I’ve been lucky enough, in terms of where I come from socioeconomically, to have a lot of traveling experiences with my family and by myself as well (though my family certainly doesn’t know about that!). So here are the places that I’ve spent time in whilst traveling; some of them aren’t included here for whatever reason, mostly because people need their privacy or the beauty of the place is too great for words. In any case, I hope you enjoy this small offering of what I’ve seen of the world. Hopefully, eventually, I’ll be able to put the names of more impressive places down in my notebook, but everything has its time and place.
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
I was only here for a few hours, because of a layover on a flight to San Francisco to see a close friend. My first impression was obtained only from the airport, and the air from the crevices around the airplane that were exposed. The air was even more frigid than it was back home, and this was comparing the weather to the harsh Bostonian December. My back was frigid even through the thick fabric of my coat. Inside the airport, it gave me the impression of being highly commercial though it was very vast. I remember having to run to find the correct terminal in time, only allowing myself to go to the bathroom once I had found a ladies’ room near where I would board my flight. On the way to my terminal, I found that everything was very assuredly Christian and Christmas-oriented. I made no judgments about what kind of city this was, but I have to say that I have always found Midwestern accents somewhat grating, and overly flamboyant Christmas cheer kitschy. I was eager to finish the rest of my journey, to be sure. I didn’t even chance food, though it was very late – I remember that I just wanted to finish the rest of my trip and be at my destination safe and sound.
Los Angeles, California
The only part of Los Angeles that I saw was LAX – meaning, the airport. It was on the way to Hawaii, where we spent a good three weeks on vacation, and partly for my father’s business trip. The airport was highly sterile, and a mess of shops and terminals. It reminded me of the stereotype behind Los Angeles involving lack of depth and sheer vanity, and to this day it doesn’t stand out to me as much as the airport that I barely pay attention to — namely, Logan.
My father had an earlier flight out of LAX than my mother and I did, so I had to babysit her for something like three or four hours, and do everything so that I didn’t explode. My mother is one of the most pugilistic and argumentative people I have ever met, so I had to make a call back East to a friend of mine that I hadn’t talked to in a long while, but knew about the situation with my parents. If I had ever been a smoker, I would’ve lit up and relieved the stress that was involved in getting my mother on the correct airplane, and making sure she filled out all the appropriate forms. There was a good amount of paperwork about what we might be bringing into or out of the country, and I wanted us to get it right so we would not be held over in any amount of customs. I’d heard many nightmares from my brother when he went through customs on his way to Costa Rica; I didn’t want to relive that with a belligerent mother in tow. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and I could bury myself in a book on the flight, so my mother was forced to either talk to herself or amuse herself in some other way. Thank god for literature.
Seattle, Washington
Seattle was my first trip alone; it was sometime during the spring of 2006 or 2007. I went there to meet one of my best friends, Rochelle, so we could go to an Anime convention together. We’d only been talking for about six months or so before we made definite plans to meet, but I felt like I’d known her forever. We fell into friendship very easily, and I can still remember that I was exhausted, nervous, and a bit disoriented by the airport that was planned very differently from the Logan Airport from which I had traveled. Before I had the chance to find Rochelle, she had tackled me in the baggage claim where I retrieved my only suitcase. It was one of the most wonderful, though wholly unexpected, greetings that I’ve ever received. The first thing that struck me about her was her height; she easily made me into a dwarf, and pulled off the feminine version of tall and willowy very well. I got to meet her father as well, and he was nice enough to take the both of us out to Denny’s; funnily enough, prior to the actual trip, I was wholly resistant to eating at that restaurant for a reason that I can’t quite remember at the moment. But when it was the only restaurant open, I forgot the joke and went to eat with them there. Surprisingly the food was excellent, though arguably I would’ve eaten anything at that point had it been provided for me. I was running three hours ahead of Seattle time, so after the meal we went back to her father’s apartment, and I was more than ready to fall asleep, face first, on the comfortable mattress on the floor. We were both brimming with excitement, since what we would be doing for the next few days together was going to an anime convention together. We’re both pretty big fans of it, so we had such a great time going around, being silly, and geeking out about anime for the greater part of most days. Most of all, I just loved being with her. I was right when I fell into friendship with her; we have such an easy time in each other’s company. We share so many interests, and have a lot to teach one another, that we could definitely spend entire days together and never get bored. Even when we spent entire days together at the convention, we would find more and more to talk about, watch, and exchange at the nights back at her father’s apartment. I feel like she’s the kind of friend that will always be there, even if we somehow manage to lose contact. We’ll pick things up again, like nothing ever happened. Though some of our views are different, we have never let that come between us. I love my Rochelle, and I miss being out in Seattle. It seemed like a more Asian version of Boston, though because of the anime convention being in just one place I didn’t get to explore the city just as much as I may have wanted to – but that’ll change. If I have any say in it, anyway. Rochelle and I are closer every time we see each other, and the next time I go out there I would love to just spend a week in her company. I would love for her to meet my family, but at the time it doesn’t seem possible – but who knows? She’s intelligent, talented, and yet still learning about everything she has to offer.
The best parts of my trips are the people they center around; they are some of the best people I have ever known. I am lucky to have all of them so close to me, though we are so far away in actuality.
Florida (as a child, probably about five or six years of age)
I remember the first time I flew on an airplane; the concept of the plane actually going up into the sky, like a bird, was completely inconceivable to me. I remember holding my breath as the plane went up into the sky. I couldn’t stop looking out the window with my brother and father beside me, marveling at all the clouds around the plane. It was almost like the plane was swimming in a cool white ocean. The experience of popping my ears because of the difference of pressure once the airplane went up was a chance to learn a new technique that I always use. In fact, now that I’ve grown to adulthood, one of the most familiar parts of the ritual of air travel is swallowing to pop my ears and make it comfortable to function en route to my destination.
When we arrived in Florida, it was oppressively hot. I don’t remember much, because at the very oldest I was about five years old. I remember wanting to stay in air-conditioned places and in the hotel room because I could almost feel the moisture come off me in clumps. I would breathe, and my body would feel the pain of having to sweat so much and take in so much nourishment to compensate. I couldn’t imagine living in that heat constantly; it would seem like such a chore to endeavor to stay whore, healthy, and perpetually functional.
We went on rides, and I could almost forget the oppressive humidity after a while, so long as I was plied with drinks. I remember losing my hat on a ride, much to my father’s anger and disappointment. Without much protest, he bought me a new one, and made me feel a little daft by forcing me to put my name on the underside of the brim so I wouldn’t lose it, in big black permanent marker block letters.
We got into a small car accident, and I remember the car actually rolling into a ditch, though thank god it didn’t roll over. I remember my father turning towards me and my brother, though my brother was right next to him, and for the first time in my life I saw him sincerely distressed. His voice as he said, “Are you guys alright?” was something I’d never heard unless he was disappointed with one of us for making a decision that he saw as a mistake. I remember that voice whenever I performed badly, when my brother left the country and slowly made my father understand that he would essentially leave the family for the time being, and when I was diagnosed with severe depression. But I remember that after my father’s mistake in driving, and after all those things that he reprimanded us for, life went on and it found a way. Otherwise, in the wake of my father’s traffic accident mistake, I might not be here, able to write about so many stories since then and how lucky I’ve been. It was scary, though, at such a young age, and I remember being homesick for the cool Boston that I’d grown to know and love at such a young age. It has been my bassinet in the piecing together of everything I’ve been through since I was five, going on six.
St. Louis, Missouri
This is one of my favorite memories; the plane ride only took two or three hours, but it was one of the longest two hour segments in my life so far. I went from reading whatever book I was chipping away at to listening to my iPod, a recent gift for my twenty second birthday. I made the trip out there to see friends that I had only previously kept contact with through the internet and various other mediums. It was wonderful to finally stand at baggage claim, have the only bag I’d packed for five or six days, and get a call from the guy who it was previously agreed would be picking us up. Pier was ready to pick me and my two friends from Seattle up from the airport – the only problem was that I hadn’t yet seen the two great friends of mine, though I was standing at their baggage claim, and they hadn’t told me what flight they’d be on. They’d given me the impression that their plane might come before mine, so I was definitely worried and frantically calling their phones to tell Pier when they’d be here, and ready to be picked up. Before I knew it, I got a text from Rochelle, saying that she and Annie would be along in just about five minutes. Then I remember pacing, like it’s always been in the family habit to do, when I’m nervous. Then I remember seeing them coming towards their baggage claim, and a sense of elation and disbelief washed over me. I couldn’t believe that we all were going to see each other – at once. I had brought things for each of them; I bought one of them an origami set, and the other a book on how to play mahjong and tiny mahjong set. I remember giving Pier a couple books I had painstakingly picked out in a favorite bookshop in Northampton. I gave Shanna, an old friend of my last ex-boyfriend to whom I had grown closer, a couple books that I had intended for my own collection but gave willingly to her as I knew she would give them an excellent home.
After we finally all found each other at Stan’s house, it was overwhelmingly surreal. We talked, caught up, and got comfortable in each other’s presence. Stan’s sister had made a wonderful dinner – much more than even I could eat in one sitting. The weekend was such a treat; we all took care of each other in terms of groceries, and there was never any shortage of food. Or alcohol, for that matter. I had had a bad week just before I went on this trip, so I indulged myself a lot with the alcohol. I would drink with dinner, but one strong rum and coke would become two, three, and four of them when I started to loosen up and relax completely. I probably wouldn’t have had a good time without the alcohol, because I’m naturally quite shy and nervous in front of people that I don’t know very well. The alcohol definitely helped me open up more easily, and I had a better time because of it even if I embarrassed myself more than a few times. But what a weekend – sex, alcohol, friends – what more can anyone ask for? We were all happy enough just hanging out together; I think our only outing was to the tattoo parlor where Stan works. Stan was nice enough to set us all up with free ink, and we all got a little tattoo of a raven on various parts of our bodies. Thankfully I got one on my thigh, under my clothes, and I got an adrenaline high from the pain of the needle. I’ve come a long way – I used to be afraid of needles as a child, and now I get a little rush from them. I definitely want another tattoo, but I totally want the perfect design for the inside of my right thigh.
When the weekend was over, I didn’t want the time to pass any faster, so I would never have to go home. I almost cried on that last day in front of everyone, but I managed to hold it in until the flight home. It was one of the best weekends I ever had; I got to see friends that I’d known for years but never met, and we got to be physically close in all the best ways. I never have much physical affection here because of the hang-ups my parents gave me as a child, so it was wonderful to finally open up to the people around me that I knew would never hurt me. I would love to do it all again one day, nestled in between two of my friends on a couch in someone’s garage, or basement, or wherever the next time finances and plans work out so I can see them.
San Francisco, California
This trip was one of the most surreal and strangest that I’ve ever had. I’ve always had an affinity for California, as my father almost moved the entire family out there for a better job opportunity, but unfortunately stayed because he got an even better counter offer here. But I’ve always wanted to move out there myself, someday. The memory of so many Asian families sandwiched comfortably in the world of the West attracted me to the area immediately. Along with the weather, which is famous for not being as harsh as the Boston climate.
I went out to San Francisco in December; a strange month to make the trip for sure, but I figured that if I ever wanted to seriously live out there, I might as well get acquainted with the harsher parts of the weather out there.
I remember sweating in my t-shirt and jeans, not because of the warm weather – it was actually a little nippy and windy – but because of the heavy clothing I’d worn out of Boston and all the time spent I’d just sitting and reading in planes. Also, it was because I was filled with raw excitement at the prospect of standing up and expending energy in several different ways after my long journey. This was after my trip to St. Louis, and this was to see Pier. He picked me up in his truck, and as soon as I got in, he grabbed me around the waist and I could feel his warmth right against me. It was nice to be warm after being shocked by the wind of San Francisco; somehow my brain didn’t register that it would be more windy than it had been back East.
I wanted to clean up and feel like a human being again, so I told him that we’d better get back to the room so I could get out of my clothes. He obliged, and I remember taking off my clothes as I walked through the room to the bathroom. He caught me with his mouth around my neck, and I swear my eyes were rolling up into my head as he bit down. I wasn’t very sure where I was anymore, and that feeling just increased over the course of that night.
We spent the majority of the next morning in bed, watching the news. I remember laughing at his political rage; I never got much of an education in the ways of politics, and any I’ve had is probably indirectly because of him. After the morning, we grabbed some hotel breakfast and drove out to the area where he works – around Sonora. It was beautiful, but windy, and though I felt warm most of the time I had to pull my coat around me when the wind blew so my torso wouldn’t get too cold.
He took me out to Japantown, to his favorite Mexican restaurant, out to a party with some friends of his from another site, and shopping any countless number of places. My favorite part was the gay district, Castro; they had all manner of sex shops that made us laugh.
We’ll always be friends, and we always have been, but several people suggested that he might have some other interest in me. I knew that he didn’t, but I certainly did. He’s a fantastic man, and I’m lucky to have him in any capacity in my life.
San Francisco is still where I’d love to call home, but I think the distance between us has been fully defined. We’re friends, and it doesn’t matter what anybody else sees in him, or what he looks like when he looks at me. There’s no point in embellishing and seeing things that aren’t there again.
Tucson, Arizona
My father once expressed a desire to retire here; I could see why the several times he brought me to Tucson on his business trips. My brother grew to knew Colorado because of his many sojourns there with my father, and now I got the same honor in Tucson with my dad. The heat is almost intangible if you strictly look at the numbers, but when you’re in the midst of it, it seems like nothing compared to Bostonian heat. Floridian heat seemed like hell compared to Tucson, though it saw much higher temperatures than Tampa or Miami had in those days. At any rate, I remember waking up in that air-conditioned Tucson hotel, and waking up to walk out onto the patio so I could finish my latest book. I can’t remember what I read there — I remember some Norse mythology, possibly some Anne Rice and other things that have weaved themselves into my repertoire. But as I read and looked up at the blazing sun in the sky, I would sometimes be graced by the presence of a small furry creature on the grass outside the patio area.
I think my father was charmed by the heat of the area, because it reminded him so much of India and Bangladesh — the two countries that hold so many memories for him. Somehow, it’s changed, but I knew because of that intimation of what he wanted when he retired that a large part of him felt that he belonged in the East, not in the West with his children who are so much different from him.
My father was never that much of a reader for pleasure, so when he would come home to the room after a day of meetings and networking, I could tell he was bewildered by my choice in books. He got off the topic of what I read on vacation by taking me out to restaurants, out to meet his co-workers, and out to various museums. The best (well, now second best) Spanish/Mexican restaurant I’ve had the pleasure of sampling is right in Tucson; I remember conversing in Spanish with the camarero. It was entertaining, because Spanish is a language that neither of my parents had picked up. So, I could say plenty about my father while he was sitting right across from me. Additionally, the food was fantastic. Just spicy enough, and just authentic enough to satisfy my appetite for what I’d heard about in my Spanish classes from various teachers of Central and South American descent.
Meeting my father’s co-workers, in Tucson anyway, disappointed me a bit. All my life, I’d seen people respect him for his work and express nothing but curiosity at what the children of such a bright man might be up to. I was never the bright one, but people were somehow impressed by me in one way or another, so it made him happy when I was younger. In Tucson, I remember sitting awkwardly with my father and a man he worked with, who was having a few sips of weak beer. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk, which I knew how to look for at that point, but the fact that he was drinking made my highly observant — at least in terms of diet — Muslim father a bit edgy. My father was attempting to talk about botanical gardens, probably in the UK, but that wasn’t what he necessarily said. My father does tend to have a bit of a British Indian accent, so in strict phonetic terms, he said, “botanickal”. I could tell his co-worker was an unsympathetic man, so he was making fun of my father for his pronounciation, and my dad was attempting to laugh at his own mistake. I’d never seen my father so stranded, especially when expressing himself in the company of the people he worked for and who worked for him. He often headed talks when he went away on business, so this experience was a new one.
The two museums he took me there were the museum celebrating the Bio Sphere project — or something along those lines — where a few wily scientists and naturalists tried to live in a contained and self-sufficient bubble. It ultimately failed, but everything was put into a museum to commemorate the project. That one intrigued my father more than me; the one that I really found amazing was the museum with all these old war planes. I knew my father did many things — some of which I still cannot disclose — dealing with air warfare. So it was amazing to interact with his other co-workers, and their families in many cases, and touch these old instruments of war.
I’m proud of what my father does, and proud that he has used it to help his travel so widely, but what he does I could never do. His business is war, though it may be indirect, and it’s not anything I want in the duration of my life. But my father is a great man, and I will never question him for his choices.
Washington D.C.
This was an interesting trip, because instead of flying out to Washington D.C., my father decided to save the company some money and take his daughter for a road trip there. We talked a lot about his family, the two second cousins of his that are at universities in the United States — either teaching or doing post-doc work. Both of them have young families. It was an interesting choice for my father to leave himself no recourse but to open up to me — he was always very emotionally frigid as I got older. But I found that it was enjoyable talking with him about his family, and acting as occasional navigator. I’ve always been better doing the cranial legwork than actually maneuvering a car, though I suppose the latter will come to me in time.
We passed several bridges, and though I’ve lost the pictures over time, the grand scale of a lot of practical architecture has ingrained itself into my brain. I would look out onto the sun gleaming across rivers and bits of the ocean, and my father would tell me stories of his other driving excursions, especially the time when he had to move him and my mother to the United States, with all their things, just after obtaining a Canadian license. Needless to say, my father has mostly been an exemplary driver.
Once we arrived at our destination, I don’t remember much about the hotel. I spent a lot of time by myself, reading as I am wont to do when I’m alone, and going out with him when he came home from work and meetings that he’d endured during the day. We went out for restaurants that somehow failed to gain a foothold in my memory; the most memorable thing we did was drive around and try to catch a glimpse of all the most important buildings in Washington that would be on television — especially CNN or the like. We saw museums, monuments, and government buildings, but were pressed for want of time to actually go in and take in everything with utmost clarity.
I guess this isn’t a memory of great material importance, but if anything it’s for the memory of being with my father. We were never very close as father and daughter as I grew up, especially as I questioned him staying with my mother, but it was nice to put that aside for this trip and just get to know the person that my father was before marriage and family happened to him. No matter what, I remembered then that he was a great person for bringing up his son and daughter in the best manner possible.
Canada: Ottawa/Toronto
These two cities are full of childhood memories for me; my oldest aunt and her husband have a house in Ottawa, where we would all gather for Canadian family reunions every few years growing up, and where one of my cousins — their children — makes trips with her two kids these days. Toronto is where Rumela, that cousin, lives with those two kids and her husband of Scottish descent. Needless to say, that branch of the family has turned out much differently than their father, my uncle, would’ve liked. But they’re all beautiful, educated, and wealthy — the three cornerstones of Indian happiness. But this isn’t the place for family from whom I’ve grown apart.
Every time I’ve gone to Canada — either city — it’s been during the winter. My father went to get his PhD up there before he met my mother, and I think he misses all the snow they get. Canada obviously receives a lot more snowfall than Boston, and there have been stories in the Canadian extended family about how my matchmaker’s daughter got her boot stuck in a vast pit of snow when she was in middle school or so, and her father made her go back in the dead of night to retrieve it. I guess you could say that Canadian Indian families were as strict as my parents treated their children.
But I never ran into much trouble with the snow. I’ve always woken up in time for the entry into Canada on those long car rides North, and the two things that greeted me out of that slumber were cow manure — there seem to be more farms in Canada — and the sheer volume of snow. It looked like a winter postcard in every frame, and I think that these were the two cities that taught me to love the cold.
Most of the time while I was there, I would catch up with family. I would reconnect with Rumela, who assumed a motherly role amongst all the cousins of her own doing, and her parents. I loved her mother especially because she would spoil us due to her knowledge of our parents’ marital woes. She bought my brother coffee, and me expensive handbags once I reached the age where I would need them. Her kitchen was a bit cramped, but people would file in anyway to help her cook or to talk with her about this or that family.
One year, when I was younger, my cousins took me to this fair, and we came away with stuffed animals, having ridden horses in a pen and petted several farm animals — much to the distaste of my own parents who did not like animals. A few years later, the excursions changed in nature. I was sixteen when I met my family’s matchmaker and assured that I was wholly ugly for any sort of youthful marriage (let’s hope my parents still agree with her, for my sake).
No matter what happened there, I appreciated the beauty of the country around me. I wanted to be closer to the rest of the world, and not necessarily stuck in a country that was ready to declare that it was the best nation in the world. But my parents picked it for a reason, and I remember, with relief, that at least there’s a security checkpoint between marriage and me.
Logan Airport
This is where the majority of my travel has originated; it has changed since I’ve grown, but in the most important ways it has remained the start of everywhere else I go. Since September 2001, just a few days after my birthday, traveling in general has changed irreversibly. When I never had to think about the particulars of what I would be packing, then I had to worry about liquid volumes, and paying for luggage, and making sure I removed my shoes expediently. I worried about race, language when I would talk with my parents at the ticket counter in the native language, or the jokes we often made in poor taste when I was with friends. Now, the airport became a hypersensitive place; I remember one morning when I had woken at three AM from my bed to be at the airport by five or six, and forgotten to take the lotion bottles out of the front of the backpack I used at the time. One member of security was irate enough to pull me over, ask me sternly about the bottles, and ask me if I’d had anything — I could tell he meant drugs or alcohol — that morning. I simply looked at him, and in English that I knew he hadn’t expected to hear from me, told him that I was simply tired from the lack of sleep I’d gotten earlier that morning. I’m thankful I was born in this country, though my skin color has been known to make things difficult. At least my capacity to express myself better than a lot of my non-immigrant stock contemporaries has saved me in several occasions. Everyone is astounded when they learn that my mother has trouble putting together a sentence properly.
Other than the uncovered unsavory aspects of travel I now face, Logan is familiar in all its amenities. I’ve spent so many collective hours reading in a terminal, or staring out those big, grand windows as planes take off from terminals where I will be boarding or other terminals entirely. They might be heading East, on long trans-Atlantic flights; South, so Northern relatives can visit their banjo-toting relatives; or West, so young New England-educated students could attend Californian universities. Logan has always been the essence of coming and going — the sight of relatives, lovers, and friends waving goodbye and kissing them hello has always dominated what I think of Logan.
I’ve spent many late nights and obscenely early mornings at Logan, and I distinctly remember how the sunlight always manages to make an appearance as it peeks through the upper corners of one window or another.
Whether I stay in this part of the country or no, Logan will be the beginnings of travel for me. Logan will hold the honor of teaching me the decreasing importance of physical distance.