Why?

Cookie
photo by waffler.

I was in my favorite tea shop, eavesdropping on a conversation between addle-brained Christian Fundamentalists about experiments being done on prisoners in Duluth in which a machine fixes their “mental problems” when I noticed that the tea shop manager, Lisa, was standing just at the periphery of my vision. I realized she had asked me a question.

“I’m sorry?”

“So why are you going to Mexico?”

It seemed a very odd question to me. Why was I going to Mexico? I didn’t know that I needed a reason, but evidently I did, and couldn’t think of one. “I wanted to use my frequent flyer miles and Marriott points.”

It wasn’t until twenty minutes later that I realized all that was expected of me was the answer “To relax.” But during that twenty minutes, I was perplexed with the question: Why am I going to Mexico? Why Puerto Vallarta? Chaos and chance; it was merely an alignment of the stars, or more accurately, an alignment of available dates for frequent flyer miles and hotel points. But why go on a vacation at all? I was dumbfounded by the brilliancy of her question, as simple as a child’s: Why?

I sipped the dregs of my tea and looked at the shocking beauty outside: a spring day in Minneapolis, bright sun, melting snow. A pair of Canadian Geese came flying in low over the city, wing tip to wing tip. I craned my neck to watch them pass overhead, bottomless blue parted by a pair of geese cutting across the sky.

Beside me, a little boy sat at a table with his grandmother. He ate a giant M&M cookie, crumbs on those pale cream cheeks, grandma smiling down on him. He bounced in his chair, enthralled with his cookie and the bustle of the tea shop. I want the same kind of thrill out of life, but I am no longer satisfied by a cookie. Maybe that is a better answer for why I am going to Mexico. Because cookies just don’t cut it anymore.