me. I’ve gotten so used to walking down the hall to bother my mom when I’m bored. To walking the dogs and spying into neighbours’ houses, paying for everything with my phone, having seemingly endless money to do so from my awesome Hong Kong salary. To my grandma minutes away and always ready to go for lunch. And a washer and dryer and TV in the house. Every summer here, I wonder if I should just stay.

But . . . I’m moving to Guatemala?!

To a town of 20,000, where I know not a single soul?! Where I have to make a special request that my yet-to-be-found and might-not-exist apartment have hot water, where I am on a volunteer stipend instead of salary, surrounded by volcanoes on an earthquake line??

What if I don’t make any friends? What if I have really financially and professionally screwed myself by taking this position, even just for two years? What if I drink the water and get some sort of permanent diarrhoea parasite? Or get bit by a rabid dog? What if I get run over by a tuktuk? What if it suuuuucks?! 

Rachel, child – you are wild, but this is WILD. And you are no longer a child. What if this . . .

And there’s the double-edged sword about living my life recorded online, or living life in any kind of community, really – I’ve let all 32 people reading this know what I’m doing, what I’m feeling, how excited and how anxious I am about it all. And most people have said “you’re so brave! We’re cheering for you! Yay! Impressive! Proud!” etc etc. 

And if it goes well, we can celebrate together! If it doesn’t, then, um, I guess we find out if one can die from embarrassment. 

But

but

(deep breath, slow sip of g&t, gaze into distance, come back, look at my computer like Jim looks at the camera on The Office)

Okay. Okayokayokay.

I think about those haphazardly recorded memories I saw on Facebook that I mentioned earlier . . . at no point in the last 14 years could I have anticipated where and what and who I am today. What I’m about to do. If there were records from before then, it would be a longer same.

And all those Rachels between 2010 and now have gotten through every hard day she faced. We’ve experienced a million joys, and learned and grew a lot. Met so many cool people. Saw the sun rise and set in too many places to count. Ate and drank and sang and danced and enjoyed the hell out of it, as best we could. And each Rachel had plans – a hundred different ones every day – for how her life would work out. None of them included this specific next step 

but it doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a great one. 

And so I sit here, and I sit with that, I reread it to myself, and I command it to sink into my bones because it’s true. Nothing of the past, and nothing that is uncertain, means that the next unknown thing can’t or won’t be the greatest thing ever. 

All of that to say . . . I’m grateful for those random Facebook memories – for the brief snapshot of the insignificant that now provides the starter to ignite the half-memories I wouldn’t normally have reason to light to life. Reminding me of all the evolving versions of myself there have been, leading up to another big change now.

So that’s my message to me, and to you – you’ve lived through every hard thing so far, and it’s only made you more resilient, and hopefully more understanding, and endlessly empathetic to everyone going through a thing. At the very least, every hard thing you make it through makes you more interesting. 

Why not try one more hard thing and see where it gets you? I’m about to. Ready or not.

Three days to go.