I was sitting here thinking about the past; I was running lazy thoughts through my head a I glanced at my daughter, peacefully sleeping beside me, huddled in a mass of blankets. My thoughts took me back to a different time in my life – when the absurdities of adulthood didn’t exist and I was somewhat at peace. New Jack Swing was in its downfall and I was an irregularly shaped kid who was obsessed with Enigma and becoming a journalist. I had a season’s pass to the two amusement parks in my area, but I loved to swim. I would frequent Water Country just to have a chance to swim in the wave pool. A pool that large and full of so many people made me feel less awkward – I knew that I could be inconspicuous amongst the growing crowd. I would spend my summers there; shoulders sunburned from the heat and belly full of all of the overpriced junk food that I could cram into it without interrupting my love of the water. Phil Collin’s “Hold on my Heart” blasted over the loudspeakers…. And this peace would come flowing over me as if that place was where I was meant to be, if only for a second.
Lovers would pass, arm in arm with their double tubes and matching attire and parts of me would long for that interaction. For me, I was just another fat kid in an ugly, ill-fitting bathing suit – somewhere between the lot of a cow and a whale. I would never be the skinny girl in the bikini, with someone’s arms wrapped around her midsection kissing the nape of her neck. It was my role to watch from the sidelines and envy with controlled contempt. After a while, I stopped punishing myself. I haven’t been to Water Country since high school. I walked away from that place on my last visit hearing the group that would soundtrack my life – Enigma. Between “Sadeness” and “Return to Innocence,” one or the other seems to play every time I strike out into independent abandon. As time as progressed, people like Moby and Bjork have been added to the list, but the tone has always stayed a similar wave of new age familiarity. A calmness….
I think of those times now. I have a husband whom I love with every breath of my being. After all of this is over, will we “return to innocence” and act like carefree lovers, kissing under a Virginia sky. Maybe we’ll share a double intertube and float lazily down the waterpaths – or maybe shoot down some slide in a wave of excitement. Maybe in a year I’ll be able to put on my first bikini… and not look like the women on the front of novelty shop cards that are there to amuse. One can be hopeful.
We’ll celebrate our fifth anniversary this year. He wanted to go to Belgium, but will be out to sea on the actual date of our anniversary. I can appreciate a man that would come up with a trip idea based on two of my favorite things: good beer and good cookies. LOL Both of which will either be limited or erased from my life after this surgery. But there is still one thing that we can still do together. We can escape into the privacy of our own space, turn on a playlist, and make love to our own private soundtrack as if we were that young couple kissing underneath the Virginia sky….
Richard, I love you so much…..
That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence
Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion
Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion
Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence
If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny
Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and use the chance
To return to innocence
That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence
Don't care what people say
Follow just your own way Follow just your own way
Don't give up, don't give up
To return, to return to innocence.
If you want then laugh
If you must then cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny.
Return to Innocence - Engima
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