Go Find Yourself by Tamara Palmer
“Go find yourself,” that was what Jenna’s therapist, Marcie said when Jenna mentioned she was considering going to Boulder, Colorado to house-sit for her best-friend Sara.
Jenna wondered why it took her ten years to realize that she’d gone missing. The disappearance happened sometime in the last few years of her marriage —nuptials chock full of parental expectations seemed so hopeful and appropriate when shared with Brad inside her childhood church. But after ten years of marriage, the last of which included sex so rare and dull that she dreaded more than enjoyed it; she knew that her marriage was dead.
Jenna was finally shocked back into reality by a reality T.V. show.
Jenna was watching the “The Bachelor” alone on her couch like she did every week. Brad was out showing prospective homebuyers a few more listings in the “nice part” of town, when she realized that she was miserable. Jenna lay on the couch that night, fantasizing about alternate universe marriages with each one of the Bachelors, even the ones she wasn’t physically attracted to.
Like an ocean breeze pushing out a heavy fog, each day for a few weeks she could see clearer and clearer. Even Sara commented how much she sounded like the “old Jenna.” One Saturday morning, while scrambling eggs, Jenna asked Brad for a divorce. She was prepared for him to be outraged, but his quiet resignation unnerved her. Then he shared a secret: he had been having an affair with the dental hygienist at Dr. Mallory’s. The same woman who cleaned her teeth.
Jenna wanted to believe that it was Brad’s affair that had caused the marriage to fail. Had he not given his heart to the hygienist, then maybe he would have made more space for Jenna. But that was the easy way out and Marcie only confirmed it. The reality was that Brad had an affair because he needed love and affection just as much as Jenna did. The sadness was that they could no longer provide it for each other.
“Colorado will be good for you,” Marcie continued. “Getting a break from your everyday routine will really help you sort things out.”
“Yeah,” Jenna’s eyes drifted past Marcie and out the office window to the gray Ohio sky. She pictured herself on Sara’s couch sorting out her habits into pretty little piles —arranging her future options into wicker baskets. There was so much spring cleaning that needed to be done.
Jenna arrived on Sara’s doorstep on what should have been a blustery March afternoon. After all it was still winter according to the calendar, and winter in Ohio always meant gloomy misery. But in Colorado the sky was the most intense shade of blue she’d ever seen. The sun warmed her face and she even unzipped her coat —something that was never safe to do before April back home.
In the next twelve hours Jenna learned how to run Sara’s house. She wrote notes about what time the big gray cat needed his medicine (not to be confused by the slightly smaller gray cat— neither of whom had collars or distinguishing marks), when the parrot needed the towel placed over his cage for bedtime, when the dog preferred to be walked and where, and how to refill the evaporated water from the fish tank. Jenna began to wonder if she was house-sitting or caretaking at a zoo.
One morning while walking Sara’s dog Jenna stumbled upon Caffeine Catie’s Curiosity Café. Peering into the windows she eyed cushy couches that looked like they could suck a person in, hanging ivy, ferns and plants everywhere, and wall-to-wall bookcases. The café looked so welcoming that the next morning Jenna loaded up her laptop bag with computer, an empty journal and a rainbow assortment of pens, sure that today would finally be the day she would “sort it all out” and that Caffeine Catie’s would be the ideal place to do it.
On her fourth morning at Catie’s still no where closer to sorting anything out, Jenna spotted a new face behind the counter. A man in his very early twenties with fiery red curly hair, not that different from Ronald McDonald’s, a ski-jump nose, freckles and eyes so light blue that they appeared to lack color altogether, was pumping his arms on the espresso machine. His head would tilt back when he laughed, as if he were channeling pure joy directly through the skylight above the counter and Jenna found him thoroughly captivating.
“Watcha havin?” The red-head asked, leaning his elbows on the counter and resting his chin so that he was eye-level with Jenna. His gaze gave her a jittery feeling inside. She didn’t even like red-heads and this kid was nearly half her age, but there was something about him – something other worldly and pure.
“Umm,” she began, even though she knew full well what she was having. “Hot chocolate, extra whipped cream,” she practiced her flirting — a skill she’d stopped developing her junior year of high school when she and Brad were officially going steady.
“Girl after my own heart!” He winked as he steamed the milk, his hands gripping and turning the knob with confident control.
“Hey, Sky — you’re back man. How was it?” The usual barista Todd came up to the red-head and slapped him playfully on the back. Jenna thought the name unusual, but Boulder had a reputation for drawing unusual folks, so she knew she had heard right.
“Yeah, just got back last night. Can you believe it? I’m jet-lagged like all get out!” Sky wiped his hands along the sides of his torso, smoothing out the first and last letters of the thinning green tie-dye Phish t-shirt he wore.
“Was it fantastic?”
“Can’t wait to go back. The best part hands down was the hot springs up north – we were actually hanging with snow monkeys, man!”
“No way!”
Jenna stepped aside to let the next person in line move up, but she remained rapt by the conversation as she leaned on the far edge of the counter.
“Where did you go?” Jenna asked, inserting herself into their chatter while she watched Sky pour her steamed milk into a pint glass. She loved hot drinks in glasses. It felt like breaking the rules, but in a safe kind of way.
“Japan. Been gone for three weeks. You been?” Jenna didn’t know what reality these people in Boulder were in where they could simply jet off to South America like Sara had or Japan like this guy just did. She’d even heard two girls at a neighboring table yesterday discuss their adventures backpacking alone through Turkey. Her exotic friends in Ohio went to all-inclusive resorts in places like Mexico or Caribbean cruises that began in Miami.
“No, I can’t say that I have,” Jenna shook her head. “My neighbor back home thinks I’ve gone to the wild-west by coming to Colorado!”
“What?” Sky asked with wrinkled eyes that twinkled straight into Jenna’s heart.
“Do you travel a lot?” Jenna asked as Sky handed her the drink complete with a chocolate syrup heart on top.
“As much as I can. Went to Alaska for a month last summer.”
“Wow.”
“So what brings you to Boulder?” Sky asked, even though a line was beginning to form and he was pumping his arms in double-time at the espresso machine.
“I’m house-sitting for my friend. She’s in South America with her boyfriend.”
“Rock on. That’s on my list. Haven’t made it there yet. Must get Machu Picchu in!”
“Machu, what?”
“Picchu –you know, the Incan village.”
Jenna shook her head. “I haven’t traveled much.”
“Oh that sucks!”
“So I’m realizing,” Jenna smiled. “Thanks for the drink.” Sky twinkled back at her as she walked to her table.
An hour later Jenna was still staring at her blank computer screen and empty journal. There had been no sorting of habits or organizing her life into buckets. She had just been pretending to be busy while really eavesdropping on Sky and Todd. While in Japan, Sky had traveled to Tokyo, the base of Mount Fuji, multiple Karaoke bars, and hot springs with monkeys.
Jenna observed Sky, practically dancing behind the counter, and she thought how appropriate his name was, and wondered if his parents named him or if life rechristened him at some point along the way.
Sky and Todd, continued to talk about traveling. Todd jumped in mostly with tales from a backpacking trip through Europe a few summers ago. Sky nodded – he’d been to most of those places too. Jenna looked around the café at the mother with twins in a stroller; the hunched man with strands of white hair falling in his face, his flannel shirt pushed up to free his wrist to work out the crossword puzzle; and the three older women who were there everyday, smiling and nodding as normal. Had they all had similar experiences – were they still having them?
Jenna stared at her screen and started typing. 10 Places to See Before I Die. She didn’t like the word “Die” in there so she erased it and started over. 10 Places to See as Soon as Possible. The list started off easy. There were certain places she’d always wanted to go: Paris, New York, Hawaii, the Pyramids, but then the list stopped. Exotic destinations swam through her mind like a National Geographic magazine, but none of them were places she thought of as absolutely needing to go to. Galapagos sounded interesting, but she wasn’t sure if people were even allowed to go. Japan never crossed her mind. Surely she could come up with ten places she wanted to go, but no – she found that after four she was just making stuff up to get to ten.
That night she stopped at a bookstore after dinner and browsed the travel section. The place names buzzed before her, Estonia, Egypt, Honduras, Iceland — she was quite sure that she couldn’t pick out most of them on a map. There were several she knew more from the nightly news than anything, and she couldn’t believe that they actually had guide books to places like Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran. As she sat on the wooden bench adjacent to the travel section, Jenna spotted a thick guide book to the U.S. Flipping through the pages, she began to imagine herself in the French Quarter of New Orleans, on the wharf in San Francisco, lying on the sand in South Beach, Miami. Determined not to let another chance be wasted, Jenna purchased the book and brought it with her the next day to Catie’s.
“I’ve decided to see America!” Jenna proclaimed to Sky as he expertly swirled the milk to get it good and frothy for her hot chocolate.
“Rock on!” Sky exclaimed channeling joy once again from the radiant beam pouring through the skylight. “What’s first?”
“That’s what I’m going to figure out this morning. Look what I bought last night,” Jenna proudly displayed her travel book purchase and Sky stopped what he was doing to flip through the pages.
“You’re onto something here. So many people don’t really see America, ya know?”
“Yup! That’s why I’m going to write a list of the Top 10 Places I Must See as Soon As Possible.”
“Sweet. Read it to me after you write it, but remember —traveling is a journey, don’t get too distracted by the specific destinations.”
Jenna winked at Sky and pranced back to her table. With her hot cocoa in one hand, she began pecking out the keys to type her list. 10 Places to See As Soon As Possible:
1) Savannah, Georgia
2) French Quarter, New Orleans
3) San Francisco Wharf
4) Top of the Sears Tower, Chicago
5) The Arch in St Louis
6) Puget Sound, Washington
7) Napa, California
Elvis’s house, Memphis
9) Grand Canyon, AZ
10) Broadway, New York
11) Vermont in the fall
12) Florida Keys
13) Yellowstone
14) The world’s largest mall in Minneapolis
15) A night at the Venetian in Vegas
Jenna was amazed that she was already at number 15 and felt like she was just getting started. She rewrote the list in order of importance and cut off five so that it was truly a list of 10. When she read the list to Sky he smiled. He’d only been to 3 of her choices, and that was mostly because he grew up outside of Chicago.
A week later Sara returned from South America. Over a long dinner at an Indian restaurant, Sara and her boyfriend wove tales of their adventures for Jenna. She took them in, savoring them like new spices all the while thinking of the stories she’d soon be collecting.
The next morning Jenna backed her Pontiac out of Sara’s driveway and headed south. Destination number one: The Grand Canyon. The road lay out before her like a magic carpet. By the time she hit the New Mexico border the sun was melting pink across the sky. She thought of Sky as she mentally checked off another state on her list of new states visited. Although Jenna’s plan was to go straight to Santa Fe, she decided at the last minute to veer west, taking the exit to Taos. Sky was right, she thought, it was about the journey, not necessarily checking off destinations. Wouldn’t Sky like to get a postcard from a place that wasn’t on her list she thought as the sun dipped below the horizon.
Tamara Palmer knew she was going to be a writer before she could even write. She would play elaborate dramas out with her Barbies for days,even weeks,on end. As she got older the stories made their way onto a typewriter and as the story goes… Tamara is actively seeking publishers for her two completed novels, Missing Tyler and Finding Lancelot. Her work has appeared in edifice WRECKED. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband. You can read more of her work at www.tamarapalmer.com
