When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home (18 page)

Not us. When we are standing in front of a panda bear giving birth, we are out of film. The day we view Old Faithful, the eruption has all the force of a radiator that blew its cap. When we are in Russia, Lenin's tomb is “leaking again and closed for repairs.”

One year we returned from Greece to find Stan and Doris on our doorstep. “Tell! Tell!” they gushed. “What did you see?”

Happily, we recounted our three weeks in Greece—from the Acropolis and Mount Lycabettus to Constitution Square and the Royal Gardens. We burst with excitement over our visits to stadiums, archaeological museums, ruins, temples, and digs. When we finished, Stan looked at us and said, “You didn't eat at Syros Herculonburgers?”

We shook our heads.

“Then you didn't see Greece,” he said. He turned to Doris. “Can you imagine the Bombecks going all the way to Greece and not eating at Syros Herculonburgers?”

Doris dropped into a chair like she had just been bitten by a viper. “You're kidding! Next thing you'll tell me is they didn't visit the Athos Flea Market.”

“Where's the Athos Flea Market?” I asked.

“Oh Stan,” she moaned, “I cannot believe what I am hearing. Tell me they didn't pay more than a dollar fifty for genuine icons at that little shop around the corner from the hotel.”

As the memories of our travels fade, ironically, so do the moments of missed airplanes, drafty rooms, lost baggage, and death marches to view antiquity.

Along about December, something happens that once again revitalizes me and conjures up fantasies of faraway places. I realize I have nothing to live for. The white sales are over, my five-month cold has stabilized in my chest, and I have just received the Semples' annual Christmas barf-bulletin. This year's tome is written by their dog, Max, and signed with a paw print.

I remember Max. He came with them one year. I never saw the dog's face. It was either buried in someone's crotch or drinking from the toilet.

Anyway, at Christmas, Max, the wonder dog, faxes resumes of everyone in the family and what they have been doing for the past year. "Howard had hemorrhoid surgery but will be 'rarin' to go' again this summer. Fay got to see 'The Love Connection' last summer when they were visiting in California and 'Yes! Chuck Woolery is a hunk!'

“Howard Jr. is married and cannot come with them on vacation this year. Edwin is doing nicely at a halfway house, and the good news is that Sissy, who is divorced, will be able to make the trek with them to California this year along with her two babies.” At the bottom of the sheet, Max has written in a P.S. under his paw print: “Fay and Howard told me to ask you if you still remember the gerbils.”

It's a shame we won't be home.

Papua

New Guinea

It was the silence that awakened me...that same ominous chill you get when you stand at a bathroom door and yell to your kids, “What's going on in there?” and a small voice says, “Nothing.”

The Kundiawa Inn, to be referred to in the future as Motel Hell, had survived the night. I dragged to the bathroom to see if I had done as well. My eyes looked and felt like they were on fire. One minute the fever was taking the curl out of my hair—the next, I was wrapping up in every piece of clothing I owned to stave off chills. I had lost an uncommon amount of weight. For a woman who gained three pounds during the delivery of an eight-pound baby, this was weird. Steadying myself on the sink, I watched a trickle of brown water dribble out of the spigot. I fell into bed.

My husband was snapping a suitcase shut. “You going to be ready to check out in ten or fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“Don't ever say 'check out' to a sick person,” I mumbled.

In the lobby, the only reminder of last night's war were three policemen having coffee. As I leaned against the wall for support, my foot hit a small alligator carved out of wood with his back hollowed out. Through parched lips I inquired, “Is this for sale?”

My husband materialized at my elbow to witness the transaction. “Thank God. I thought you were dead. What are you going to use it for?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Dips. . . candy . . . nuts.”

“The plane will never get off the ground with all this stuff.”

Getting a plane off the ground in New Guinea is right up there with falling from the Empire State Building with a bungee cord tied around your ankles. Back home, their airstrips are known as unplowed fields. They are mined with ruts and rocks. They are also short. The plane usually aims toward the edge of a cliff. If the aircraft isn't airborne by the time it runs out of runway, the missionaries have a good day.

Flying low over the lush green jungles on our way home, I try to piece together not only the idiotic nightmare of the night before, but an answer to why we do this every year. Why do we leave an all-electric kitchen, people who speak our language, soft beds, safe drinking water, and toilets where we can sit on the seat?

What were we doing poking into other people's lives and cultures? Swatting their flies, worshipping at their shrines in our stocking feet, and lugging home Indonesian art to hang over our Santa Fe sofa?

Travel had long ago ceased to be just adventure and curiosity. For me, it had turned this planet into a small town—with a “Mayberry RFD” cast of people who had more in common than we had ever hoped was possible. We all had children who giggled ... a belief in something bigger than ourselves . . . and a need to love and be loved back. It was a start.

Later that night as we walked into the lobby of one of Sydney, Australia's, five-star hotels, we must have looked like the Clampetts arriving in Beverly Hills.

Our shoes carried the mud of a hundred paths through the bush. Our clothes reeked of the smoke of a hundred campfires. Our bodies carried the sweat and dust of scores of villages and caves. As we blinked from the brightness of the lights from the elegant chandelier, I tried feebly to stuff the wooden alligator farther into my tote bag. A bellhop scurried to help me with another one of my souvenirs—a three-foot pig made out of skins. “Is this yours, sir?” My God! He was talking to me!

Somehow, I couldn't absorb it all. My reentry was too fast. The marble floors, the computers on the desk, the boutiques, the gift shops, the women in heels, the men exuding musk. It all seemed so unreal!

I just stood there in the middle of it all in a state of numbness. From across the lobby, a young, beautiful woman approached me, smiling. She looked like an album cover in her white tennis dress and dazzling smile. She smelled wonderful. “Hi,” she said, “I'm Olivia Newton-John.”

I sucked in my stomach (thank God, some reflexes were still working) and tried to explain that we looked this way because we had just returned from a world of skies blackened by fruit bats in the early morning hours ... a place where giant frangipani trees rained pungent petals on you as you passed by and where exotic birds of dazzling colors ate off your plate at breakfast. But all I could do was to extend my hand and say, “We've been on vacation.” It seemed to explain everything.

The encounter with Olivia Newton-John seemed to jar me back to civilization somehow. It gave me a grasp on reality. My roots needed color. I'd have to make an appointment the minute we got home. We had children. Should we call the kids in New York or take a chance on having a coronary when we saw the house? Would there be milk and bread for breakfast in the refrigerator? The only thing that stood between us and home now were the airport carousel and customs experiences.

The baggage claim at a port of entry is a study in subhuman behavior. I am convinced there will never be a viable hope for world peace until we can get two hundred people to claim their luggage from a carousel in an orderly fashion. This flight would be no different from the others.

When the plane landed, two hundred passengers sprang into the aisles like someone had just yelled “Fire!” They dragged carry-ons/coats/souvenirs/ children down miles of corridors until they reached baggage claim. Gasping and panting, they scoured the area and arm wrestled one another for the twelve luggage carts.

The people planted in cement closest to the carousel were the last to have their luggage come down the chute. Don't ask me why that is. It just is.

I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.

The second and final hurdle between us and home was the customs line. This is where you stand around, spitting on your jewelry to make it look worn and in general trying to look as creditable as Walter Cronkite. I still felt lousy as I kicked our luggage forward inches at a time.

“You OK?” asked my husband.

“I'll make it,” I said weakly.

The customs officer was riffling through the dirty underwear of the couple ahead of us. He held up a giant boomerang and turned it over several times.

The owner felt he had to defend it. “It's a boomerang,” he said. There were at least thirty pairs of eyes focused on this fool who had lugged halfway around the world a crooked piece of wood that couldn't have gotten him 35 cents at a garage sale.

“I'm going to put it in my den,” he announced to all of them. The customs officer just shook his head and waved him on. Somehow, we all knew he would never have the same feeling for the purchase as he had when he bought it.

We were next and I leaned against the counter for support. “Open 'em up,” commanded the agent, pointing to our suitcases.

He worked like a surgeon . . . professional and without emotion as his fingers moved quickly under the plastic bags and among the shoes stuffed with socks and bras. Finally, both of his hands met in the bottom of the suitcase and he carefully extracted three elongated gourds and held them up for the entire terminal to view. Then he barked, “What are you going to do with all these penis gourds?”

It was like one of those scenes when E. F. Hutton talked and everyone listened. So that's what they were! I thought they were primitive artifacts they wore to add interest to a dull belt. By this time, decent people behind me were beginning to form opinions about us. Taking a deep breath, I said, “I'm going to use them for planters.”

He motioned with his hand for me to move on and turned his attention to the next couple.

The lines from customs counters funneled into one large mess at the door where you had to show your passport and your declaration card before you were cleared to leave the terminal.

By this time, my face was on fire, my eyes were swollen half shut, and my lips were cracked with fever. The attendant flipped my passport open and looked from the photo to my face for confirmation.

“Good likeness.” He smiled.