Two Steps Forward, One Step Back December 27, 2006

Almost every year I make the journey back home to San Diego for Christmas.  A single thirty-something urbanite wedged into a tiny window seat on a discount airline, counting the seconds until the next martini.  There are far too many.

As soon as I step off the plane, I realize how very little California sunshine is left in my blood.  Everything in the San Diego airport is bright and airy.  Too many women in fluffly santa hats and flip flops.  An old woman in her 70s stands next to me.  She wears sparkly rhinestone wreaths in her ears, a red sweater embroidered with brightly colored presents and smiling reindeer, matching red socks and sensible shoes.  My skin is crawling.  My impatience and irritation build into a crescendo as all these sunny, happy people meander about at a pace at least twice as slow as mine, and the steady mantra in my head grows louder with my aggravation. “Move faster.  Move faster.  Move faster.”  And then, exasperated, simply “Movemovemovemovemove.”   

As though it couldn’t get worse, it does.  In anticipation of a three week vacation, one week in San Diego and two in Thailand, I have packed a good portion of my wardrobe.  Dress for a wedding, dress for a formal dinner, business casual lunch with a client, business casual breakfast with another client, sightseeing clothes, night out clothes, clothes appropriate for a poker game with the boys…all neatly arranged and packed in a single suitcase.  However, although I am here in sunny, sparkly San Diego, my luggage is not.  “We don’t scan bag tags here,” says the bleach blonde twit in baggage claim.  “So you have no idea where my bag could be?”  I ask.  “Nope,” she says.  And that’s it.  No explanation, no apology, just simply, “We don’t scan bag tags.”  Oh, I want to rip her hair out.  My already dark mood darkens even more and I stomp out into the bright California sunshine.  I am holding a piece of paper that says I have claim to a piece of luggage that is somewhere in the universe, but not in San Diego.  I need to cook.

Cooking for me is therapy.  And, anticipating a dismal emotional state upon my arrival in San Diego, I had prepared a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner menu for my parents.  They get a good home cooked meal, and I get to take my aggression out on a chopping board.  Wintermelon soup, Caesar salad with homemade dressing, crab and salmon roulette with a citrue beurre blanc sauce, roasted asparagus, and a light vanilla ice cream drizzled with Frangelico and walnuts.  Easy peasy lemon squeezie.  Right?  Wrong.  The grocery store is sold out of salmon filets, asparagus and frangelico.  How is this even possible?  How can you run out of seafood when the Pacific Ocean is right there? 

I truly am at this point, about to go postal.  My luggage is gone.  The grocery store is out of food.  All these people are smiling too brightly and there is far too much white and pink in the architecture.  I’m in San Diego and I am so disgusted I want to spit.  I used to be carefree and happy, and now I’m goal-oriented and time-efficient.  There’s got to be a balance somewhere.  We do head to another grocery store, and I fly out of the Jag before it even comes to a complete stop.  I fast-walk to the seafood counter and take a deep breath.  There’s my saving grace, resting beautifully behind the glass counter.  I have never been so happy to have found a fish before.  The butcher flirts with me, asking if I’m cooking for my husband, my boyfriend, my lover, etc.  It’s not the plastic, happy tea-time conversation, but the hard-edged, unapologetic Chicago-style banter.  He’s not trying to get down my pants, he’s just trying to get my attention.  And it works.  Just enough to snap me out of my self-pity and smack some sense into me.  Finally, my other mantra kicks in, the one that says, “Make it work.”  And as I walked out of that grocery store into the warm San Diego night, salmon, asparagus and Frangelico tucked safely away in a brown paper bag, all my angst and anger drained out of me.  I realized that when life takes a shit turn and there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s not worth getting your panties in a bunch.  So right then and there, I un-bunched and moved on.  Dinner was phenomenal.  And my luggage arrived a day later.