As is my custom when Leaving Home For An Extended Period Of Time, I began packing for Costa Rica a week before our flight’s scheduled departure. Bright flowery summer dresses draped off the ironing board, with corresponding undergarments and shoes nearby; tank tops made precise, cotton multicolored tiers on the rug, and piles of t-shirts, skirts, denim shorts, linen capri pants, sunglasses, and swimsuits overwhelmed the bed in a collage of potential perfection.

I love this ritual, and it stresses the hell out of me. It’s exactly the kind of thing I try to keep from a significant other for at least two years.

“Don’t . . . come in,” I told Jurvis. “I have . . . delved into summer storage.”

There were chargers, extra batteries, extra lenses, extra books, necklaces and earrings in appropriately-sized Ziplock bags. Two notebooks, an iPod, three purses, my favorite pen, eyeliner, travel-sized shampoo and conditioner — freshly labeled with pungent permanent marker. And when I had finally gathered and prepared everything in my possession I could possibly desire in Flamingo, I set about putting back ninety percent of it.

I like thinking of the suitcase as the harborer of a new life, where I am beautiful all of the time, in love with everything, and I never think to myself is this just weighing me down? Do I really want to carry it up five flights of stairs?

Leaving home for a time is — I hope — becoming a new person. The kind you see in catalogs.

Welcome to Miami. I went to the bathroom after deplaning in Miami, and when I came out the door, Jurvis informed me that our connecting flight had been canceled.

“Canceled?” I said. “But we have boarding passes.”

“Canceled,” he said

Since the next flight — on any airline at all, let alone ours — wasn’t until the next day at the same time, an airline agent gave us six airport meal vouchers and a night at the nearby hotel. But this was not entirely convenient: besides missing a full day in Costa Rica and spending a full freaking day in hideous airportville, Miami, we had no way of contacting my cellphone network-less parents, who we were scheduled to meet in Liberia in two hours. I envisioned their panicked faces, the checking and rechecking of watches as they stood in the midday heat in the middle of the world, uncertain, unmoving, purgatorial.

What if they mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”? What if I mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”?