This time last year, I was telling you about our little cocoon of comforts by a lake in Idaho. I hadn’t planned to tell you about this cocoon of comforts on our last night in Montreal exactly one year after I told you about that cabin by that lake, but I’m not surprised by the coincidence.
I told you about that lake of baptisms and the washing away of shame, so it’s only appropriate that, one year later, I’d tell you about a dinky little overchlorinated pool on the eighth floor of an in-terminal hotel where silly people try to do laps and others pretend they’re on the beach while planes fuel and refuel below; it’s just another dip in the water, a lot less profound, but in no way insignificant.
We splurged on this final night because our flight was super early the next morning; thank God that we did, because I’d barely gotten any sleep that whole week in our easy-bake oven of an Airbnb. I hadn’t been in a real hotel in years and years but, as an Arab rapper puts it, abouya rabbani muhandis (“my daddy raised a big shot”) – it takes a minute but you soon find your sea legs again.