The Yellow Envelope

by Kim Dinan

  That night I lay on the floor under a heavy blanket that smelled of musty earth and hay. A mosquito net hung above me like a veil, the other members of our group snored around me, and Brian’s warm body rose and fell beside me in sweet, shallow breaths.

  I’d gone traveling, seeking something that I could not quite define, but hopeful that I would know it when I found it. I had found it, though the definition of what it was still eluded me. On the outside, I still looked like me, except with shaggier hair and a few more wrinkles around the eyes. But internally, I was like Pangea after it split into the continents. The old parts of me were still there, but they’d cracked and drifted so far from their original location that the new map of my blood and breath was unrecognizable from the old one.

  The next morning, we stood in a parking lot near the center of the village to give away the remainder of the yellow envelope gift. In addition to the leftover school supplies, Hao had also bought children’s bikes and trikes, which seemed a fitting end to our bicycle tour. He had spread word with the locals that we had toys to give away, and a crowd of children and their parents had gathered near our bus.

  We unloaded the child-sized bikes and tricycles and set them out for the children to play with. The first brave kids took the bikes for a spin before stepping aside to let the others ride. I could see that they were going to end up as communal toys, and I liked that so much better than the weird dynamic back at the school. In the bright morning sunshine, I stood and watched as a young mother loaded her chubby-cheeked daughter onto a toddler trike. The mother put the baby’s feet on the pedals and rotated them. The bike lurched forward, and the baby shrieked with glee. I stood back and laughed with her.

  I squinted across the parking lot and saw Michele and Glenn watching the little girl on the tricycle, laughing too. Around us, children were yelling and playing in the midmorning sunshine. Michele and Glenn had asked us to give away the yellow envelope money in ways that made us smile and made our hearts sing, and as we all stood there in the village, adults and children from different sides of the globe, I could hear the melody of joy as it wafted through the air among us.

  We took the bus back to Hanoi for a final group dinner where we said our good-byes. Hao clanked his spoon against his water glass and stood up to say a bit about each of us. “Kim… She was a bit slow,” he said. “But steady. Steady the whole way.” I laughed and thought, if he only knew.

  As we sat around the large dinner table and reminisced about the trip, I worried that our time with Michele and Glenn was running out. They were catching a flight home the following afternoon, and Brian and I had not yet told them what we’d done with their yellow envelope money.

  As multiple conversations carried on around us, I caught Michele’s eye across the table. “Hey, do you want to do an early lunch tomorrow before you take off for the airport?”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  On the day of their departure we walked along the motorbike-packed streets to a restaurant in the Hanoi Old Quarter. I followed Brian as he ducked through an arched doorway to a secluded outdoor patio, a quiet refuge from the loud and busy city.

  “Are you excited to get home?” I asked Glenn and Michele as I pulled out my chair and scooted toward the table.

  “I’m ready to get back to work, see our dogs, and reestablish our routine,” said Michele. “It’s funny how being gone makes you appreciate home.”

  From my day pack I removed my laptop and looked up at them. “I want to show you guys the slide show I mentioned when we were on Whale Island.” Sitting the computer on the table, I turned the screen toward them. “I know you guys said we weren’t accountable to you, but we want to show you what we’ve done with the money that you gave us.” When I hit the space bar, a picture of the children from La Bib appeared on the screen. It was a group shot; nine of the kids stood upright and smiling in front of Brian and me and the other volunteers. Behind us, painted on the wall in a purple cloud, were the rules of La Bib: Don’t use bad words, don’t run, don’t fight with the other children… Brian began to tell Michele and Glenn about how we used the yellow envelope money to buy a memorial brick in their name.

  While Brian spoke, I stared hard at the picture and studied our faces. We were grinning widely at the camera, and our clothes were not yet stained and puckered with holes. Brian’s beard was cropped neatly near his chin, and my hair was still short and styled. We looked younger, fresher, happy. And I supposed we were. Because we were not yet aware of how we were about to crumble and, afterward, how we’d rebuild ourselves into new structures with joints that facilitated swaying, and more windows to let the light in.

  When we’d clicked through the entire presentation I shut my laptop and sat back in my chair, folding my hands in my lap and fumbling with my wedding ring. “Brian and I don’t really know how to say thank you. But we want you to know how much it means to us that you trusted us to give your money away. And we want you to know how much it means that you asked us on this trip. Everything you’ve done for us has meant more than you will probably ever know.”

  When I looked across the table at Michele I saw that her eyes were red, and she dabbed away tears. “I’m being honest when I say that it means even more to me that you guys are here. Someday I’ll have to tell you about the kind of impact you’ve had on my life.”

  Back in the hotel lobby we hugged Michele and Glenn good-bye and watched as they climbed into the back of a taxi to start their long journey home. We’d become used to watching people leave while we stayed put on the other side of the globe. It didn’t make me sad anymore though; it didn’t make me feel lonely. Somewhere along the way my homesickness had dissipated. I pined only for the next country, the next adventure.

  There was still so much I wished I’d said to Glenn and Michele. I wanted to ask Michele if she even recognized the woman that’d just biked hundreds of miles through Vietnam as the same woman who sat in the park at our going away party. I wanted to know what had motivated her to change and if she’d always known, somewhere deep down, one day, that change would come. And I had hoped to tell her how it had felt for us to give their gift away, how the yellow envelope had coaxed me into living in a way that I wouldn’t have lived otherwise. I wanted to explain that at first I’d been worried I would feel like some pseudosuperhero looking for ways to save the world, swooping in when a situation called for it and fixing things with money. But it hadn’t turned out like that at all. It was more like, when an opportunity to do something good or kind presented itself, I didn’t have an excuse not to do it. I couldn’t ignore it because I was too shy or too broke or in a rush or feeling grumpy. I had to do it. Not for me but for Glenn and Michele.

  Out on the street their taxi merged into traffic, and Brian and I waved as it descended down the road. When it disappeared I turned to Brian and grabbed his hand. We were alone once again, our backpacks at our feet and our futures as malleable as they had been on the day our plane touched down in Ecuador.

  • • •

  And I thought that was the end of it. But a few weeks later I received an email from Michele.

  Kim,

  I want to express how your journey has had a profound impact on my life. I know I have told you in bits and pieces here and there, but I wanted to put it all in one place.

  I’ve always been an active and adventurous sort. I played rugby and roller hockey in college. I’ve rafted raging rivers in Australia, hiked the Grand Canyon, got my nose pierced in Fiji and went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. I spent several summers fighting wildfires in California and Nevada where I was one of the best on the crew with the chainsaw. I got my pilot’s license before I was twenty and have jumped from a plane more than fifty times with a parachute I packed myself. You name it, I was up for it.

  Nearly two years ago you and Brian said good-bye to your Portland friends at a going away party in a beautiful Portland park and set out to b
egin your grand adventure. As I said my good-byes I was struck by two things nearly simultaneously: (1) Holy crap, they’re actually doing it! (2) Huh, that could have been me.

  Would have been me. I was overcome with the realization that the version of myself I described above totally would have done something like quit her job to travel the world. But that wasn’t the version of me that was standing in that park that day. At that moment a big switch in my brain flipped, and I realized, quite to my astonishment, that I had somehow become a spectator in my own life.

  I guess that is a natural progression really. We all grow up and move on. Falling in love, jobs, and mortgage payments become the focus instead of where to spend Spring Break. Don’t get me wrong—my workaday world was great. I had an amazing partner, fabulous job, adorable pets, and good friends. I was living in a great city with spectacular coffee, beer, and food. What more could a person want? I certainly didn’t think I wanted anything more.

  But all the while I never realized that I had lost the spark in the core of my soul. I was no longer that adventure-seeker with a zest for life. It turns out she was, quite literally, buried. I have been overweight my entire life—was always the chubby girl in elementary and junior high. Described as “big-boned” by adults in an effort to be kind and as a great many other things by fellow kids in an effort to be not so kind. By the time I was a teen I was at least thirty pounds overweight, and in my twenties I was probably more than fifty pounds overweight. And so on, and so on, and so on…

  I’ve really never been one to allow my weight to define me. The size of my pants didn’t determine my worth, and it certainly wouldn’t dictate what I could or couldn’t do. If I wanted to jump out of planes, then by God I was going to jump out of planes! Even if it meant I’d have to get a custom-made jumpsuit because the ones at the jump school were too small.

  But somewhere along the way my weight did start to define what I could and couldn’t do. When you first met me I weighed over three hundred pounds. At that weight it was physically too hard to be an adventurer—I was literally carrying the weight of another adult around with me everywhere I went.

  In early 2006, Glenn and I were making plans to take an “active vacation” through REI Adventure tours with Glenn’s brother Chris. Chris, a well-seasoned traveler and adventurer told us to “pick a trip, any trip.” So Glenn and I started scouring the REI catalog to make our selection.

  Each trip was ranked on a scale from one to five based on level of difficulty. A level-one trip was the equivalent of sitting on a nice boat enjoying the scenery go by, and a level-five trip essentially meant you needed a doctor’s waiver because you could die. We decided to focus on finding a level-two trip or maybe a level-three if it didn’t promise to be too difficult.

  That was when I first saw the trip of bicycling through Vietnam. I was so captivated by the descriptions and pictures. I couldn’t imagine a trip I wanted to do more, but I knew my weight and fitness level wouldn’t enable me to bike long distances over mountain passes. I found myself thinking, bummer, too bad I’ll never be able to see that, as I continued flipping through the catalog looking for a less physically demanding trip. In the end we decided to get in better shape, lose some weight, and do a hiking trip of the islands of Greece. The trip was absolutely fantastic, but I always lamented not being able to do the biking in Vietnam.

  Which brings me back to that lightbulb moment in the park at your going away party. I looked at you and saw living proof that just because something seems daunting, it’s not impossible. Just because something you want is scary, it’s still worth the risk of taking that first step…and then the next…and then the next.

  I realized I had a choice to make. I could continue to be a spectator in my own life, all but snuffing out the internal flame that sought activity and adventure. Or, I could seek to uncover my former self and put her back together again.

  Since you left Portland, Glenn and I have been working hard to be healthy and active each and every day. In many ways our journey toward health has been an adventure all on its own. It has opened up so many opportunities to see and do things that we had never imagined. And, most importantly, I finally got to do that bicycling trip through Vietnam!

  To be able to share that experience with you and Brian meant the world to me. I was able to physically do a trip I thought impossible, see things I had only dreamed about, and best of all I got to share the experience with the person that was the catalyst for my transformation.

  You continue to inspire me to this day. I often think of you during those moments of self-doubt when I wonder if I have it in me to keep going. Thinking of your courage and perseverance gives me the determination to keep taking that next step.

  Glenn and I have a lifetime of adventures awaiting us! You were the catalyst that changed the trajectory of my life. You have helped me reconnect with that adventurous girl that lives inside of me. You gave me the courage to dig her out, dust her off, and put her back on her feet again. You have given me a precious gift for which I will forever be grateful.

  Thank you.

  Love,

  Michele

  I read Michele’s letter once, quickly, and then again more slowly, letting the words sink in. The magic of everything, I realized, was that we would not have become who we became without each other.

  Mexico

  Epilogue

  ONE YEAR LATER

  From the shade beneath my umbrella, I squinted toward the horizon at two tiny figures paddling past the breaking waves. Behind me, a row of palm trees divided the beach from town, and beyond them was our apartment, a one-room, light-filled thing built at the edge of the jungle. Brian and I settled there when the constant movement of travel began to lose its shine. And although we could not keep the ants out of the sugar or the hot water from turning cold, it had a particleboard desk for writing and a view of the ocean, and we were happy.

  The warm breeze off of the water smelled of coconut sunscreen. I put my book down in the sand and closed my eyes, my second nap of the day. When I awoke, Brian and Wendy were beside me on their beach towels, drying their bodies in the sunshine.

  “Hey,” I said. “How was it out there?”

  “Great.” Wendy gathered her hair above her head and leaned forward to wring out the saltwater. “The waves were perfect for paddling. Not too strong but not too mellow either.”

  Brian shaded his eyes and squinted at me. “Are you staying hydrated?”

  I held up my water bottle. “I’ve been sleeping in the shade, Brian, not running a marathon.”

  He shook his water bottle back at me. “Better to be safe than sorry. You’re growing my baby in there.”

  Instinctively, my hand went to my belly, and I smiled. “Your baby is perfectly hydrated, I promise.”

  Just the previous week we’d climbed aboard a hot and bumpy bus that weaved along a windy road to Puerto Vallarta and watched as a hazy blob on the ultrasound screen kicked and flipped in my belly. “Strong heartbeat,” the doctor said, as a swoosh swoosh sound filled the room.

  “Oh my God,” said Brian. I said nothing, too captivated by the black and white image, the tiny bundle of cells growing inside of me, for my mouth to form any words.

  That evening, when we returned to our apartment, I’d stepped into the shower and cried so hard my shoulders shook. A simple truth had overwhelmed me: I had two hearts now.

  “You up for a walk?” Wendy asked me.

  “Yeah, actually,” I said, standing to sweep the sand from my legs. “I feel good today.”

  We walked north, away from the restaurants and surfers, and toward the emptier end of the beach. To our left the waves pounded roughly against the shore, and pelicans dive-bombed the water hunting for fish.

  “Sorry I’ve felt so crappy during your vacation,” I said to Wendy. “I had no idea it’d be this bad.” For the majority of her visit I’d been in bed,
heaving into a trash can, and I was sad to be missing our time together.

  “Don’t worry about it. I came down here to relax, and that is exactly what I’ve been able to do.”

  I held my face up to the sun, grateful to be out and moving on such a beautiful day. “It’s hard to believe that the last time I saw you was in India. So much has changed since then!”

  Wendy laughed. “I know!”

  We reached the end of the beach and turned back toward the crowds, talking of the developments in our lives. Wendy had a new job and a new boyfriend. I had a new perspective and a new life growing inside of me. We’d both crammed a lot of living into the year and a half since we’d last seen each other, and though we’d kept in touch, it was so much better to discuss it all in person.

  Up ahead, an old woman walked toward us on the beach, barefoot, dressed in a white dress embroidered with bright flowers. Rainbow-colored beaded bracelets were displayed on her forearm. She gestured to them as we passed her and asked if we wanted to buy one.

  “No tengo dinero,” I told her and waved my arm at my swimsuit. “No place to put it.”