Packing
A trip is a journey or an excursion, but it can also be a stumble or misstep. To avoid the latter, I bought a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette, which confirmed my strengths as a guest:
I am quiet and don’t have any food allergies.
I’m not a heavy or light sleeper, an early or late riser.
I don’t get cold easily.
I am not good at “curling up.” I’ve never been comfortable putting my feet on another person’s sofa.
I like wine and you never have to make me decaf.
I don’t need ice cream, fudge, taffy, or a T-shirt to feel like I’ve been somewhere.
I take a professional interest in botanical gardens and arboretums, obviously, but that doesn’t mean I must see them everywhere I go. They’re not always as good as people think they are.
I enjoy seeing a good river, but I’ve never climbed an observation tower that wasn’t a waste of time.
I like zoos and aquariums in the presence of a child, but small museums make me nervous.
My friends had all referred to “catching up” and I wanted to do that, probably while “curling up,” but I wondered, is that when you ask the questions you can only ask the people who have known you longest? When do you say, What do you remember? What was I like? Was I nice? I hate the word nice, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It seems to me that your oldest friends can offer a glimpse of who you were from a time before you had a sense of yourself and that’s what I’m after. When do you say, I know you probably have better friends, but my father is old, my brother is absent, and I need to know who is near.
What I packed: two pairs of jeans, one dress, more shoes than I’d probably need, several tank tops, cardigans, and scarves (because layering is to travel as tuning is to music), the Emily Post, the usual underthings and toiletries, a flashlight, and a thermos.
Departure
Just as there is no explaining why some people can’t board by their assigned row, there is no explaining how Grendel fit into the measuring bin at the gate. I had hurried there after my standoff with the child at the water fountain and now the flight attendant, who a moment before had been certain Grendel was too large, snapped the stretchy string of the claim ticket in her hands.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
I was surprised, too, but I pulled Grendel up and out and smiled apologetically, which seemed to annoy her more. She crushed the tag in her fist and turned her attention with a fresh smile to the next person in line. I spun Grendel around to roll in front of me, the position he seemed to like best, and headed down the ramp.
I see a lot of nice airplane-window shots on Instagram, but to me the idea of being pinned against the curved metal wall of an airplane by a stranger or two is intolerable. I am devoted to the aisle seat. I keep a scarf with me for holding over my nose against other people’s aromatic food, and I hold a book in my hand as I board the plane. I do not take any chances, and a chance would be leaving a window of opportunity open in the time it takes to get a book out of my bag.
Something about travel makes people confessional. Why isn’t it enough to be going with friends to celebrate your fiftieth birthday in Las Vegas with matching T-shirts? Why does your seatmate need to know all about it, how long you’ve planned, how crazy your boss thinks you are? Maybe everyone just feels raw and vulnerable in their flip-flops, another mystery. To me, bare feet and travel go together as well as spiders and cuisine.
I turn the reading light on before fastening my seat belt.
In the end the plane was overbooked. No one volunteered to be bumped, so they held a lottery and I lost. I had to close my book, wrestle Grendel from the overhead bin, and deplane. The attendant who had measured Grendel seemed to be suppressing a smile.
I would arrive on the Thursday and leave on the Monday. That’s how Lindy and I had described the visit, setting it up by phone, the definite articles giving the days a certain dignity. Now I’d be arriving on the Friday. I called Lindy, who seemed unfazed by the change.
“I’m just sorry for you,” she said. “Travel delays are the worst.”
But as I went to treat myself to a Bloody Mary, I didn’t feel irritated. I felt relieved. Lindy and I shared a lot of history. The thought of some quiet hours in a hotel room before the burden of arrival sounded good to me.
The televisions behind the bar were showing sports and violence, and people talking about sports and violence. The night before, while I had finished packing and gone to bed, another black man had been shot by a white person in uniform. I had not seen this news yet. Coverage of a football game was on two screens, this story was on the other two.
The television anchors were reporting that a group of young men had been running around Central Station. It was either a game or, possibly, parkour, reports hadn’t been confirmed, but two of the group claimed to be parkour instructors who sometimes performed in public spaces. When they were finished one of the men approached a window to buy a train ticket. He slipped his backpack off his shoulder and dropped it to the ground, then leaned over to get out his wallet. He was out of sight of the ticket window for five or six seconds. When he stood back up, the clerk shot him in the chest with a gun she kept in her purse. He was thirty. The woman, fifty-six, said she was scared he was getting out a gun. She’d noticed him running around the station that evening.
I signaled to the bartender to cancel the mixer in my drink and watched the screens closely, trying to follow along through the misspellings and broken rhythms of the closed-captioning.
Suddenly a man a few stools down said loudly, “Oh, man. Don’t do that.” He was black and shaking his head. “You don’t need to buy me a drink.”
The white man next to him pushed back his stool and stood up. “I just wanted to do something nice for someone today and you were sitting right here.” Both men wore blazers and jeans.
The bartender waited as if in stop-motion, holding aloft a credit card and turning to the first man who had spoken.
“I’ll get the tip,” the black man said, and the bartender swiveled back into motion.
The white man nodded, signed his receipt, and left.
Gradually the restaurant din came back up, most tables likely debating whether the gesture was a weak attempt at token solidarity or a genuine desire to make a connection. Just recently I’d read about a fever of kindness running through a small Southern town in which the residents started paying the bill of the car behind them at a McDonald’s drive-through. For several days, cars paid for each other in an unbroken line.
My visiting plan included three white, one brown (Neera is half Iranian), and no black women. I regretted this imbalance and wished it were otherwise. I’d had a chance. A girl named Danielle Belieu arrived in mid-September the year I was in fifth grade, and perhaps because her apartment building and my house were close, Danielle wanted to play often. I remember a snowstorm when we both came out of our homes and played in the middle of the street. I can see her standing under a streetlamp with the snow coming down fast. We already knew school would be canceled the next day and we were happy. Danielle had a big smile, with upper teeth that were going to need to be straightened. My braces were already on. When she wanted to play, I often said I had to do homework, which was sometimes true and sometimes not. She was the only person I knew who lived in an apartment building. She was also the only black girl in the fifth grade.
The next year we chose instruments in school. I wanted to play the cello, but Danielle chose it so I didn’t. Instead I chose the viola, a miserable instrument on which I achieved nothing. Danielle eventually won a music scholarship to college.
The first year I was on Facebook I found her and sent her a message. She responded, I wrote back, and I never heard from her again. Sometimes the door to friendship doesn’t open as far as you think it might, and you’re vulnerable standing there on the threshold
, not yet in or out. It was uncomfortable online, and Danielle had endured the feeling in real life. I wish I could say the school where Danielle and I met is more diverse now, but it’s not.
I looked back at the TV screens. Now there was a report about people wearing backpacks across their chests as a symbol of solidarity with the slain man, the way they had once put up their hoodies. The closed-captioning was badly delayed, but one commentator seemed to be suggesting a backpack worn in front was better for your posture anyway. Two birds, one stone, or something like that.
* * *
—
THE AIRPORT HOTEL’S specialty was freshly baked cookies any time of the day or night. NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH ON YOUR PLATE FOR A COOKIE! was the lengthy slogan, printed on a sign near a huge plate in the lobby. A white employee of the hotel was eating them, and when the clerk helping me noticed him, he winked at her and made an appreciative growl. The clerk, a black woman, shook her head. “I see you stealing my cookies,” she said. She repeated this sentence several times, the emphasis moving around: “I see you stealing my cookies; I see you stealing my cookies.” The man ate at least five more.
I lingered over some brochures, and when the man finally left, the clerk rolled her eyes and replaced the cookies.
Arrival
Many wise things have been said about a visit’s proper length.
It was a delightful visit—perfect, in being much too short. (Jane Austen)
Fish and visitors stink in three days. (Benjamin Franklin)
And we know that Hans Christian Andersen ruined his friendship with Charles Dickens by staying with him three weeks longer than planned.
The arrival, however, has been overlooked. Welcoming a friend into your life is like folding egg whites: it should be done gently and with good technique, leaving lots of air. Enthusiasm has its place—exclamations, hugs, compliments—but mainly the trick is to make people feel comfortable right away, and to do this both guest and host must conceal any work that has gone into the convergence. The preparation of the house, the altering of schedules, the travel. It’s usually a mistake to launch into a story about the difficulty of your travels, though that wasn’t always the case. In the Odyssey, it was part of the accepted pattern of hospitality:
The guest arrives.
The guest is offered a bath and/or fresh clothes.
The guest is given food and drink, usually at a feast.
The guest is questioned about his travels; there are speeches on both sides.
Everyone retires for the night to a soft bed.
Today people will leave a key so the guest can let herself in. Some want to be there when you arrive. Others want to meet you at the airport. Some show you where you’ll sleep right away. Others ask if you’d like something to eat or drink. The eating schedule is almost always the first hurdle for a variety of reasons: you may or may not have eaten at the airport, dinner may be early if there are children involved, or late if work is an issue. There are almost never feasts and entertainment, at least not the first night. And if there are, you are definitely expected to talk during them, though Odysseus got to eat first and talk afterward, which would be my preference. Almost no one asks if you’d like to bathe.
Speech making is out of fashion, but questions do arise. A common one: “How’s your family?”
Ah.
A Venn diagram might be helpful here. In the Attaway family Venn diagram, if x = my father, y = me, and z = my brother, then the point of greatest overlap between x, y, and z is where we agree that my mother died. What caused her death, relevant details of her last few years, her state of mind when she died, remain in dispute. My father and brother agree she was bedridden. My brother and I agree that her bedridden state was at least partially voluntary. My father and I agree her lack of mobility contributed to her death. My brother believes it was an accident. My father blames himself, while I have wondered what it is fair to ask of loved ones. Can we ask them to take care of themselves for our sake, because we love them, or is that an inherently selfish request?
Or perhaps a parable would be better. A woman was going from her forties to her fifties when she fell into a depression. It stripped her of her energy and beat her down. A man happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the woman, he had good personal boundaries established and so passed by on the other side. So, too, a woman; when she came to the place, she spoke to the depressed woman but grew frustrated, and was also very busy with her own life, and soon passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the woman was; and when he saw her, he went to the woman and bandaged her wounds, pouring on oil and other balms. Then he put the woman on his own donkey, took her to an inn, and took care of her. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. “Look after her,” he said, “and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.”
Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the woman? The Bible says the one who had mercy on her. But what is mercy if, as in my mother’s case, the woman wanted to be left alone? What happens if the woman never again leaves the inn?
On a message board about the original biblical story, I found this question: “Which of the following could be reasonably understood as an accurate biblical definition of the term ‘neighbor’?”
Only one’s immediate associates.
Only one’s extended social or religious group.
Neighboring nations and cultures.
One’s enemies.
All humanity.
The most popular answer was 2. How can we live in a time when social media makes us friends with people all over the world, but our sense of neighbor is shrinking?
So, how’s your family?
I could say we’ve grown more comfortable with peace than joy, patience over hope, and perseverance feels the same as love.
I could say happy families are supposed to be all alike, but even the happiest, after forty years, probably has some reckoning to do.
I could say my brother hasn’t been home in eight years.
But I don’t. How can I when I’ve just arrived? Most of us, especially women, don’t have the luxury of an Odysseus or a Beowulf to deliver an epic speech upon arrival. So I say we’re hanging in there. And, where should I put my bag?
House Proud
I knew Lindy’s house would be thoroughly decorated; I followed her on Instagram. I used to marvel at her acquisitions, impressed by the early finesse of her home. She had real furniture at a time when most of us were still working with futons. When every room was decorated to its full potential, she started designing napkins and placemats and curtains. She’d recently posted a picture of a pink tape measure and a stub of pencil on a windowsill. No caption, but the ethos it conveyed was unmistakable. Her DIY impulse was boundless, extending even to the surname she and her husband shared. They combined pieces of their last names to make an entirely new one: Lindy Ascoli (English) and Max Casaubon (French) became Lindy and Max Casacoli, suggesting an Italian heritage neither of them had, though their kitchen was painted a beautiful Tuscan yellow.
Lindy picked me up at the airport with her middle daughter, Mona. I saw them standing by their car outside baggage claim, but I waited until Lindy saw me. I think she might have done the same thing. It’s worth remembering that Odysseus always arrived in disguise, which is a lot easier than showing up as yourself. In the end, Lindy and I seemed to see each other at the same moment, then hurried toward each other, smiling. We hugged and laughed, said it had been too long, and immediately started trying to remember when we last saw each other.
“No school today,” Lindy said, putting her arm around Mona. “Max is at home with Jessie and the baby.”
“She’s grumpy,” Mona offered.
“The baby?” I asked.
“No, Jessie,” Lindy said.
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”
“She’s a preteen,” Mona explained. I nodded. I knew a lot about what that meant from Lindy’s Facebook posts. I also realized I knew a lot about Mona—she liked ballet, she was good at math, she’d gotten her first-grade class to start composting—though I hadn’t seen her since she was a baby. This didn’t make me feel confident, though. I felt like a spy who had read a dossier and wasn’t sure what I could reveal.
“Do you know your multiplication tables?” I asked.
I’d overstepped the mark. Mona looked up at her mom.
“She’s getting there,” Lindy said. “One through four, right?”
Lindy’s face looked older, which meant mine did, too. I think she was thinking the same thing. We said almost simultaneously, “You look great,” and gave each other a new and tighter hug, Lindy up on tiptoe.
“Oh, it is good to see you,” she said. She sounded a little relieved.
* * *
—
MANY MIGHT HAVE BEEN daunted by a visit so near Christmas, but not Lindy. She’d said on the phone she was organized “this year,” but I know she is organized every year. I’ve seen the pictures. And indeed, when we arrived at the house, it was thoroughly ready for the season: candles in the windows and lights on the bushes; two trees up and decorated, one in the living room and one in the den; mantel and windows draped in evergreen boughs.
“I haven’t done the village yet,” Lindy said.
“The village?”
“The Christmas village. I’ve been collecting pieces for years.”
I gave them their presents in the foyer. My timing was off, gifts should come later, but we were gathered awkwardly around the front door, where Lindy’s husband, Max, and their elderly dog had greeted us next to a full-scale gingerbread house. Max and I seemed about to resume the how-long-has-it-been debate, so I opened Grendel and got out the gifts. I had books for the girls and a set of hand towels with an embroidered strawberry (Lindy’s side of the long ago Dairy Queen debate) for Lindy. She remembered and laughed, then showed me to the guest room so I could get settled.
Rules for Visiting Page 7