Rest & Relaxation
“I’m going to give you ten more minutes to feel sorry for yourself.” Whirling around to face me, my husband refocuses my attention with his directness. He stands erect on the muddy single track trail of the rugged Na Pali Coast, carrying his sixy-pound pack like it’s full of feathers. Irritating, if you’d ask me.
He scowls at my foot-dragging and swats away another mosquito, but not before it bites into his brown, sweat-drenched flesh. “We’re not going to waste what little time we have together being upset,” he continues, pulling me out of my self-pity, “The dynamite blasts are out of our control. We can’t hike this trail. So after the 10 minutes are up, I don’t want to hear another word about it. Let’s move out.”
For a second I wish to scream, I’m not another foot soldier, I’m your wife, but it would be useless, he is only acting as he’s been trained. Sliding into step behind him, I try to match his cadence with mine but it’s impossible. His size 13 military grade boots imprint the earth in front of me, spraying up a slippery, peanut buttery mud, the kind that forms a casing around your boot, mummifying traction lines at the sole, impossible to kick off. I wonder if his soldiers have the same difficulty keeping up with him that I do. The same feeling of not quite measuring up.
As he turns back towards the path we just came from, to hike the measly mile and a half back out of the jungle, I envision him leading his platoon through villages in Iraq. Shouldering armored breast plates, an M4 rifle, and enough water and ammunition to make any patrol intolerable, I realize my husband’s ability to pivot is his strength. I can hear him speak to his men in the same gruff tone he uses now with me, commanding them to follow as if their life depended on it. Which it did.
***
Service members in the United States Military on 12-month deployments are granted leave from their overseas duty assignment for a period of two weeks. Known as rest and relaxation, or R&R, it is the Army’s way to boost morale, and maybe to keep families sane. The goal of R&R is to assist in re-energizing and mentally preparing servicemembers for the remainder of their tour. It was ironic that I had chosen to spend our time together in the jungle on a challenging hike.
For ten months I had buried my sadness of our separation in piles of his clean clothes. I washed, folded, and rewashed socks, underwear, any item of his I could get my hands on. Some would argue that washing his clothes would wash his scent away, but the rote task of laundry, though he wasn’t there to dirty any of it, made me feel as though I was taking care of him, even with the thousands of miles between us.
Six months prior to my husband’s R&R, I had arrived home from my own deployment to Afghanistan. A year before that, we were married. In total, we had been separated by deployments as long as we were together. This yo-yo effect of life together, then life apart, occupied the first five years of our marriage.
Every time we’d circle back into each other's lives, we slowly, painfully, ironed out the kinks of the relationship, then we were gone again. As much as I loved him and wanted to be together, it was easy for me to build an invisible wall between us because of his absence. My wall made it difficult to work through differences.
With each reunion he’d diligently tear down my walls, bit by bit. Peeling back who I was and what I’d become in his absence took both love and patience, but his ability to problem solve the puzzle of me has always been his forte. This was the kind of man that would say yes to my grand plans of a 22-mile hike during his 2-week R&R.
***
Adventuring together had always brought us close, so I threw myself into the planning. Hiking together would redefine us as a pair after a prolonged separation, surely. It was a long, treacherous trail that required special permits which I had obtained months in advance in order to tent camp on the beach at the end of the trail. I was stoked for his arrival, for his approval of my grand plans, and for a chance to show that I could also be the party planner.
Any normal person would have reserved a hotel room on the beach with ocean views. Maybe a spa day. Possibly, a surf lesson.
The problem is, that’s just not us.
We are the couple that, between school and starting a job, thought it would be awesome to bike pack 400 miles through South Korea in five days. I had no idea how long the trail was when we started. There were times I wanted to quit.
When I asked for a babymoon, a few years later, my husband thought it would be a perfect opportunity to take a 28-ft sailboat and sail it through a storm in the British Virgin Islands. The boat-plus-baby nausea was laughable. The fact that we did it alone made me question our sanity.
***
Back in Kauai, on the Na Pali Coast Trail, we stood admiring the stunning scenery that lay before us. Reaching the end of a switchback, peering out beyond the jungle, sheer lava rock cliffs plummeted to a pristine glassy turquoise ocean below. This Jurassic-Park-esque landscape, the jewel of the Garden Isle, was formed by some of the highest rainfall on earth, giving it a signature lush greenery. It was idyllic.
What could possibly go wrong?
A mile and a half into our planned 22-mile hike we began hearing blasts from the side of the mountain. I imagined my husband’s mind snapping back to the battlefield he’d just left. Around the bend we were greeted by an explosives team who looked as surprised to see us as we were to see them.
They explained the trail was closed due to rock slides, which they were clearing, and that the permit I thought I reserved for camping at the trail’s end was in fact for a campground at the trail’s beginning. Devastation hit me like a rogue wave off the beach.
I didn’t want him to see my tears, that I had fallen short significantly on an adventure I had hoped would bring us closer together. Before I could think of a solution, my husband did an about face, turning back towards where we had just hiked like no big deal.
“I can’t believe you’re just going to turn around and give up like that!” Anger rising up in me like hot steam in a tea kettle.
“What would you like me to do?” He questions, “The trail is closed, we have no other option.” Leaving me collapsed in the middle of the trail like a puddle, he summits a nearby peak, somehow gets service from what I thought was a cell phone dead zone and reserves an Airbnb for the rest of our trip.
Walking back towards me through the jungle of vines, he breaks into a smile. In my mind, he’d clearly forgotten our epic adventure had ended before it even began. “Check out this Airbnb. It has one of those swinging outdoor sofa beds you like. The owner cooks all meals for you, and there’s a secret beach within walking distance. Come on, it’ll be okay.”
***
Fifteen years of marriage and two kids in, I look back on this memory and still feel the devastation of unmet expectations. There’s a sinking shame I can still feel in my reaction to failure and I imagine my husband’s frustration with my inability to adapt to change. If we’re being honest, our differences can set us at odds even to this day.
Challenges for us are irresistible, and memories like this remind me that we are at our best when we’re in the thick of it. It’s when we feel most alive as a couple. Navigating our differences in those moments, leaning on each other’s strengths as a complement to ourselves, we begin to step from tolerating to appreciating each other.
Years later, when the strands of floss he leaves throughout the house no longer bother me, we laugh about this little misadventure. He never really wanted to come home from a deployment steeped in physical labor to hike a trail and sleep outside. But I was determined to walk through a wall if it meant we’d complete a goal. My plan, once perfect, now seems ridiculous and I laugh alongside him as we plan our next adventure together.
This essay was a runner up in Coffee & Crumbs annual Love After Babies writing contest—exclusively open to Exhale members. Learn more here.
