Can I See Your Claim Check?

I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Fort Worth this last weekend when I overheard two women talking.

"Seriously, is it that hard to find someone who does not have an entire closet of Samsonite?"

"That is why you have to get them young before they have time to develop any."

Ahhhh, "baggage."  I got it.  I wondered if she considered the fact that she herself is most likely someone's Samsonite.  Granted she may be a carry on or she may be a steamer trunk.

I look at what can be considered my baggage and I do wonder how many people I have scared away simply by having children; by being a financially unstable; having an ex-husband, a dead husband, ex-girlfriends; and any other number of daunting things in my life that may tell someone to cut and run.

What makes someone's baggage Louis Vuitton and another's a black roller bag held together by duct tape?

What makes one more attractive than the other?  Is there a mental process people go through when they meet someone and marks are deducted for each thing that resides within their own suitcases?

"Oh you have kids? That is awesome!"...."Wait -- five kids?  Yeah, umm., it was nice meeting you."

At what point when meeting someone do you divulge certain things about you that may be dealbreakers?

"Dinner was awesome, did I mention that I am married?  Well, I may or may not be."

 When you meet someone as teenagers and have nothing behind you and everything ahead of you, it is so easy to simply let go and dream of all the possibilities.  Hours can be spent imagining a future together.

As we get older and we develop our own special brand of accoutrements, the dreaming becomes harder. 

So nice to picture a tract house of our own, somewhere that's green. 

So difficult to get to that little house on the hillside made of ticky tack.

How much of our past has to go with us into the future? 

There are obvious things that can be worked out -- will your big dog eat my little dog?  Will my cats kick your cat's ass?

When is the time to put away the baggage and just be?  To just lie down and have the world open up and move out the way for the lovers that walk, oblivious to anything but each other?

People say that the first three months of a relationship are the easiest because we are filled with endorphins and blinded by possibilities

I disagree.  The first three months are when we are slammed with the small nuances a person may possess that at once we find endearing but become annoying.

The start is when we spill our guts, we unzip our luggage and hand it over to the other person to run through it like a security checkpoint at an airport.

"I am so sorry, Ma'am, but I am going to have to take this if you want to continue on with your journey." 

"Wait, I have had that forever.  Is it that big of a deal that I (smoke, have children, don't drink, am overweight, have really sappy taste in music)?"

Sometime between hello and goodbye is an unzipping, an unpacking, a time to decide if you can take on someone's baggage along with your own.

If you never try, you will never know.  Call the bellhop, get a roller cart, load the bags, put them in storage for a while and take time to just be. 

Walk hand in hand and unpack as you see fit, discard what you feel you need to discard for you and cling to that which you know to be authentically yours.

Take the time to look the person in the eyes and just see them as they want to be seen. 

See possibility, see openness.  Look not at the baggage claim ticket but rather at the adventures in which the bags were packed and filled in the first place.