The Getaway Wake-Up Call

We drove up the snowy, winding road toward the cozy A-frame cabin. Jimmy was squirming in the passenger seat as if we had missed an important gas station exit and his bladder was about to spontaneously combust. But that wasn’t the case.

“You can take your blindfold off now, Jimmy,” I said.

Jimmy peeled the blindfold off like a days-old band-aid.

“Ta-da,” I added, fretfully.

There was only the sound of the car heater blowing on high.

“Couldn’t we have waited for this until next year when I’m retired, babe?” Jimmy grunted, unclicking his seatbelt.

“No,” I spat back, “you’ve been banking your vacation for years and never using any of it. That’s why you’re miserable. You tell me every day.”

“I’m a happy guy,” Jimmy smirked through frustration. “Tennessee isn’t for me. I like Florida just fine, thank you.”

Jimmy and I have been dating for eight months now and it has been somewhere along the lines of tumultuous and the greatest thing that has ever happened to either one of us. Two people finding love for the first time in their late fifties doesn’t fit the mold of social norms. And no, we didn’t meet on some niche modern website for folks who are too afraid to talk to the opposite sex.

The thing is, Jimmy hasn’t left his hometown of Gainesville, Florida in thirty-three years and he’s moderately proud of this fact. He’s content working in the warehouse of a furniture company with plans to retire early next year at 59. I have been drilling it into his head that if he doesn’t travel now, then he might not feel like traveling in his sixties. What if he has a major surgery that inhibits this? Falls off a ladder in the warehouse and breaks his neck? Gets shot for asking his neighbor to clean up after his dog? Life is oh so startling and unexpected.

The inside of the cabin felt like a comfortable oven as the fireplace blazed and flickered like fire dancers parading over fresh maple logs, set there by the owner of the place before we arrived. The large windows showcased the picturesque mountains of Gatlinburg surrounding the cabin. Jimmy walked towards the windows and stared to the great beyond, popping open a can of coke from the fridge. He doesn't even like coke.

The snow continued to fall, and the wind shuddered the bare branches.

“I’m a beach guy, I’m easy peasy. I don’t need these sorts of luxuries, Alexis.”

I shook my head and pursed my lips.

“Why, Jimmy, just why?” I said.

“Why what?”

“Why is it so hard to get you to enjoy something in your life and treat yourself once in a while? You are not a working machine sent to this earth to only work eight-hour shifts.”

“Because babe, I’m just simple. A bologna sandwich and Cheetos every day and I’m good. This kind of caviar ain't for me.”

“Then who’s it for, Jimmy?”

“Millionaires.”

There is a complex of never feeling good enough and it is called a fear of imperfection. Somewhere along the line of life, Jimmy began to believe that the lovely things of this world weren’t reserved for people like himself. A belief system had been developed deep inside of him that said travel was exclusive to the ones with beefy bank accounts, so he began to settle down with the idea of watching television until he passed out every night after work.

But I chose Jimmy because I saw something inside of him that wasn’t free, a good person needing wings, much like how I was up until a few years ago before I decided to let my hair down and run. Jimmy was a caged sociable animal who, when let out of his cage on occasion, preferred to hide under the bed rather than mingle with the guests.

Jimmy reached into his pocket to pull out his cell phone, lifting it to his ear.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

“Work. Checking to make sure everything is good in the warehouse.”

“Put down the phone,” I stated.

“It’ll be really quick, babe.”

“Put it down, please.”

Jimmy slid the phone back into his front pocket.

“Please, enjoy where you are at, be in the present, not the future.”

Jimmy’s eyes shone liquid and anxious. “I’m a little worried about the warehouse back in Jacksonville.”

“Worry about yourself, I beg you.”

“I told you, this isn’t for me. I don’t fit in I’m not a rich man. I know you want me to be a rich man. But I’m not. You’re just showing me your dream house, I get it.”

It was like dismantling a bomb to neutralize Jimmy’s negative attitude toward life and travel. Any moment he was confronted, he could implode into smithereens. The years of solitude had done a number on him, contorting his vision of everything around him. Forcing Jimmy to take a vacation was only a minor detail of how difficult it was to bring him this far into the mountains of Tennessee. I wasn’t about to leave this cabin in two days without him having a spiritual awakening of sorts.

“I don’t think I’ve seen snow since I was seven,” Jimmy mentioned, glancing out the window from the recliner.

“You need to treat yourself more often, life is beautiful, there’s more to it than that stupid warehouse you obsess over.”

His eyes scanned the room in deep thought.

“Thirty-three years. That’s how long it has been since you left the city,” I added.

“I know.”

Alexis leaned forward a bit from her chair, “And you know what else? The company will go on without you whether you’re there or not. If you get fired or lose your job, they’d have your replacement before your body would be buried in the ground.”

“I know it.”

“My father died a death that stretched out over two years. Two years. And guess what? I was too young and stupid to stand up to my boss and tell them I wanted to take more time off. Why? Because I felt like I was doing a disservice to my job if I took too much time off.”

Jimmy shed a single tear without one facial muscle shifting.

“And you know what else,” I continued, “Now I’ve got barely any memories of his last years to show for it and I don’t even work at the same place anymore.”

“You’re right,” Jimmy affirmed. “I’ve been putting my mental health behind my job. Look at this snow falling, it’s like therapy.”

Jimmy began to reminisce of all the years he hadn’t left his town to stay working for the company, accruing paid time off, believing it was that which was making him a rich man – ninety-something days of vacation saved.

Jimmy began to tense up as he stepped onto the back porch off the living room with me. It was frigid, each other’s breath visible like two lone scuba divers breathing from beneath the sea.

“I can’t buy a house like this for us, I want you to know that,” Jimmy said through the snowflakes.

“I don’t care.”

Jimmy wiped some of the accumulating snow from the porch banister.

“Do you think I’ve wasted time in my life?” Jimmy asked.

The mountains of Tennessee in the winter bear no resemblance to Florida in the winter. One place is snowing, and the other is 85 degrees Fahrenheit and sandal weather. No matter what it is, it takes a new experience to broaden the mind and to see the world from a new lens. It is impossible to compare when there is nothing to measure against – and this is simultaneously a good thing as well as a bad thing. Good and evil lie in the hands of comparison.

“Can life start again at 58?” Jimmy asked, holding his tongue open to the snow like a toddler.

“If you want it to.”

“Can learning to travel at my age be my version of being born again?”

I chuckled.

“This beautiful cabin is a temporary blessing,” Jimmy carried on. “In two days, we’ll be right back in Florida and this will all be a good memory. And that’s what I hate about travel.”

“There’s nothing impossible about this moment,” I said. “Be here, Jimmy.”

Something in that moment clicked for Jimmy as he squeezed every possible morsel of light from our talk. I opened my heart like cardiac surgery to profess my love for travel and told him how the secret to remaining healthy and happy is to always be in the present. I explained to him how it keeps you grounded and connected to yourself and everything around you, reducing your stress and ruminating, and aids in the fight against anxiety, something he didn’t realize he dealt with when he didn’t feel like traveling outside of Gainesville.

“What have I done?” Jimmy appeared amused by his own awakening. “I could’ve been traveling up until now.”

“We can only go forward. We can see Rome and all the ancient cities next,” I said.

Jimmy’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hold on a second,” he said. He glanced at the phone screen. Work.

My vocal cords were dry. I had nothing left to say to him.

I waited. The phone continued to rattle in his hand. The look on Jimmy's face was knowing, almost aware.

Then, as if he were a star quarterback, Jimmy launched his phone into the snowy wilderness below the cabin.

“That’ll cost me a pretty penny,” his eyes smiled as he listened for a thud that was never heard.

“Had you answered, it could've cost you your life.”

"And now I realize that more than I did one hour ago."