passenger in transit

After 3 days of bad sleeping and worst eating, working at Iowa City, I’m finally on the plane back home. I’m tired and I really want to sleep, so, as usual, I asked the girl at the counter to change me to a seat with nobody next to me. 2C and my fingers crossed so nobody gets 2D. I’m flying with Daniel and we have seen each other day and night at the plant and the car and at dinner, we only don’t see each other in the few hours we have for sleeping, each one at his/her hotel room. We are absolutely sick of each other. We get along well, we work well together but we are not really friends friends and the conversation topics are very limited and soon finished, therefore we cordially say ‘good night’ when we get on the plane and we each go to our seats… we are so tired. I sit down, fasten my seat belt, take the iPod out, a book, everything I need to take advantage of the fly and make sure I get a 1 hour 43 minutes nap. The flying time to Cincinnati.
While people are still boarding on the plane I cross my fingers so nobody seats on 2D, I want to stretch, get my head against the window and be dead to the world. When it seems that nobody else will board, an old lady comes in and looks to the empty seat next to me. The stewardess asks her for her seat number, it’s 2B… and I breathe happily. She is seating next to me, but with an aisle in between. My nap planes are saved. Daniel is already snoring two rows behind.
I turn on the music, the fatigue and sleepiness have me in a Nina Simone mood, between tired and sad and thoughtful; a dangerous mix. As I know I have to turn off the iPod and all that before taking of, I try not to fall sleep just yet, so I distract myself looking at the people on the plane. The lady at 2B is the closest one, I look to that direction and suddenly I get a scent of talc, cologne and medicines. A scent of a strong grandma, yet a spoiler. My grandma. And I realize then that this lady has certain air to my own grandmother. I see her saving her passport with shaky hands but terribly determined, is a Peruvian Passport. My grandmother is from Argentina and my grandma is because she has never stopped being for me, although she is not here anymore.
My grandma, Abu, loves to travel, she really does. She has ‘hot feet’ and her daughter got them from her and I think I did get them from her daughter. Abu used to say her eyes are like a camera and she didn’t need pictures, the only thing she had to do was to close them, choose which place she wanted to go again and transport herself. I saw her doing that more than once, on the weekends I spent with her at 5511 Bolivia St while we lived in Buenos Aires. So, I close my eyes and turn on my own movie on the plane, I'm going to one of those weekends. A grandmother/granddaughter ritual that we enjoyed our own way…
We took the train first and then the bus, we stopped, as always, one stop before her house to get ice cream; a medium strawberry for her and a huge dark chocolate/caramel for me. Dripping ice cream and happiness, because we had two days of ‘adventure’ ahead of us, we started walking. We arrived to the house, took the TV out to the patio and played cards until Simon & Simon was on, around 2am. Of course I wouldn’t be able to do something like that at home, but at 5511 Bolivia St, we were both ‘your majesty’ and I was able to do it as long as I let my grandmother have fun practicing on me the cheating she would do on her friends later at the card game.
Continuing the ritual, the next morning I was sent to buy raviolis, watermelon, apple for my turtle, chocolate milk and those chocolate sugared cookies that were my favorites. After a decadent breakfast I went upstairs to read some of the books my mom left in her old room. On that musty smelling room, lying on the bed or the floor or out on the stairs, depending on the weather, I read The Three Musketeers for the first time… and like 3 times more, I read all the volumes of The Youth Treasure, an impressive book about Hiroshima and I discovered Hemingway when I was 12 years old and I didn’t like it that much. All this with the turtle as company, while my grandma was visiting her next door neighbour.
For lunch Abu made the raviolis, cream for me and sauce for her. We ate, of course, while playing cards. As dessert, two huge slices of watermelon were eaten standing up next to the kitchen sink, spitting the seeds, while Abu told me juicy gossips and dirty jokes and I laughed my head of. Then nap time, grandma went to sleep and I went back upstairs to continue reading until Soledad called me. Soledad had my age, lived next door, was able to make ham and cheese pie, one of my favorite meals and I admired her for that. She was fun to hang out with. When the nap was over Abu called me, sounding upset to scare Soledad, but the real motive of her needing me back home right NOW was to give me money so I could get candy for her and sugus and chocolate for me. And the weekend was supposed to went on, full of little moments of happiness; little, simple, happy moments, as all the moments we spent alone together. But the 1 hour 43 minutes is over and I have to wake up and stop being with my Abu… again.
My Abu is practical, divine, full of mistakes and wise words, vices and wonders. I’m sure she has told my sisters and myself many interesting and deep things, things that deserve to be embroidered and framed, but the best things I have learned with her are that eagles don’t catch flies, that only the stupid get bored and that sometimes is very very good to do something really bad. I leave the plane with a napkin still on one hand and Daniel telling me that I probably didn’t sleep well because my eyes are red, like I’ve been crying… I miss you so much Abu.

I really didn’t want to write about this; it feels like using an incident that shouldn’t be used, but it’s already being used by many people. Even so, at the same time is sort of absurd not to do it, as, by the willing of my exclusive and always ironic Mr Destiny, I had to fly to London right on July 7th, 2005. Terrible coincidence. In a 3 weeks trip, where I had to go to 5 countries in 3 different continents, I had to pick July 7th to be the day to stop over at London. Not before, not after.
So, that precise day, at 10:30am, I was seating at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, waiting to take the plane to London, filing my nails (literally), drinking club soda with lemon and thinking about pregnant little birds and the immortality of the crab and then I heard about what was going on… It took me quite a while to assimilate it. Getting the idea that another terrorist attack had happened was difficult. Terrorism is something I deeply dislike; is something I hate, as I hate any other act of violence, from whomever to whomever. A terrorist act in London bothered me specially as I like the city and have quite a few very good friends that live there. But, that in top of everything it was happening the same day I was flying, leaving me with only two hours to understand and decide what I had to do… that was something beyond what I could handle rationally, at least for the first 10 minutes.
As incredible as it sounds, I kept filing my nails like a robot, while my head was spinning at 1000 rpm, although I was really not thinking what to do yet, I didn’t even know what to think about. To add to the weirdness of the scene, at the airport things were absolutely ‘normal’. They were not saying anything, the monitors where sometimes they show the news, were just concentrated on the Tour de France. Next to me there was a couple reading the newspaper, over there some business men were working on their computers. I went to the counter to ask what have they heard about my flight, about the news, about anything. The girl told me the flight was on time and we were going to board at gate F46. But, do you know what’s going on? I asked, and the answer I received was ‘Yes, and the flight will be on time and you’ll board at gate F46’. That was a clear message.
At the same time, I kept getting news about what was going on in London (thanks John, XXo) which made me felt like I was in a parallel universe. Completely paralyzed. The news were more worrying each time so I went back to the counter to see if I could change my flight for a later flight, for a next day flight, cancel my flight to London and stay in Paris, anything. But no, the flight was going to be on time and we were going to board through Gate F46 and, as my ticket had multiple stops and airlines, only my travel agency could change it. The agency wouldn’t open until 8am US time, that meant 2pm Paris time. By that time I should have been at London already, theoretically.
As the spoiled little girl I am, my next reaction was to call my mom, she would have a solution. And that made me react again… mom! My options were either to call her right then, wake her up at 5am (Venezuelan time) and tell her that there has been some terrorist attacks in London, that I was still flying there because I couldn’t change my ticket, but… not to worry? Or wait until my arrival to London and call her from there, knowing that she was going to wake up before that, she was going to listen to the news and realized her little daughter was flying right into the middle of the ‘chaos’. I thought the last option was the least cruel, it meant the least amount of ‘suffering time’, so I didn’t call. Nevertheless, every 10 min I was thinking about how much worried she was going to be and it made me feel bad every time.

Some friends that live in Europe, and knew my itinerary, started to call to my cell phone. Great friends, offering advice, places to stay and the wonderful feeling of being able to vent and talk with somebody that knew what was going on, as in Paris the people, the monitors, the announcements of the flights that were leaving, everything continued like nothing was happening at London. The conversations with my friends followed the same disorder I had in my head. We were talking about what should we do and at the next second we were talking about the horrible situation, the number of bombs, of victims, about the incident at Madrid last year. We would go back to the reality of our situation, that I should change my hotel and stay closer to the airport, that I could take a taxi to Egham and stay with one of them and then, in a split second, we were trying again to understand what was going on, what do things like this happen? Why that hate, why making innocent people pay for the guilts of the world?
The time to board the plane finally arrived and the flight left on time and we board by gate F46. Even so, as there was another plane on the runway, we didn’t take off on time. I think I was waiting for the flight to be canceled, I thought they would made us go back to the airport. But that didn’t happen. We took off just with a 20 min delay and, for the first time in my life, I was scared on a plane.
The flight was unreal, absolutely unreal. I was seating on the plane, with the safety belt securely fastened, the carry on luggage below the seat in front of us or in the upper head compartments, but we were going to a city that just had a terrorist attack and my mom was probably listening about it at that precise moment, while I was flying. And I was scared and angry and I wanted to cry, for the people in London, for the people that have those extremist ideas in their heads, for the people that were flying with me, for my mom that was going to be worried until I could call her, for this world that seems to be more complicated each day that passes by. So many things I didn’t know where to start or if I should get sad or angry. I felt absolutely worthless, a leaf in the storm, a character from a Pearl Buck novel and at the same time I felt absolutely selfish… of all possible evils on the situation I was getting a little one and I was making a huge tragedy about it.
And sitting there, with my safety belt securely fastened, I cried silently out of fear, anger, worthlessness, but most of all of disbelief, of not knowing what to do. The plane landed in London and, of course, my mom had heard the news already and was about to have a heart attack. I pretended I was calm when I talked to her, I pretended I was calm when I got on the cab and when I checked in at the hotel. The same way we all now pretend we are calm while life goes on.

As every single morning these last days, Mr Zhu is waiting for me outside of the hotel, next to his car, a black Kia. With a half smoked cigarette in his mouth, dark glasses, the nail of his right hand little finger disgustingly long and his unavoidable ensemble of grey pants/black shirt, he looks like a member of a Chinese mafia. A bodyguard or something like that. Mr Zhu’s Spanish (or English, or French) is as good as my Chinese (or Japanese or Thai). None of us can say even ‘good morning’ in the other’s language; that’s why, after nodding our heads to greet each other, I take my seat in the back of the car and look through the window or read something while he starts driving. None of us talks. That makes me feel like now I’m part of the same Chinese mafia than Mr Zhu and he is my bodyguard. He is taking me to a secret place to close a secret deal and it’s better not to talk or give him any details, to keep him safe. I’m a serious and professional Chinese mafia person.

But no, Mr Zhu is not a member of any Chinese mafia, at least not apparently. Mr Zhu is one of the drivers at the Huang Pu plant and, while I’m here, he is the one in charge of taking me to the plant, or the hotel, or the airport, because the ‘foreigner’ doesn’t speak any Chinese and she might get lost. And that’s very true.

It is easy to imagine that communication with Mr Zhu has been difficult. Not that we really need to talk a lot, as the people from the plant tell Mr Zhu where I want to go and Mr Zhu tells them how much I have to pay; but being alone with another person in a car, during trips of approximately one hour and with the crazy traffic between Guangzhou and Huang Pu, is bound to happen that one of us will try to point at something with the finger to say ‘look at that bus how it got into the front of that other car, crazy!’ or ‘that motorbike almost hit us!’ and in my case I’m longing to ask him what’s that building over there, or how many people he thinks live at Guangzhou, but it’s just the intention and the pointing finger for a few seconds. When we are about to open our mouths we remember our communicational barrier and the finger and the intentions fall down.

The first afternoon that Mr Zhu left me at the hotel, he turned and said something, in Chinese of course. I answered that I didn’t understand, obviously in English. He kept talking and, frustrated, counted till 7 with his fingers. I figured out that meant he was going to pick me up the following day at 7am. I counted to 7 too, said yes, ok, si and smiled. He smiled back and the following morning we were both there at 7am. That’s how we have communicated with Mr Zhu. If Mr Zhu wants me to stay at some place while he gets the car, he points emphatically to the floor and I nod my head also emphatically and we both feel better. If Mr Zhu wants me to follow him some place he makes another signal and I start walking. At those moments I’m not the serious and professional Chinese mafia person, but the stupid cousin that came from the country and Mr Zhu is showing me the ‘city ways’.

Mr Zhu has a tape with Chinese music and we listen to it and listen to it and listen to it in the car. Sometimes he turns the volume down, sort of an instinct, when he feels like turning back to say something to me. Then he realizes we are not going to talk, he mumbles something and turns the volume back up. I act like it’s not with me and continue looking through the window, dying to ask him what’s that huge house on the left. The tape is not particularly good, but I already know at least the order of the songs and yesterday afternoon I found myself amused by the fact that after the song that was playing at that point I knew my ‘favorite’ was next. I think I was about to sing it.


This morning something incredible happened. Traffic was awful, we were completely stopped. Mr Zhu turned the volume down and up at least three times, until he couldn’t take it anymore and left the car to talk to somebody about what was going on in Chinese, not without making the ‘don’t move from here’ sign first, pointing emphatically to the car floor. He came back a minute later, made a ‘doubt’ gesture that I interpreted as ‘I couldn’t find out anything’ and without any word he sat in the car again and turned the volume up. Finally the traffic started to move and we arrived eventually to the place where 7 cars had crashed, Quite impressive. Mr Zhu turned the volume down and turned his head to me and not thinking it twice said something in Chinese, very excited, pointing at the crash scene. Without even noticing what I was doing, I answered to him, with the same excitement, but in Spanish. It seemed that I had understood him and that he was understanding me as we continued ‘talking’. Somebody else’s tragedy have made us so basic we were able to communicate and, for a few minutes, we both knew what the other was thinking and/or saying whether it was in Chinese, Spanish, English or Russian. We both were talking amazed and surprised, almost enthusiastic, pointing at the accident. It was an odd great moment, but it lasted just a couple of minutes, once we left the crashed cars behind, Mr Zhu turned the volume up again and I kept looking through the window, asking myself ‘what could be that huge building?’

Before we arrived to the plant, Mr Zhu took a different route than the one we’ve been taking everyday. We went through a very beautiful park, along a river. It was stunning and I was looking through the window embezzled. I still don’t know if Mr Zhu did that as a celebration of our little ‘episode’, or to avoid the heavy traffic or if it was because he was trying to evade the police… because, you know, we are from a Chinese mafia….

For some strange reason, airplanes normally decide to arrive all of them at the same hour, to the same airport and the queue at immigration is generally long, specially when there are like 10 counters and only one or two officers that with o-ffi-ci-al slow-paced motion are dedicated to make stupid questions and find out about the life of each of the people that go through their hands. How many days are you staying? And what are you here for? And what do you do for a living? Where are you coming from? Where are you going to stay? and why do you care about that and why are you asking if I already wrote all that in the stupid little paper? Can’t you read? They look at the passports as if they were looking for something o-ffi-ci-a-lly important, but I really think that what they do is laugh about the pictures and the answers on their breaks (they don’t laugh about the names, because… they don’t know how to read).

During those long waits when you are traveling alone, it’s most likely that you‘ll end up making up some way to use that time. Reading is not very practical, because the maneuvers that have to be done with the book, the carry on, the coat, the I-have-my –passport-ready-on-my-hand-although-I-know-I’ll-be-in-this-queue-forever and everything else to make the miserable little step forward every time somebody moves don’t let me concentrate. Talking with the person in front or behind you it’s not always the greatest option, because they could be like me and answer only with a grunt or they could be like a friend of my sister’s and then you can not get rid of them and you think it’s better to lend them some money so they could take a cab and leave you alone. What I do sometimes is counting how many people are there, how many people with a computer, how many people with dark pants, with leather jackets, how many people have a ‘I’m so bored’ face, a work face, a face that looks like as soon as they cross those doors somebody is waiting for him/her to take him/her to a nice place and have a good time (there are not so many that look like that, but, really, there are some). Getting the earphones on and listen to some music is one of the best options, but that leaves the mind free and, not only that, free and inspired to think about something else.

One of the first things you have to do is to estimate the waiting time. If there’s more than 20-30 people in front of you is worth it. Nevertheless, as the process depends on 1) how annoying is the questionnaire of each officer, 2) how slow is each passenger, 2) how badly have they filled the stupid paper that is not going to be read anyway and 4) how many kids/suitcases/coats each passenger is carrying; the results could vary significantly. Therefore, it’s recommended to count the time that at least 5 passengers take to go through and make an average. Knowing the waiting time is usually useless, but at least provides entertainment for 10 minutes.

On this occasion, with a queue of approximately 50 people in front of me and a similar number behind me, 2 officers and an average of 2 minutes per passenger, plus a high percent of kids running around and a tour of about 10 people (those are the worst) I had enough time and material to play a more sophisticated game…

First I did a quick screening of the persons from the opposite sex that were in the queue alone or at least not with something that could look like and obvious partner or kids. That is, opposite sex people with a slight possibility of being available. There were like 30, a good number and most of them behind me, which meant more playing time. The next step was to discard the ones that, for very obvious reasons, were not going to work whether because they looked too young, too old or too short (those selection criterias can be changed according to the taste of each player). Now there were 15 specimens left. With less candidates I was able to step into the next ‘filter’ that takes a bit more of time and consists on analyzing how much of a ridicule family, friends and myself would be able to do of them. Getting rid of the worst, I started looking for the best options between the available ones. Imagining (mostly based on past references) how the nature of each of them might be I made the next elimination: that one looks like Gaby’s ex and he was annoying, and that other one looks like that painful guy that worked with me once, and that over there looks like my brother-in-law… Some of them were really scary.

After that last step there were only 3 or 4 left. Those were looked at in more detail, shoes, suitcases, hands, hair-cuts (how much hair is left, it there’s any hair left). If they were smiling stupidly or did the look interestingly serious, if they were reading something and what or listening to music. One of them was reading a self-help book… immediately discarded, another one was smiling stupidly… point against. Now there was only one left. He was not particularly handsome, but looked interesting. He looked at me looking at him and smiled, I played dumb, easy thing for me to do, and looked somewhere else. Few seconds later I’m looking back at him and he was still looking my way and smiled again. No, no, no, that was not the game objective! It was just statistical… and now, what could I do??

“Next!”, my turn for immigration…. Thank God.

December 1999 was a tragic month for Venezuela. The disaster that happened at El Litoral affected almost everybody and impacted everyone. Landslides and flooding destroyed or damaged more than 8000 houses and 700 apartment buildings; 30,000 is now generally cited as the approximate number of fatalities. Closer or further we all knew somebody that was directly affected by this tragedy. And even closer we were all indirectly affected. My personal tragedy those days was how to do to get to my house for Christmas.

At that moment I was living in Caracas and my family in Merida, that means 10-12 by car or more than an hour by plane. Of course, the airport was (is) at El Litoral and the access to it was completely closed… as well as the airport. So, while thousands of people were looking for the names of their relatives in the list of disappeared persons, their belongings in the mud and some food in the help centers, I was just looking for a way to get to Mérida on time. Could anybody be more selfish? but I was not alone! Oh no! Joining my dilemma were three coworkers, also from Mérida and as or more selfish than me. We felt really bad, we wanted to help but more than anything we wanted to be home.

Out of the four of us, the only one that had a car was not willing to drive the 10-12 hours. The car was too old and without a professional mechanic and a huge tool box it could only be driven work-home-work-home. Another option was taking a bus, but thousands have had the same idea and it was almost impossible to get a ticket. We searched for all the possible car/bus/plane combinations from different cities, we got organized and each one explored a possible option, a possible contact, a possible craziness. We talked to travel agencies, rental car agencies, people on the street, anything. Our families were already dealing with the fact that most likely their babies were not going to be home for the holidays and, considering what was going on, they were happy because we were at least safe and sound.

When we were also about to give up, Leo came back with the news that he had decided to buy a new car, right there, right now, ipso facto! And that we were going to make it to Mérida. All of us. Driving. Period. We all helped with part of the down payment, basically what we would have paid for the craziest of the ideas (rent a car and drive to Valencia, take a plane to Aruba from there, another plane from Aruba to Maracaibo and from there we thought we could figured it out somehow). Hurrah Leo! We were saved.

Five days later, December 22nd, was The Day. The plan was to leave all straight from work to Mérida, drive all night and arrive early morning. Worst case scenario we could spend the night somewhere along the way, but the important thing was to get on the road. We had music, food, drinks, maps and a perfect plan. All happy, singing ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’!

Surprises started with Laura, who didn’t bring her suitcase to the office and didn’t give a clear explanation of the why. We thought (knew) she was just a bit blond… dumb. So we had to stop at her house on the way out. Ok, no problem, 10 minutes of delay is nothing. The second surprise was the fact that Leo had offered another friend a ride to Barquisimeto, a city half way to Mérida. That meant five in the car, plus the ‘stuff’. Well, what mattered was to get there, ‘if there’s love walls are elastic’, we had to help our fellow travelers, besides Leo had said he was going to get a more or less big car, we might be a bit uncomfortable, but that was it. And that was the next surprise… in the parking lot was waiting for us a very small sport car, two doors, no room, no space, money was not enough for something else. Surprise, surprise. Still, our Christmas spirit remained intact; everything was an adventure. We were on our way to go home and be with the family.



And Laura’s family was huge, really huge. We realized that when she got out of her house with her luggage, full of Christmas presents… three suitcases, plus some bags, plus something else wrapped in such a weird shape we still don’t know what it was. Laura’s luggage, the rest of the luggage, the five of us, everything in a small car. We looked like sardines in a tin, happy sardines, but then some nice and not so nice discussions started about which music to hear and at what volume and what route to take and I want to stop to go to the restroom and I don’t want to and I want to eat something and I can’t move with this suitcase on top of me and your elbow on my side and I’ll move my elbow if Laura gets off my lap and I want the window after the next stop and who the hell ate all the cookies I brought!? Love is fragile and the walls of that car were made of many things but rubber.

At 11pm we arrived to Barquisimeto, we left the 5th passenger at his place and Leo, always surprising, announced that there was a girl he knew that lived in Barquisimeto and, as we were there, he wanted to stop by. Just a friend, just 10 minutes, then we could eat something and continue with the trip. How could we say no? So we waited in the car. 10 minutes, 15, half an hour, an hour. It’s midnight and we don’t know at which apartment is Leo, we have the car keys, but none of us knew Barquisimeto, nevertheless at midnight. These sardines were stinking already. 12:30am, Leo came back with the address of a cheap hotel for us, because he was spending the night with the 10-minutes-girl.

That night, that hotel, those cockroaches, that cheap wine and the horror stories we told deserved another chapter… and 3 minutes of silence.

Next morning we were back on the road. Not at all rested, very much annoyed and one of us with a particularly bad mood and an upset stomach. We took the Páramo route, as we thought it was a good idea. The scenery between the mountains is full of curves, but beautiful. Kharla’s stomach didn’t think it was such a good idea and Leo’s new car didn’t smell anymore like a new car when she left the wine, the breakfast, the hotel and the horror stories between the carpet and the seat on the back. I could swear there was one of the cockroaches too.

Long hours later and we were barely getting closer to Mérida. Laura was not speaking to Leo anymore, Leo was upset with me, Kharla was about to get off the car (while moving) when Laura played for the Nth time ‘that dreadful Madonna’s CD’. I only wanted to go home. No more talking, not even arguing, no more ‘adventure spirit’, no more singing ‘I’ll be home for Christmas’. Who does believe in Santa Claus anyway? When Cormetur’s “Welcome to Mérida” sign appeared, from the back seat came a very spontaneous and genuine ‘at least the car didn’t break down, this is a Christmas miracle’ and we all couldn’t do anything else but laugh at how stupid we were. We arrived to the first of our houses still laughing.

Although each of us promised to itself (and some loud enough for the others to hear) that we would-never-ever-in-our-lifes-do-something-like-this-never-ever-ever-ever-again-really-ever at some point of the trip and even though the airport was open again, we drove back to Caracas together in Leo’s small car with no rubber walls, still smelling at whatever Kharla had left on the back and listening to ‘that dreadful Madonna’s CD’ for at least half the way.

6 years later Kharla is still living in Caracas, Leo is living in Costa Rica, Laura in Mexico and I’m in the US. We have all became responsible car owners, some are even married and we have spent some Christmas not at home for various reasons. And every December 22nd we remember that trip and think that we will never-ever-in-our-lifes-do-something-like-that-never-ever-ever-ever-again-really-ever… and we think about it without any anger, but with a deep sorrow.

They are sitting next to me on the train. He reads, she sleeps. From here I can only see his profile and the back of her head of golden hair, sleeping on his lap. He reads a book about traveling and has an arm surrounding her, protecting her. A young couple, traveling from Tours to Paris. It’s a grey day in the middle of the winter and the sky I can see through the window is threatening with rain. We go through Mer, Beaugency, Meung sur Loire. Bucolic stamps of the Loire Valley, the perfect scenery.

I look at them once in a while and I’m amazed by the tranquility of the scene. He is dressed casual, but impeccable for a rainy Saturday. He is not handsome, not ugly, and has a terrible air of ‘good people’, of faithful loving husband. He is wearing Snoopy socks. I imagine she gave those to him. I imagine they live in Orleans and are coming back from visiting some family. I imagine she is this angelical creature that he adores and protects, a divine woman. A french woman out of a romance novel, from head to toes. She must have blue eyes that go with her golden hair and his green eyes. They must have a beautiful house, where she is the queen and everything is perfect, in there’s always laughter and music and kisses. He must have a good job, but always has time for her and the book he is reading is to plan the itinerary for their next vacations. And I imagine... how lucky, what a nice couple. It seems that being married is not so bad. Feel that peace, that safeness, her rhythmic breathing while sleeping, his watching over while he reads… surrounding her with his arm.

We are arriving to Orleans. He shakes her, she wakes up buffing. Her thick and black eyebrows show that her golden hair is not so golden in reality. Her angelical face is really fat, with tiny eyes. He tries to kiss her, she turns her face the other way, annoyed. “Get away” she says, “You are a pest and this is not what you are paying me for”. He looks at her with a little bit of anger and a lot of repulsion. While they are leaving I realized his wearing a wedding ring and she doesn’t…. oh! l’amour, l’amour and the blessings of being single.

At Orleans a man takes the couple place. He takes out a laptop, pens, calculator, glasses out of his bag and starts to type in numbers in what seems to be a software that once in a while makes a ‘ca-ching’ noise, like a teller machine. And the man smiles each time he hears that noise. Ca-ching/smile, ca-ching/smile, ca-ching/smile. After 15 minutes, he takes the glasses off, puts them on one side, looking closer to the computer, concentrated and excited at the ca-ching rhythm. A few minutes left to arrive to Paris and now he looks worried, glasses back on his face… is it that he couldn’t make enough ca-chings? A modern version of a character from The Little Prince, for him playing ca-ching is so much better than playing Nintendo, reading, anything. That’s why he doesn’t realize that those white socks really don’t go with the black shoes?

We are arriving to Paris. We all walk fast to the door to be able to descend-as-fast-as-possible, still don’t know why. A dad and her daughter are playing a game, which side will we descend? “This side” says the dad, “that side” says the girl “this side”, “that side”, “this side”, “that side”, “if you lose you have to give me 50 cents”. And it goes one and we all smile. The train is just going slower and slower, but doesn’t stop. “This side, that side, this side, that side”. We still don’t know which way will be getting off. The girl doesn’t play anymore, the dad still goes on “this side, this side, this side, this side, 50 cents” Ok, it’s enough. The girl and everybody else have changed from oh-how-cute!-smiles to when-will-he-stop-faces. We don’t care anymore if we go down this side or that side, we just want him to shut up. Even more, we want him to loose so he has to give the darn 50 cents to the girl. Unfortunately we descend from ‘this side’, hence big smile on the dad’s face, who now only says “I told you, I told you, this side!! Where are my 50 cents? Where? Ah?” Mr Ca-Ching searches on his pocket, hands 50 cents to the girl “Make him shut up, please”. And we all descend from the train… by this side.

I’ve been told that I was a year old the first time I got into a plane, but, of course, I don’t remember anything. I should have behaved relatively ok because nobody has a dark memory of some horrendous thing I did during that trip… and if they have one it’s a very well kept secret.

The first ‘important’ trip that I have any memory worth telling, was going to Argentina from Venezuela, when my parents decided that my mom, my sisters and myself should go to Buenos Aires to find a house to move there later. Due to one of those crazy ideas from my dad, we were going to move to the supposedly unknown South in a time where everybody who could move from Venezuela was going to the so called wonderful North.

The flight left at night and I spent that whole day playing outside. Now I understand that they let me do that so I wouldn’t disturb the preparations and I wouldn’t help with the stress. I said goodbye to my friends not like somebody who was leaving for 3 months to a country they didn’t know much about to be with a family I knew even less about, but like somebody who was leaving for a weekend at the beach. Ignorance is bliss.

Luckily, I can’t remember anything about the forms filling, customs, passports, etc which is a routine that I coordinate to perfection now, almost with my eyes closed, as I’m the one charge of doing it anytime we travel. In that occasion my mom was taking care of all of that, of all of us and of all her nerves. The movie on the plane was Rocky (I, II or II, my memory doesn’t go so far) and my mom decided I was too little to watch it… even though I have watched it already. It seems that when you are a kid on a plane you are smaller and you need to be more ‘controllable’. As I kept insisting on watching, because there’s nothing else to do on a plane and the screen was huge and right up front and I had no intentions to sleep, my mom decided to take my glasses away. Great success. I was (and still am) almost blind, so the movie was over for me. Moms can be very creative, really. But I still didn’t want to sleep and as that was my mom’s objective I felt that, in that particular battle, we were even.

Now, what my mom didn’t realize was that not only I couldn’t see the movie, but either could I see my food, so I ate with my nose on the tray. I couldn’t see the coke on my sisters little folding table when I tried to leave my chair to go to the restroom (little sisters travel in the middle seat, what did you think? That I was going to get the window or the aisle?), so the coke went flying away when I kicked my sister’s table and it spilled over my shoe, my sister and the woman in the seat across the hallway. It’s amazing the amount of liquid those little cups can handle. Sadly resigned, my mom gave me my glasses back and I fell asleep happily while Rocky was kicking somebody on the screen.

We arrived to Ezeiza and I’m not sure if my aunt and uncle and cousins were there, but I’m sure my grandmother was and not all of the suitcases were. From the baggage we brought… they lost half. And that’s how that odyssey started… my mom, the three of us (two with coke on their clothes and/or shoes), two lost suitcases, a ton of dollars in an envelope, as my mom traveled with all the cash to buy the house because the currency exchange was a nightmare in one of the countries (or both) and my grandma, the spoiler, waiting for us with chocolates in her purse.