Mickey Mouse ice cream

When I was little (somewhere between 4 and 6), my family took a trip to Disney World. It was deliciously hot down in Florida, just the way I like it. It was even still hot at night, warm enough to warrant my parents giving in to the overpriced ice cream sold at the hotel's store. I was so excited to get this novelty that out of all the things we did, this is the one I remember the most. Outside the store, the lights of the outdoor pool shone on me as I tore into the thin, shiny, plastic wrapper and beheld my treat. It was shaped like Mickey's iconic head; ears made of chocolate ice cream and face of vanilla, and then the whole thing was covered in a thin candy shell - again, ears chocolate, face vanilla - and stuck on a popsicle stick. I took a deep breath and bit off an ear. That first bite was divine: cool, creamy ice cream and rich chocolate sheets that melted on my tongue. I quickly realized, however, that the warm Florida night was working its magic on my frozen friend and the first bite had disrupted the whole shell. Jagged shards of candy shell slipped on the melting ice cream and stuck out in all directions and innards were starting to drip everywhere. It rapidly turned into a race that many are familiar with - the panicky licking of the ice cream cone until it's "under control" but then almost gone. Where's the enjoyment? I joined the race that night and I like to believe I won (though probably it was a tie since I likely had ice cream and chocolate all over my face by the end), but I've been wary of ice creams with shells ever since.

Just in case

I have my ID out and ready with my boarding pass. I have it down to a system - how many little plastic bins I need, when to take off my shoes to minimize sock-to-dirty-tile time, what order to empty my pockets and take off my belt, my watch, sunglasses. Frankly, I'm glad for the distraction. I always have a book or magazine to pass the few minutes between arrival at the gate and when I can board, because I try to cut it close. I've only missed two flights in my life. One was this morning.

But this time, I'm ready. I even had a nap and a shower to make up for the hectic morning. This trip is going to be great. When they start pre-boarding, I go to refill the water bottle that I finished off at security and use the bathroom so I don't have to go while we're in the air. I shuffle onto the plane with a few dozen other passengers. Tossing my duffel bag into the overhead bin, I slide into my row. I check out the air flow above me and turn the knob quickly, making sure I can find and adjust it without looking. Water bottle and magazine go in the seat pocket; airsick bag is located and put right in front, just in case. I fish out my ipod and make sure it's hidden from flight attendants' prying eyes but easily accessible. Maybe it's the distraction, maybe it's the way the sound waves hit my inner ear, but listening to music nearly always helps, if just a little.

I'm absorbed in my magazine for the rest of boarding so I don't notice until we take off that my row is empty. The row ahead of me is empty also. I sneak a look across the aisle to my left and see a couple about my parents' age, chatting. I can't make out what they're saying over the roar of takeoff. A small wave rolls over my head and I turn my eyes straight ahead, and close them. I breathe deeply and try to focus.

I focus on anything - usually breathing and relaxing, but if things get challenging, I'll try my tricks of doing long division or name the state capitals in alphabetical order. As soon as we tip back to go airborne, I think the same thing I think every single time, a gentle self-scolding: What am I doing here? Don't I remember all of the awful flights I've been on in the past? Don't I remember that last awful flight? My heart races and I wonder how bad this one will be. Most of this flight to Austin is very smooth, but I realize I'm used to going east and west, not north and south. Maybe the wind patterns will be really different? My palms are getting sweaty. Breathe. It's too bad there's no one to talk to. I travel with someone I know so rarely but sometimes light chit chat with a stranger is distracting in a good way.

When we level out, I stare at the seat back in front of me and eye my magazine cautiously. Do I dare try to read? Often it's tempting fate, but I'm already bored. The plane lurches and my eyes widen. We smooth out and I remember to breathe again, slumping down a bit in my chair. I put on my ipod and load up a playlist of gentle music - a plane list. I decide to try sleeping for a bit, even though I'd already had a nap that day.

The plane shakes a bit and wakes me a little while later. Then a bigger shaking makes my eyes fly wide open. I'm dizzy, the way you get when you spin around a bunch or someone pushes you on the tire swing for too long. There is such a short lead time between that and losing my lunch that I don't understand how people find that feeling pleasurable at all, why they ride tire swings and roller coasters and get drunk. My heart is racing again as the threat looms. I use the hair tie on my wrist to pull my hair into a loose ponytail at the nape of my neck, just in case. I can feel my pulse everywhere - in my temples, in my chest, in my arms. My arms are turning to jelly and I try to swallow.

The plane jerks downward, what feels like about a ten-foot drop, though at that height who knows how far it actually was. I get a second or two of lead time and fumble for the airsick bag, sticking just my mouth inside, just in time. Only the very practiced know just how to keep their nose outside the bag with scary accuracy; the acid, rotting smell only makes it worse. After a few heaves, there's nothing left in my stomach (again, carefully planned). Normally this is when it stops. I can hear the pilot over my retches explaining what wind shear is - sounds worse than your average turbulence, which also explains why I can't stop. I lean my forehead against the seat in front of me just to take some of the burden off my neck and help hold my head a bit still, keeping the bag firmly planted to my face. Eventually the plane evens out and my stomach settles.

I take a deep breath and lean back. Honestly, I feel better. A flight attendant comes by to offer me some napkins and I ask for a new bag too, just in case. I wipe my mouth and take a small mouthful of water, mostly to rinse my mouth. I have my toothbrush and toothpaste in my carryon for exactly this reason and once I get off the plane and sit still for a bit, my first stop will be the bathroom. I can't wait.

I hear the announcement for the initial descent and force myself to take a deep breath. The landing is as smooth as they get, but I've got one eye out the window, praying for a quick landing. I'm sweating, so I reach up to turn on the air. A minute later, I snap it off; I'm freezing. We bump down and my hips press against the seatbelt as the brakes are applied to calm this roaring cheetah of a machine to the speed of the average housecat, fitting in with the other grounded vehicles. I always remember that this was one of my least favorite parts when I was little, after all the trauma of takeoff, turbulence, and then the grand finale of landing, when I would cry and beg my parents to make the plane stop. I couldn't understand why, now that we were on the ground, we had to keep moving at all. I just wanted it to stop. They would just smooth my hair and murmur soothingly to me, which was all they could do. But now I'm a grownup and there's no one to cry to. The rushing of braking has dulled any other noises and the plane seems almost quiet for a moment in the white roar.

We finally come to a full stop and the flights flash on. Signs unlight with a bing, seatbelts unclick, phones chime to life. Around me, life springs forward, eager to catch a connection, meet their family, get checked into the hotel, move on. I sit. My legs are jelly.

As they leave their row, the couple seated across the aisle pauses. The woman asks if I'm all right and I nod with a weak smile. She says, "Our daughter is about your age. We had our eye on you. Just in case. Looked like you were having a rough time." I thank her and wonder vaguely if she was the one who called the flight attendant for me.

Once the rest of the passengers have left, I pack up my water bottle, magazine and ipod and drag myself out of my seat. I grab my duffel bag from the bin above me, retie my hair and make my way off the plane. I thank the staff, especially the flight attendant who helped me. I leave the new airsick bag for the next person. Just in case.

Spark Plugs

Near the end of my stay in San Lucas, Guatemala, it was my host sister, Jocelyn's, seventh birthday. My friend Jessica and I went down to the ice cream shop to buy her an ice cream cake. While we were there, I started feeling a little funny in the tummy area, and a bit lightheaded. Having already survived three bouts of amoebic dysentery in my three-month stay, I knew enough of the warning signs and decided to take it easy. I asked Jessica to take the cake home for us and I'd join them later, but the party was starting soon so we wanted them to have the cake sooner rather than later. I went outside the shop to the plaza and sat on the cement steps in the shade of a tree, watching a pickup basketball game. Not long after I sat down, a white couple emerged out of the throng of indigenous San Luquenos and approached me.

"Hablas espanol?" the woman asked.

"Si," I responded.

"Do you speak English, too?"

"Yes..." (Where is this going?)

"Oh, thank god," she said, and collapsed next to me. It turned out that she and the man with her, who were Canadian, had rented motorcycles from a place in Panajachel, which is about an hour's drive from San Lucas. Just outside the town, one of the bikes had broken down and they needed help calling the rental place and being picked up.

"Sure, no problem," I said, though inwardly my heart was racing at the thought of carrying on a conversation with someone in Spanish over the phone. I was still learning how to converse in person and the phone is even harder!

It was Sunday, but the Parish office was open, so I led them over - just a five-minute walk down the main street in town. I dialed the number they gave me and haltingly told the man who answered the situation. He was very accommodating and said he'd send a truck right away. But first, he wanted to know, did the couple have any idea what was the matter with the bikes? I relayed the message.

"We're not sure, but we think it's the spark plugs," the woman said.

After a moment's hesitation, I dragged up a word out of the depths of my memory, and I told the man on the phone that they think it was the bujias. There was a pause, and he asked me to repeat it.

"Las bujias?" I said, even more uncertainly.

"Okay, I don't know what that is, but don't worry, we'll send someone out."

I hung up the phone and told the couple to wait at the church and a truck would be along in about an hour. They thanked me profusely and I returned to the plaza, slightly shaken from the weird turn of the day and the adrenaline rush of a new experience.

I finally had a minute to compose myself and reflect on the experience and realized the hilarity of it. The reason I know the word spark plugs, despite not actually knowing what spark plugs are, is that in tenth grade Spanish class we were given lists of vocabulary to memorize, with a quiz each Monday. We resisted every list, but no list did we resist harder than the one about cars, including the word spark plugs. Our teacher insisted that we might need it someday, and he was right. Even if it didn't end up helping, I was proud I remembered it! (I looked it up when I got back to the house and I had the right word but it could be a regional difference, or else my terrible pronunciation!)

The Bike

"Mommy?"

With a sharp breath, almost a gasp, my mother's eyes flew open in the early light and she sat straight up, a swift, abrupt combination that never failed to startle me - probably more than it startled her, and I was the one who saw it coming.

"What is it?"

"Can I go outside?"

"Now? What time is it?"

I waited patiently for her to answer her own question. I couldn't tell time yet. I was only 6.

"It's 6 a.m., Lovey. Why do you want to go outside now?"

"I wanna learn to ride my bike."

"Oh, honey. Can't it wait? Just a couple of hours, then I'll come out with you."

"No, NOW!"

"Shh, shh. You'll wake your father." She sighed, not quite resigned to letting me go, not quite wanting to get up and come with me. I sensed her indecision.

"Pleeeeeeeease? I'll be really careful, I promise."

 She sighed again. "Oh, all right."

My face lit up and I jumped up and down, then turned and dashed back to my room to throw some clothes on. A few short hours later, I had conquered the bike that was missing its training wheels, and caught up to my big sister, who had accomplished the same feat the day before. Victory was mine.

Drip Drip Drop

Today, the sound of Boston is the sound of water: dripping, melting, running, rushing. We had a heavy, wet snowfall on Thursday and now it's in the 40s, with clear blue skies and lots of sunshine. Walking two blocks home from my friend Miriam's house this afternoon, all I heard everywhere was water. Streams of water rattling through metal gutter pipes. The steady drip-drip-drip of eaves spilling onto the sidewalk. The pitter-pat of gutters emptying. The whoosh of rushing riverlets racing to the sewer. Even the cracking and sighing of snow - frozen water - starting the melting process. It's not the best environment if you have to go to the bathroom, but it sounds like spring all the same!

Ten Years

The summer before my senior year of college, I went down to Guatemala for three months. I chose Guatemala for several reasons, one of which is that a family friend lives there with his wife and daughters. I flew into Guatemala City, stayed overnight in a small hotel, and was driven out to the countryside to the American mission by one of their drivers. That makes it sound fancy, doesn't it? It wasn't. The driver was a member of the church who had business in the city anyway; it was three or four hours in his (mostly quiet) company, holding on for dear life as we bumped over two-lane asphalt highways and then small dirt roads, heading due west of the capital.

I was deposited mid-day at the parish, which consisted of a good-sized church (for that town), attached to living quarters for the priests and nuns, offices, a dining room and a kitchen for feeding all the American volunteers. I lugged my bag into the dining area where one of the priests explained that everyone would be gathering for lunch soon. After lunch, I was shown to the volunteers' living quarters, where I stayed for about two weeks, until my new friend Jessica and I arranged a homestay with a church family. A few days later, Sister June introduced me to another volunteer, Steve, and asked him to show me around the town. I think we walked all the way up the hill to the clinic and also around the cemetery at the far edge of town and everywhere in between. It was quite a thorough tour.

A few weeks in, I contacted our family friend, Paul. He's always looking for new things to do, and asked me lots of details about the different projects the mission has. After his own solo visit, he made arrangements for himself and his older daughter, then about 14, to come for a few days. While they were there, Lucia got a chance to work on some of the medical projects since she dreamt of becoming a doctor (and she has almost achieved her goal now, ten years later). Lucia also got to know me and some of the other volunteers, including Steve. She invited me to her Quinceanera, which was in July. She was careful to let me know I could bring a friend, and had a ready suggestion: Bring Steve, she said.

What could I do? It was the girl of honor's request. I very awkwardly asked him if he'd ever been to a Quinceanera (he had; he'd been living in Guatemala for maybe 9 months and is very kind and easy-going, and worked with kids; it stood to reason that he'd befriend many families and be invited to at least one or two) and mentioned that Lucia (and I) would like him to go to hers with me. He accepted graciously and we made our plans. Paul would come back to the town for a few more days of volunteer work and then take us back to the city with him for the big day.

A slight problem occurred when we realized we had nothing to wear. We had come down to Guatemala expecting to work hard and live simply, not go to fancy city parties! However, Lucia's mother was about my size and so we went through her closet together, and Steve ended up with one of Paul's suits, which hung on his slight frame. It felt like we were playing dress-up in our parents' closet, but it was fun. They also made a hair appointment for me. I couldn't believe that this family, who had so many details to prepare for their older daughter's big day, would go to so much trouble to make sure we were taken care of. They even helped arrange for me to go to synagogue and Steve gamely came with me, sparking the first of many conversations about religion.

The day of the party arrived and the Mass was beautiful. Lucia dedicated herself to the church with grace and there were tears in my eyes at hearing her conviction. We headed over to the reception afterwards, where she danced with Paul and other significant men in her life in a choreographed ritual that was new to me. Then the general dancing started.

I am not a big dancer, and Steve had a big job on his hands to get me to the dance floor. But once he got me there, it was enough of a different experience from American dances, and he was so carefree and fun, that I was actually having a good time! Though we hadn't talked much before this trip, we became fast friends. As a longer-term volunteer, he was friendly enough but understandably not overly interested in making friends with the shorter-term volunteers, so we hadn't really gotten to know each other except for a bookmobile trip down to rural Totolya to read and sing with the kids. Ten years later, I know him much better, thanks mostly to Lucia.

I think it's safe to say that Steve is addicted to living overseas. To my friends who only know him from stories, he has alternately been known as Guatemala Steve, East Timor Steve, Thailand Steve, and currently, Cambodia Steve. In the past ten years, he's been back in the U.S. maybe a grand total of two years, instead mostly doing ~4 year stints with Maryknoll Lay Missioners, and we usually have epic phone conversations while he's stateside. This summer we will have been friends for a decade and tomorrow (or today, where he is) is his birthday. Happy birthday to a great inspiration to me on how to live your values, simplify your life, and concentrate on what really matters. To many more birthdays, and many more years of friendship!

Meeting Becca

"Chrissy, is that you?"

I froze. It was not me. I was just minding my own business - really, nobody's business but mine, seeing as I was in a dorm shower stall my first week of college. But my eyes widened and I wondered who would be so bold as to address someone she couldn't see, who was also in a vulnerable position.

"No," I called over the steam and water, trying to sound casual, like someone addressed me over the shower stall every day.

There was a pause. Clearly this was not the answer she expected.

"Oh... who is it, then?"

This girl wanted to carry on a conversation with me! In the shower, no less! Crazy. But it was still early enough in my freshman year that I didn't know more than three people in the entire building: my randomly-assigned roommate and two friends from high school who roomed together three floors up. If this stranger in the next stall lived on my hall, it was an opportunity to meet someone. So to speak.

"Um, Amy?" I squeaked.

"I'm Becca, nice to meet you," she said cheerfully.

I finished rinsing, keeping my ears perked in case there was more to come from this Becca person, but there wasn't. I wrapped myself up in towel and bathrobe and squished in my shower shoes back down to my dorm room.

Not long after that, maybe a day or two later, not having new friends still weighed on my mind. I sat in my room, psyching myself up to go out and make some friends. I gave myself a little pep talk and instructed myself to open my door and walk around until I heard noise - any noise - and follow it until I found people, and then force myself to knock and give it a try. I'd never had trouble making friends before, so I wasn't sure why I was so nervous now, but I took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway. I started down the hall towards the bathroom and followed the sounds of laughter and talking, all the way to the end of the hallway. The last door on the left was open and I peeked in.

The first thing I saw was a guy I'd gone to high school with, who'd graduated two years ahead of me. (These are the small-world joys of going to college an hour away from home.) His hair was now pink and he smiled at me, which encouraged me. I thought he recognized me, but he could have just been his characteristically welcoming self. I took a tentative step inside.

The room was full of maybe a dozen new faces, and they all looked over welcomingly. It was as if the whole room stopped and said, "Hey, great, another new person! How fun!" They asked my name, and then all introduced themselves. About halfway around the room, a girl simply said, "I'm Becca." and the two of us started laughing. Everyone else exchanged bewildered but bemused glances and I knew I was in the right place. I relaxed as we told the story of how we'd met, and settled in on the bottom bunk bed next to Becca to get to know my new friends.