Talking Texan, Y'all

December 12, 2011 – Because I am a 4^th Generation Texan

It doesn’t help my tendency to talk Texan that my sisters and I go visit my aunt and uncle in the country. One of my Colorado friends always said, “You say ‘y’all’ a lot more after you visit your family.” I’ve only been here a week and already the Y’all is replacing You Guys, You All, and Ustedes. My vowels are also rounding out and elongating. Heck, before I leave the States I’ll be talkin’ like a real live, bless your heart, southern gal, y’all.

I call up my younger sister. “What day do you have off work? You wanna go out to the country with me to visit David and Kathy?”

My aunt and uncle live out in East Texas on the farm my grandparents bought some time in the 1970s. I spent a good portion of my childhood dusting my socks, jeans and the top of my shoes with sulfur to avoid chigger bites, high-walking in the grass to scare off rattlers, casting minnowed lines into the tank to fish, and walking the foot trails with my Mammaw looking at animal tracks. I haven’t been out to the farm in years. And certainly not since David and Kathy moved there at the beginning of this year. It’s high time I go for a visit.

“Saturday is my only day off,” Michaela says. “We could go then.”

I text my aunt to ask if she’d mind us coming out on Saturday.

Plan to stay for dinner, she texts me back.

Later on, when my older sister is over I throw out an invitation to her as well, forgetting that Michaela’s car doesn’t have backseat room since it serves as her closet. After all she does live on a boat.

“Oops,” I say to my mom after Jesse leaves. “Now what do I do?”

“You can take my car,” Mom says. “Maybe Kim will want to go too.” Kim is my sis-by-engagement-to-my-brother.

“You don’t mind?” I ask.

Kim and David

My mom never minds. And thus it’s arranged. We’re country bound!

Saturday arrives and Jesse and I go pick up Michaela and then Kim. I drive. Jesse DJs the jams and knits. Michaela provides the personalized GPS service and Kim updates us on our second to youngest brother’s commercial truck driving interstate progress.

Jesse and Me

It’s a perfect day for a drive. The fifty some odd miles go by quickly. Soon I’m turning down 2602 and taking a right onto the gravel lane.

“You shouldn’t speed down this road in Mom’s car,” Michaela chastises me after I swerve to avoid a pothole.

I’m only going twenty miles per hour, but I slow down a little more.  Then I turn left through the gates, past the sign that says Epps--our maternal side surname-- down the path past the tank (a tank is a man-dug water reservoir similar to a pond or lake) through the copse and then pull into the carport next to the house.

Uncle David greets us with Paco in hand. Paco may be just a Chihuahua about the size of a zucchini, but he’s got delusions of grandeur that I can totally relate to. He lets us know in no uncertain terms that this is his property and he’s pretty much in charge.

Kathy, David, Paco

After the hellos are made we all go up to the tank to check out the new dock that David and his brother-in-law put in. Paco leads the way then doubles back to bark at our heels.

Uncle David tosses some fish food into the water. Jesse and I watch the perch come up to nibble their dinner while Michaela and Kim try out the fishing poles with no catching success. We discuss water levels, rain accumulation, fish size, wood staining, post strength , deer sightings, hog sightings, and turtles. After a while Aunt Kathy heads back to the house to start some appetizers.

When the air starts to gather a chill in its arms we follow after Kathy and head indoors.

“I know you said you’ve been craving spring rolls,” Aunt Kathy tells me while cutting up carrots and other crudités.  “so I’m making some lettuce wraps.”

They’re delicious and craving-satisfying. We make short work of them.

“When do you girls want dinner?” Aunt Kathy asks.

The four of us exchange glances and convey that we’re all up to the challenge of making short work of dinner too whenever it’s ready. Then we all try to help and stay out of the way at the same time. Uncle David pulls the trash bag out of the can and starts for the door. Kim takes my camera and follows him out while he goes to burn the trash.

When they come back inside Kim says, “You should go get some pictures of the cows.”

The recent rains have made the crossing of the creek both possible and enticing to some of the neighbor cows. David and Kathy and Paco have been occupied with chasing them off the property for the past couple of weeks, but the cattle are still coming over. They’d come in and eaten the bales of hay Uncle David had set up to use for target practice, made clomping tracks up to the tank, “planted” cow patties across the pasture and created gaping holes in the mud with their heavy hooves.

Michaela has Paco in her arms while we try to get in picture taking distance of the cows. Once the pictures are captured he’ll be released to chase the cows and demonstrate his super speed. He can hardly handle waiting.

Michaela and Paco

I only get one picture before the cows trot off into the brush out of our sight. They’ve been chased off so many times now they know the drill. Paco barks, “And stay out!” then darts all around looking just like a land-bound version of Mighty Mouse.

Since we’re there, we tour the old west town a guy named Tony had built in the ‘70s or 80s’. He’d been a journalist for the Dallas Morning News and came out to the country on the weekends. As kids, that place had seemed so huge and so fantastic. Tony had named one building The Sheriff’s Office. Another The Opry House. The Outhouse had been down the path a ways. When we were kids we’d always wanted to play there, but Mammaw kept us in check. We could go over to visit and peer through the windows but that was about it.

“It seems so small,” I tell Jesse.

“I know,” she says.

We look for the Outhouse but don’t find it.

“Uncle Vic tore it down,” David tells us when we find him. My Great Uncle Vic and Great Aunt Glenna had bought the property from Tony at some point and had lived there until my Uncle Vic passed away and Aunt Glenna went to live nearer to her kids.

“Tony used to work for the Dallas Morning News and he did a piece in Austin for Austin City Limits or some show like that where Waylon Jennings played and Tony got to take the Opry House sign with him which he put on one of the buildings.”

Maybe David said it was Willie Nelson not Waylon Jennings. I can’t remember. The place has some Country and Western history at any event.

Meanwhile back at the house, Kathy’s done stuffing the tomatoes and prepping the potatoes.
While the grill is heating up I try my hand again at making Pisco Sours. When we’re all served they say, “Welcome home,” we clink glasses and drink.

“Is this a dry Pisco Sour?” David asks.

“It’s right in the middle,” I reply. “Not overly sweet but not completely dry.” They’re not half bad. At least no one spits them out or goes to wash their mouths out with soap and water.

While the potatoes bake, we tour the house, watch a Hallmark special, play with Paco, don Christmas scarves and then dinner is served. Sure, we’re eating potatoes and tomatoes, but these are no ordinary tubers. These are gourmeted up. Fancified and delicious!  

When my plate is clean Kathy asks if I’d like more.

“I’m so full,” I tell her. “That was really good.”

“You won’t go home hungry?” she asks.

“Not a chance.”

Especially not after she serves us gluten-free brownies. Kim and I split a second brownie just to be polite. At least that’s how I justify myself to my full belly.  We sit around the table visiting for a bit longer then ease up from the table. After we say our thanks yous and get some Y’all come back nows, we head ‘em up and move ‘em out.

Uncle David rides up to the front with us to close the gate. We wave goodbye and drive away.

Michaela GPSes us back to the Dallas area. I drop her off at the marina, Kim at her apartment and take Jesse home. I drive myself to my parents’ house, get greeted at the front door by the dogs and then steer myself off to bed.

Hoo doggies, what a day, y’all!

Comparing

December 10, 2011 – Comparison

I can’t help myself from comparing. Maybe it’s human nature. Maybe it’s a personal flaw. Maybe it’s just my curious mind always trying to make sense of what I see. As if that weren’t bad enough I find myself contrasting everything too. Putting experiences side by side. Holding them up by the tips of my fingers to see how they catch the sunlight. Gazing at them through my mind’s eye like at those Spot the Differences pictures in the comic section of the newspaper. This might just be me stringing connections together where before there weren’t any in order to tell a story. Whatever it is, it’s what I do.

When my mom drives me home from the airport all I want to say is, “In Peru this…” or “In Peru that…” or “In Lima there’s…” I’ve come back with a new prescription to my world view glasses and it’s all I can focus on. If I keep my mouth shut maybe I’ll avoid sounding obnoxious.

Sunday morning traffic is pretty light. I’m shocked (not into silence though) by the calm, the order. There’s a Dallas area adage that I’ve used plenty of times in my life that says, “Six Thirty-Five is always bad.” And it is. Until now. 635 is one of the main highways in the complex and veiny highway system of Dallas Fort Worth. On this ride 635 is practically empty. The cars that happen to be zipping by or getting left behind us all stay in their own proper lanes. No one honks. No one leans out the window and yells, “Avance!” No one pulls out in front of us and then stops dead to haggle rates with someone standing on the side of the road. Clots of taxis don’t trawl the roads looking for fares. In fact, I don’t see a single taxi or bus.

“We’ll take the Dallas Tollway,” my mom says, “because 635 gets backed up a little around Preston Road.”


Light and orderly traffic

I sit back and enjoy the ride. After a trip down three laned Javier Prado with a mess of traffic that crowds in six or more cars and feels like a dare against death backed up seems relative. Just having a personal vehicle seems like a luxury.

It’s fall in North Texas. The trees, whose numbers seem greater than I remember, have turned delightful colors of orange and yellow and red. “Look at all the trees!” I exclaim. “I didn’t know Dallas was beautiful.” I didn’t. The blend of road and tree, cement and green, skyscraper and sky makes a contrast of color I’d never fully noticed.  

I’ve not been totally oblivious; I used to be shocked by all the trees and flagrant greenery when I came from mountainous and arid Colorado to visit my folks. Despite its more temperate growing environment, Dallas had always come up short for me in comparison to Colorado. Now I wonder how Colorado would stop me with its beauty. I wonder how the city of 400,000 would seem flat-lined after Lima. I may not get the chance this trip to see, but part of my heart beats faintly from an altitude of 6035 feet.

Some bit of me belongs in Colorado, but when I talk about going to Texas I always say, “When I go home.” Because home is where unconditional love ripens and never spoils. Home is the place where I can leave my composting worms with my dad because he gave them to me in the first place and I know he’ll take care of them while I’m gone and maybe forever. Home is where memory smells like honeysuckle vine and looks like Black-Eyed Susans. Home is a place I can leave behind and come back changed, and yet people will still know me by name.  

If heaven were a garden; it’d be my mom’s backyard.

If paradise were a house; it’d be found at 1222 Carroll Drive.

If happiness were living beings; they’d be my parents’ dog-friends Oscar and Rocky.

If friends were parents; they’d be mine.



Oscar

Friday morning I go to get the insurance card for the white van from my grandmother. She and my grandfather are letting me borrow it for the weekend. I’ve too quickly given up on my idea of taking public transportation or walking everywhere while I’m here. Convenience presents a persuasive argument.

“Do you have a minute to come inside?” she asks.

I do. I have about five minutes before I need to head out across town to meet a friend for lunch.

We sit in the front room.

“You’ve changed,” she tells me after she settles down and turns to face me.  

“I have? How do you mean?”

“I noticed it after you came over the other day.” She pauses, and I wait with a weave of curiosity and mild fear about the size of a Taco Bell Hot Sauce packet. I’m not quite sure how to take this. I can’t tell if she means this in a good or bad way. I feel like so much depends on her answer in the way that William Carlos Williams said:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I stay politely in my chair waiting.

“You seem more cosmopolitan.”

I breathe again even though I don’t exactly know what that means.

“I think it’s a good thing,” she says without me having to ask. “You’re a woman of the world.”

She’s comparing me to who she saw me as last. She’s contrasting my behavior to what defined me before. I can understand this. Ain’t that what I’ve been doing myself?

A Quiet Place

December 8, 2011 – A Quiet Place

Never in my life did I ever think the words, “Dallas is a quiet city,” would come out of my mouth. I’d have bet against those odds. “Right,” I’d have said, drawing out the word with total disbelief. “Dallas. Quiet. Ha.” But recently I’ve learned never to think in absolutes.  Especially when I hear the kinds of words coming out of my own mouth.

Dallas is a quiet city. After Lima my sense of noise has forever altered. Here, the omnipresent cacophony of horns does not plague the air. Car alarms aren’t a constant melody. Screaming kids and yipping puppies are at least not within hearing distance for hours on end. Strange sounds like duck calls or misplayed kazoos do not reverberate up and down the street as some vendor announces his presence selling bread, ice cream, sweets, or sharpening knives. This is not to say that the City of Dallas is not without sound--no--but it is at least, from what I’ve heard in the last four days, less noise polluted.

This astounds me. I stand in the middle of the sidewalk listening to one airplane passing overhead. Then I only hear the rustle of drying leaves against the concrete. The soft whir of a passing car says something sibilant. A distant dog barks then stops. I go back inside and sit on the couch looking out at my mother’s garden. The refrigerator hums comfortingly and Rocky sleeps against my knees making soft snorting, sighing sounds.

Something warm settles around my ears absorbing the chill I got from standing in the outside air. Silence. The silence I’ve been craving for so long is here in the place I left behind me so long ago.

I would never have believed this of Dallas.

I’d fled to the mountains of Colorado and sworn off cities. Forever I thought. Then, in a fit of craziness, I moved into a city of nine million people. Lima. Someplace where I never thought I could survive. A city jungle I wasn’t sure I could handle. Fighting it, resisting it, trying to find my place within it somehow I have survived and I have handled it. Me—one among millions.

The Dallas metroplex contains only six million people. That three extra million that Lima has makes a heck of a difference that’s for sure.

With the warding off and protective measures I’d learned in the last six months’ of my Lima living I decide to walk to the library. It’s four and a half miles from my parents’ house. I don’t have a real reason to go except that I’ve missed books and want to see how it is walking in this city.

DART, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, is a relatively new thing, and the trains don’t go everywhere. As I head down Carroll Drive towards Glenbrook, there aren’t seven million taxis passing me, slowing down, yelling out the window, “Taxi. Taxi?” to me as I walk head down and fast. Here I don’t have to walk fast at all. I take a leisurely stroll and only two cars go by me in that half a mile stretch.

Here I meander. I gaze up at the blue sky. I stop to turn my face into the sun. I watch a yellow leaf fall to the ground and then I sidestep it so I don’t crunch it underfoot.

I walk for an hour without getting honked at once. I don’t get yelled to or whistled at. I only pass one other walker and she meets me eye to eye, smiles. Smiles! and says, “Hi.”

“How’s it going?” I say as I pass her and keep on.

The streets are empty of humanity. The people of this city are behind their wheels, inside their insulated houses, at their jobs – they’re not out walking the streets to get somewhere. Places are too far apart for that.

Settling way too quickly into this City’s mentality I get about halfway to the library and realize I don’t really need to go there. So I walk up Sycamore Street to gaze at the house my parents’ bought after they got married. The house where they brought me right after I was born. The tiny house I lived in until I was about seven years old. My older sister and I swung on swings in that backyard looking up at the stars and dreaming of Care Bears. We made notes with Crepe Myrtle blossoms in the front yard. We tricked people into smelling the pollen filled centers of Buttercups and then laughed with delight at their yellow tipped noses.

I smile at the memories. Then I walk the back way to Blossom Road where I lived from age seven until I was ten. I walk past my childhood best friend’s house, up the hill, to the house with the tall Pine tree that I climbed at least once to satisfy a dare. There’s someone on the front porch talking on the phone. So I duck out of sight to take a picture without being seen. The roofers on the house next door don’t whistle down at me or blow my cover.

Just when I tuck my camera back into my bag and start walking again, a white truck pulls up to the curb. I pause to check both ways before I cross the street. The driver catches my eye as he climbs down out of the cab and says, “Hi.”

“How’s it going?” I reply and go on.

It’s not a come on. It’s not a, “What beautiful eyes you have,” hit.  It’s just a hi.

I’m not used to that. I scrunch my forehead and ponder ulterior motives. Then I laugh. I look up at the glorious cloudless blue sky. I watch an American Flag flip against the wind. Here I can walk with my head up. I can meet people’s gaze without recrimination.

I can let down my defenses. This is the place I’m from.

This is Texas. The Friendly State. Welcome back.

Back in the U.S.S...er...A!

December 7, 2011 – Back in the U.S.S…. er, A!

“I'm watching the weather!” my mom messages me. “Winter storm possible for Monday. Arghhhhhhh!

I’m flying standby thanks to a ticket my aunt secured for me through some kind of powerful magic. Getting on my scheduled flight is dependent on seat availability, which is dependent on the whimsy of the travel gods, the weather gods and the karmic gods of life. I might have been lax in pouring out libations to all of them so I have a little worry eating at the back of my mind. When I came to Peru I got delayed four days from my original leave day because of some insanely magnificent thunderstorms in the Dallas area. Then it was a good thing. I needed the extra days to repack my bags twenty more times and throw out several more pounds of possessions so as not to exceed the airline checked bag weight limits. Now, with my bags already packed and my travel “game face” on, I can’t bear the idea of being delayed. I’m ready to go.

I call my aunt. “Mom said there’s the chance of bad weather. Maybe winter storms. Do you think there might be any flights sooner that I could get on? It’d be nice to beat the storms. I’m ready to come home.”

“Let’s see what we can do,” she says. But the rain clouds already hovering over the DFW metroplex are blocking their satellite signal and she can’t log on to the airline website. “Your uncle David is trying to bring up the site on his computer. We don’t have to keep you on the phone for this, but we’ll see what we can do to get you home. Call me back in half an hour,” she says.

“Okay, thanks!” I pace in front of my computer watching the clock in the lower right hand corner of the screen. I go stare at my bags. I come back into my study. It’s just after 9:15. I pace some more. That thirty minutes is taking its own sweet time.

CALL ME PLEASE!!! an email message suddenly pops up and screams at me.

I call my aunt maintenant.

“How far away from the airport are you?” she asks on answering.

“About thirty minutes.”

“If you can get to the airport I can have you on a flight at 11:55.”

“Tonight? Right now?” My heart picks up. I look at the time and calculate hours. There’s nothing I want more than to leave right this instant. “Let me call the taxi company.”

I’d scheduled a secure taxi to take me to the airport at an unreasonably early hour on Monday morning and it makes my life easier that the company already has my contact info and address. “I had a taxi scheduled for Monday morning,” I babble in Spanish to the guy who answers the phone. “But do you by any chance have a taxi that could come get me right this very instant and take me to the airport?”

“Will you still need the Monday pickup?”

“No, this would replace it.”

“Let me call a driver, I think he could be there in twenty minutes.” He and I calculate hours and both think I might just make my flight. Traffic willing, I would arrive at the airport with only two hours to get through all the stop points. It could just work.

I zip up my bags, make sure I have my passport and money, put on my travel clothes, chicken-scratch out a (hopefully comprehensible) note for my roommate, turn off lights, lock the door and take the elevator down.

The cab driver knows I’m in a hurry. He winds through the streets and around cars and buses. The traffic is unusually light. But I still find myself thinking, Can’t you honk more, speed it up, go a little faster? I can’t believe I just thought that, I think. The transportation line into the airport is long. “Do you think it’ll be faster if I walk from here?” I ask the driver.

“It’ll be quicker once we get past the checkpoint. Don’t worry, I’ll get you to the door.”

And he does.

I pay him, thank him, and rush inside.

There’s a line to the bag check counter. I mutter, “Come on, people, hurry up,” under my breath. Patience is the wrong virtue when you want to travel rapidly internationally.

When my turn comes I throw my bag up on the scales and hand over my passport.

“Are these your bags?” the man behind the counter asks me.

“Yes.”

“Did you pack them yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you pack them?”

“In my apartment in Lima.”

“Your apartment? But you’re here on a tourist visa, right?”

Oops.

“The apartment I stay at with my friend when I visit Peru,” I amend. There’s nothing like security questions to make me feel like a criminal, like a country fleeing fugitive.

Apparently I don’t raise too many red flags because he gives me a standby boarding pass and puts my checked bag on the belt.

The next hour and a half is a blur of lines and questions and sublimated impatience. As if by a miracle (and only slightly out of breath and sweaty), at 11:42 PM I find myself past customs and security and buckled into a business class lounge chair in a huge jet set to leave the ground in thirteen minutes.

Not having many chances in life to take advantage of the benefits of wealth, I stay awake long enough to enjoy a glass of wine, munch some mixed nuts, eat a salad, and have some pecans and dried apricots for dessert. Then I press the button that declines my seat, wrap a soft blanket around me and doze for the next four hours.  

Juan, my Lima to Miami seat companion, is also on the same flight from Miami to Dallas. “It’s going to be really close,” he says. We only have one hour and forty-five minutes from touchdown to flight #918’s takeoff. He explains that I’ll have to go through passport control, get my checked bag from the baggage claim, take it through U.S. customs, recheck and then go from there.

It is going to be close, but I’ll give it all I got.

From the moment the cabin door is opened and I’m let off the plane I run.

Or speedwalk.

Or stop to bend over and huff for breath before repositioning my computer and carryon bags over my shoulders and sprinting on. It’s about sixteen miles from our gate to passport control. Maybe seventeen. After I make each turn of the long-halled corners and think, Ah, this must be the end, another sign points me down yet another long hallway. This is a cruel joke. There is no end. I’ll be rushing through airport corridors for the rest of my life. No air moves in these halls except what I stir up as I whirl by, and soon, I’m pouring with sweat.
I’m right behind Juan at passport control. I feel suspicious, don’t guilty people always sweat? I pull some tissue out of my pocket and towel off.

“Are you a U.S. citizen?” a security guard asks me.

“Yes, sir,” I say. Look American, look natural, look less sweaty, I tell myself.

Satisfied, the guard moves on to make sure people are at the correct entry points and I breathe again.

The lines seem to be taking forever. Juan looks back at me and shrugs as if to say, “Well, we’re doing our best.”

He gets stamped in and then it’s my turn.

The passport control lady is uniformed, official and efficient. After a few questions and the computer’s checking of my travel life and background she stamps me in and returns my passport to me. “Welcome back,” she says.

Welcome back.

But I don’t have time to reflect on what this means to me. I’m on American soil, but I have a long way to go before I am actually home.

Another mile or two gets me to the baggage claim. I snatch up my bag and hightail it. Juan is just ahead of me and I use him as a GPS to steer me the right direction. Following the yellow arrows I arrive to customs.

“Where are you coming from?” the guard asks me. He has a friendly smile. I wonder if I look as gross as I feel.

“Peru.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer,” I lie. Unless living means something other than how do you bring in money.

“What do you write?”

“Fiction,” I say.

“Do you have any alcohol in there?” he points to my bag.

It’s probably a normal question. Why do you ask? I think, Do you assume all writers are alcoholics? But then I laugh at myself. Because I do have alcohol.

“Just some Pisco,” I say.

He shrugs and waves me through.

Home free. At least that’s what I believe until I round a corner and see the very long line for Miami security. I hadn’t realized I’d have to go through security again on the U.S. side. All my things have already been x-rayed, sorted through, questioned, how much more secure could I be?

I take off my necklace, pull off my belt, get my computer set to put in its own separate container, wipe more sweat off my face, check my pockets, pull out my toiletry quart-sized see-through bag, and step out of my shoes.

My flight leaves in less than forty minutes. I don’t think I’ll make it. Especially when I see the cylindrical full-body x-ray machines.

One of my health-minded friends, Pinklady Apple, had messaged me several days ago to say, “Safe travels. Remember to get a pat down at the airport instead of going through that xray machine. give yourself an extra 10-15 minutes and you should be okay.”

I don’t really have an extra ten or fifteen minutes. But I’m going to follow PLA’s advice. I’m not sure if I want the pat down more for health reasons or for principle of the matter reasons. Whatever my reasons are, when I get to the front of the line I tell the female TSA guard, “I’d like the pat down.”

“One to opt out,” she yells behind her and waves me forward.

“Female check,” the male TSA guard calls over his shoulder.

A uniformed, slightly intimidating female approaches me. She looks at me with a You silly girl look. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Female opt-out,’ she reprimands the male guard. They exchange a light repartee and I bite my tongue from telling her to hurry it up because I have a flight to catch.

Finally she points me over to the corner. “Stand on the taped yellow feet prints and put out your arms palms up.” She tells me everything she’s going to do as she dons protective gloves.

You’re gonna need those as you feel me up, I think, I’m sweaty as heck.

The final sprint

Then she proceeds to do everything she said she’d do.

Thoroughly patted down and deemed safe enough to proceed, I get set for my final sprint.

I arrive at the gate twelve minutes before boarding time only to be stuck behind two family groups who are apparently trying to rearrange their entire travel arrangements right before the flight.

Eventually, the lady behind the desk takes my passport and standby boarding pass. She hardly glances at it before she hands it back. “It’s a full flight,” she says. “We’ll call your name if there’s room.”

I go sit down. I feel antsy, like if I stop moving the whole world will stop too. I stand back up. The kiosk screen flashes flight information and I see the standby list with my name at the very bottom.

I’ve been so fortunate. I mean, less than twelve hours before I had been staring at my computer screen in my study in Lima, and here I am humidly stinking up space in a Miami airport. It wouldn’t be out of the realms of luck to have to wait in Miami a bit longer for the next flight.

The flight gets boarded. The final calls are called. The standby list gets started.

“I feel like I’ve won the lotto,” a standby pilot tells the check-in lady as he boards.

I prepare myself to have to wait. He might have just got the last bit of luck left. I think about taking a sponge bath in the Miami Airport bathroom.

“Passenger White.”

I’m at the desk before she’s finished enunciating the T in my last name.

“It’s amazing,” she tells me, “but you’re on the flight.”

“It’s a miracle,” I say. I want to Peruvian kiss her cheek out of joy, but I refrain myself. “It makes all the running worthwhile.”

She smiles and waves me through the doors.

I’m the last one on the plane.

I pass Juan in the first class section. “You made it,” he said.

“I got the last seat on the flight,” I reply with a grin.

I head towards the back.

The couple in row 24 look up at me.

“I have 24F,” I tell them.

“Do you want the window seat?” the girl asks.

“The aisle seat is fine,” I say. “Actually I’d take any seat in the plane. I’m just happy to be on this flight. Oh, and I’m sorry if I smell. I ran the entire way.” I ran the entire way from Peru, I think in my mind because that’s how it feels.

“Don’t worry, we probably smell a little bit too.” She pauses as if testing the air. “You don’t smell.”

“Thank goodness,” I say. I settle into my chair and click my seatbelt on. I don’t fully relax until the plane is in the air. It’s real, we’re moving, I can stop hurrying.

When the flight attendant asks me what I’d like to drink it really hits me that I’m back in the States. I don’t have to ask for things in Spanish. And when I tell her I would like water I don’t have to say, “Agua, sin gas (without carbonation).”

Soon the landing gear is lowered and we touchdown in Dallas Fort Worth.

I head to the baggage claim and hope that my aunt and uncle told my mom I was on my way home. My phone is completely out of saldo (minutes) and I don’t even know if my pay-as-I-go Peru plan would have worked in the States.

I go through the revolving doors. There’s a little old man sitting at a stand, I’m not sure if he’s security or some kind of customer service. “Excuse me,” I say, interrupting his nap. “Do you know if the airport has payphones?”

“Has what?” he asks.

“Payphones,” I say a bit louder.

“Who do you need to call?” he asks.

“My mom.”

“Your mom? You’re coming to visit your mom?”

“Yes, sir.”

He digs in his pocket and pulls out his cell phone. “Here, you can call her from here.”

“Oh my god, you don’t mind?”

My mom answers after what feels like a million rings.

“I’m at baggage claim C12.”

“I’m about five minutes away,” she says.

I’m so grateful to my new phone friend that I give him a Peruvian cheek kiss after I hand him back his phone. I think it made his day. He glows and I go to wait for my bag to trundle down the belt and for my mom to arrive.

Welcome back.   

Was there ever anyone as lucky as me?

My Six Month Review

December 3, 2011 – Six Month Review

It’s hard to believe I’ve been in Peru for six months. The time has sifted away, quickly and without heed to feelings, like the red sands in the Wicked Witch of the West’s hourglass. I’m astounded and yet, I'm not. Life is a full throttle ride to the end of time, right? Unexpected, adventurous, and enjoyed. At least that’s the way I want it to be. Monday morning, I’ll be heading home to Dallas to visit my family and friends, and as I pack up my things I reflect and evaluate.

What did I want when I came to Peru?

In reality, I wanted freedom. I’d gotten stuck in drudgery. I was doing things every day that I hated. I couldn’t stand to live that way anymore; working a job I didn’t like, living paycheck to paycheck to pay for things I had little concern for, dreaming about some future--sometime, somewhere, someplace other than where I was--and of being the someone I’d always dreamed of being. I wanted to fly from the cage I was confined to. I wanted to escape forever the prison of corporate American life. I wanted to shed the shackles of the nine to five.

“What’s a nine to five?” my sister’s friend asked when he passed through the room while she and I were talking on the phone.

“A job,” she said.

“Oh god,” he replied.

Which just about summed it up for me. I wanted to test out the possibilities implied in the question, “Is this all there is?” I would have gone just about anywhere. Just about.

But I got lucky and through a series of fortunate events I touched down in South America. What a touchdown it’s been. At the risk of turning this into some random State of the Union styled speech I’m going to try and list some of the things I’ve learned and then maybe even go as far as to say what I’d like to see for my future.

So, what have I learned from being in Peru?

I was fortunate growing up, in that my parents taught me and my siblings to live with our eyes wide open, to accept differences, to embrace other cultures and languages, to sing, to laugh, to cry, and to love people. Even with that upbringing I’ve learned that there’s so much more to life than I could have ever imagined, yeah it’s a cliché, but it’s true. Here in Peru, as all over the world, there’s pain that breaks my heart to tiny, smashed up pieces. Poverty that can’t just be fixed with that American “Work Hard, Pull Yourself up by the Bootstraps and Succeed” mentality. Beauty that swells me so full I nearly explode. Joy that bites like ginger and smells like cinnamon. Hurt that can only be cured by my mother’s hugs. And peace where I thought only chaos existed. There are things I’ve seen in Peru that I never saw--wouldn’t have believed--while wearing my North American Middle Class Blinders. There are more songs, there are more differences, there are more tears to cry, more laughs to share than I can sing, experience, shed or guffaw out in six months’ time, or in my entire lifetime. But by golly, I want to try. And then I want to write about it all.

I’ve learned that I never want to go back to a life that feels like settling. I want to truly live. To be. To have. To give.

I’ve learned that humanity is a strange and complex jumble of consciousness and illogicality. That Latino men pity me when I tell them I have no children. That Latina women will stare me down if I smile at them. That South American children gaze unabashedly at me and pull at their guardians’ arms as if to say, “Do you see that strange creature too?”

I’ve learned that everyone loves a good story.

I’ve learned that I take me with me wherever I go, that I can live in the now, and that I need my own space--even if it’s an ironing board desk in the spare room--to think and work and live.

And I’ve learned that we all need someone to talk to sometimes. Like the lady who scooted close to me on the bus bench seat and then told me her life story because she recognized that we were both outsiders. She felt more akin to me, a foreigner, than she did to the Limeñan Peruvians. She was from a far off pueblo, away from home, away from her family just like I was; as much a foreigner to these city folk by fact of her accent as I most definitely was by fact of my coloring.  

As I gear up to head across the Equator to experience my third winter of this year, I’ll be interested to see what it feels like being back. Will the United States of America feel like home to me, or will it just be the place I’m from? How will I view the city of Dallas after having been in the city of Lima for this time? How will they sound in contrast to each other?

“It has been said that every city makes its own unique music, though that “music” is more like a discordant jumble of various urban noises.”  

http://weburbanist.com/2011/05/25/city-of-sounds-scale-model-plays-urban-soundtrack/

Will I be able to see these loud cities as musical pieces or will I always crave the quietness of the mountains and the solitude of the open sky?

I don’t quite know what to expect. But I hope to find stories wherever I go. I hope to be able to see with fresh eyes what was once familiar, what once was all I knew. As I count down the hours until I leave, and think about finally satisfying the cravings I’ve had for over three months for vegetarian spring rolls, for carrots and hummus, for kale salads, I don’t forget to appreciate the time this afternoon that I sat out on my balcony soaking up the summering sun while listening to the delighted play of the children below me, the time I have right now alone in the apartment with both the Screaming Kid and the New Oft-Lonely Puppy silent and the words shifting from my brain to the keyboard to the page. I don’t forget to be amazed by this life I’m living.

I am amazed.

Then, in January, when I come back to Peru to live out another six months on this southern soil, quien sabe (who knows) what adventures will await me then.