Here I am, back in the USA.
I was going to continue to do day by day entries, but that blur of time and consciousness intercontinental travel induces have made the last four days fold into each other. It’s as if there has been one long day since leaving Montmartre, followed by a bunch of naps and visits. For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to try to reconstruct it all. It would be an odd thing to lose four days from your life.
I remember mumbling a hoarse “Bonjour” into the phone at five thirty am, with no sleep at all behind me. The tea our friends had treated us to, combined with the Parisian road noise outside our window and my own tumult of thoughts and memories had all combined to prevent much rest. I do remember closing my eyes, then the phone. Then a cramped shower, me leaning against the side of the shower stall. If I appreciate anything about the US, it is our rather fine plumbing. I have had a tub bath everyday since returning. But oddly, at that moment, I savored that cramped shower.
My mind still a blur, I had my first painful moment of the trip when Oxy outlined exactly why he didn’t want to bring the hookah my friend had given us. American security, as I know from experience, while filled with many decent people, also has a fair number of uneducated types who react from prejudice and stereotypes. For example, when I took to wearing a traveling hat, a very nice straw boater, I got special searched every time for five trips in a row. It’s not a pleasant experience. I left the hat at home, and the searches stopped. Oxy pointed out that, while we’d eventually get through, carrying what a stupid customs official would call a “bong” given to me by a Syrian friend was not the way to get through in record time. We might even get detained. If you think he was being paranoid, it’s because you don’t have my amount of travel experience and friends in the industry. Very upset, I bit my lip and agreed to leave it on the train, hopefully for someone to find (the hotel owner knows our Syrian friend very well, and we didn’t want to have word get back. In her culture, you just don’t turn down gifts given from the heart)
Then it was traveling clothes on, multiple laps around the room, purse over shoulder, computer in hand, cup of tea in the lobby and profuse thanks to the clerk again. We’d given the staff flowers, and I was happy to see the chipper little pot perched next to the clerk’s computer.
Then it blurs, a Metro ride, a painful parting with the hookah left under the seat (I SO hope it finds a good home), the usually confusion with the RER (is THIS the train to DeGaul?), misinformation from a local so we got off at the wrong terminal, a bus to the right terminal, a deserted terminal, hike hike hike, information lady telling us to hike to another terminal, hike hike hike, wait in line, find out we need more paperwork, go to customer service to fill that out, struggle with ticket agent’s bad English--ask her same question in French—she decides I’m completely fluent, allez allez from a random security guy in one of a thousand lines, another bus for some reason or another, then another customer service desk, I’m staggering about wondering if I could talk Oxy into carrying my computer too, then we finally check in to discover the last customer service agent had upgraded us to business class.
I collapse into an overstuffed seat as the flight attendant hands me a glass of champagne. Although my miles make me eligible, this has never, ever happened to me before. Now, I am completely spoilt. The usual grueling flight across the ocean became akin to spending the morning in bed while watching movies, playing videogames on my computer (er, I mean outlining my novel razz ) and having very nice, motherly types bring you tea and food (I got an English flight attendant, who knew tea. Score!)
We also had clear skies over Greenland, allowing us a fantastic view of that island (it's really quite big, although of course, not bigger than Mexico like the Mercator map would have you believe lol )
I won’t say I was happy, what with leaving Paris and losing my friend’s gift, but at least I was content. In the morning, they gave us warmed cookies, then a whole bag of extra cookies for good measure and sent us on our way in the wilds of Atlanta Hartsfield Airport.
As an American, I shudder over the fact that customs is the first thing that foreigner encounters in the US. We passengers were confronted by an empty room with a bewildering array of tensile barrier guides, leading to a dead end. The first man quite sensibly ignored them and ducked under them so he could get to the passport line. Screaming ensued from the previously somnolent, uninformative customs agents. He was made to go back in line, then we snaked our way through the set up course (in an empty room, mind you). Reaching the dead end, we stopped as ordered until an agent came down and removed one barrier. I asked her if we could then go straight on to the passport window, only to get yelled at and told to go down another maze of barriers.
Finally reaching the passport window, we got yelled at and told to step behind the “yellow line”, which was more of an orange-brown colored line that looked like so much trim in the carpet. To be fair, there was a sign explaining this on the other side of the booth, two feet off the ground in easy enough to read typeface (if you happened to be there). A few obligatory minutes later, we were allowed to step up and get cross examined. Yes, we are married. See, same last name. Five years. Oh, you thought your marriage was going well, but then she left you. How interesting. Smile nicely, looking bland and non-threatening, then off to another line. No, not that line, another line. No need to see passports. Do you have food? Chocolate isn’t food (actually a pleasant man here, trying to help us reduce our declarations). This resulted in a brief flash of humanity that morning as the Agricultural inspector talked lovingly about Georgia’s ethnic dishes (motto: “If we fry, you’ll eat it”).
While we wandered about, random agents kept coming over and stopping us for a minute or so to examine our bag of cookies the flight attendant gave us.
“Is that meat?” one asked.
“Um, no, it’s chocolate chip cookies.”
“Where did you get them?”
“From the airplane.”
He gave us a skeptical look.
“No, really, the flight attendants had extra and gave them to us.”
He stared at us, perhaps not believing anyone would every get extra food from a flight attendant. Then we got a curt wave of the hand, universal dumb-guy-with-badge for “I should take you in, but you’re not worth my time.”
So the cookies went into the nearest dustbin, the second gift that day that customs had forced me to part with.
After this, we went through security again. Don’t ask me why. We just had gotten off an international flight, and now were going to a short hop domestic. I mean, what would have worked more mischief—taking over/blowing up an international flight or doing the same to a much smaller aircraft? But nobody asks my opinion on these things, so I dutifully did the usual shoe and metal object shucking and headed to the walk through scanner. I promptly got yelled at again for wearing a scarf. Today’s rule was my jacket was fine, but my scarf would need to go through the X-Ray. Last month, they made me take off my jacket, but I had better sense than to point this out.
A completely un-Metro train ride to the main terminal, and it was on a flight to visit Oxy’s family in North Carolina. I was completely numb by this point. I was surrounded by loud mouthed businessmen and women, talking with great self importance about the need to manage “human assets” (read fire people or make them work longer for less pay). I watched one nauseating excuse for a human (“I’m in food storage containers”—try, you push papers at a paper cup factory, jerk) hitting on a vacuous HR girl, both of them bellowing at the top of their lungs. Wild children ran about, their parents indifferent both to them and the impact they had on their surrounds. I was in a world of unexercised, pallid people, bright walls of linoleum and florescent lights about me, staggering about under signs of corporate food chain after corporate food chain.
I probably would have cried if I hadn’t found a second run book store run by a very lovely lady with a nice selection of classic books. I picked up a copy of Night Flight by St. Expurey (of Little Prince fame. Not to be a spoiler, but don’t read this one on a plane), Wuthering Heights (which I’ve been meaning to reread) and Camus’ The Stranger (probably not the best choice, either, given my mood). Still, they were great books, and soon the two Frenchmen had me whisked off to their worlds for the hours necessary to reach Raleigh (Bronte to wait for later).
Oxy’s parents are wonderful, and their soft English accents were music to my ears after listening to so many braying businessmen (really, why do Americans yell when they talk? For all the noise of Paris, people don’t shout like that there). Oxy’s mother made a quiche and poured some wine out for us while we showed pictures. They’ve been to France a number of times, themselves, and have many friends in the south (Oxy’s father used to work for Alcatel), so perhaps they understood our need for gradually re-acclimatization. Oxy disappeared downstairs to play videogames with his father (er, yes, I married a geeky son of a geek. But they’re SO cute together heart ) Oxy’s mother showed my some of their paintings, including one from the early twentieth century of Montmartre, just outside the Sacre Couer. With the exception of a few awnings, it hadn’t changed much since I took this shot:
The next day, we wandered about a local greenway, once again trying for restfulness. Outside of its innumerable strip malls (the big news is that they now have a Starbucks nearby. *shudder*), North Carolina can be quite pretty. It has these long sections of streams and woods. Recently, I think the state has started to recognize this, and is designating them as parks, marred only by a large sign listing the twenty odd things we were not to do there, and another warning us off the fish as there’d just been a PCB spill. *sigh* That’s America. But once we left the parking lot, we were surrounded largely by trees, and the world was a good place again.
(Pictures to come, as soon as Oxy's father emails them to me)
A cramped, largely unconscious flight across the States, and we were back in Southern California, Oxy navigating the highways as if he’d never left. A friend of ours was attending some sort of business convention in San Diego, so we went and visited him for a bit, and went with him on a tour of the Maritime Museum they have there. They have the actual ship that was in the movie “Master and Commander” (Russell Crowe, be still my beating heart heart )(Just kidding, Oxy. And like him, you need to shave!).
The interior is unfortunately given over to Pirates of the Caribbean pandering—don’t get me wrong, I like fantasy pirates (YARRR!), but I wanted actual history. I wanted to see cramped gun decks, not skeletons and chests of plastic gold. At least the topside was still kept like an Napoleonic era frigate.
They also had a Soviet submarine, which was a cramped as cramped could be inside.
We followed that up with a tour of a 19th century sailing ship, The Star of India, whose informational placards kept going on about the cramped quarters passengers had to endure. I think some of those Russian sailors may have begged to differ.
Then it was a fond farewell to our friend at a local “English” pub (well, the chips and cider were actually good, and the company was fine, so I shan’t complain about the differences. Besides, I like smoke-free pubs), and we were homeward bound.
Home was as untidy as we’d left it, but we had no energy to clean up before picking up Puppy heart heart heart She clearly had taken to our friends, and was playing with them and their little boy. In fact, she kept hopping into their car, apparently on the assumption that we were all going to go for a road trip together. We played with her for a while in the backyard, just running around and tossing ball. Okay, I had to show off her ability to do jumps, which my friend Susan was convinced was impossible. Puppy needed a bit of refresher, then five minutes later, she was gleeful doing 26 inch leaps over a broomstick in response to my hand gestures. I may have looked smug. Puppy may love my friends, but she obeys me best.
At home, Puppy, was a bit nervous, at first, perhaps out of fear that we might leave her again. We spent the evening just laying about, the three of us. I know, I know, dogs aren’t people. But she’s part of our family. And as much as I loved Paris, I missed her tremendously. Well, I guess I could always teach her French…..
