“Ma’am, you’re ticket doesn’t have your first name printed. Do you see that? It’s just your first initial. I’m going to need you to step to the side.”
The way the security officer speaks sounds like baby talk to me. I think about whether or not I find this condescending, but the woman with the bad ticket has bigger things on her mind. And in truth, I find his tone kind of soothing.
Going through airport security is so stressful for me. The worry that I’ll have something confiscated lurks in the back of my mind. And after reading this story about arbitrary detainment at Heathrow airport, I hold my breath going through every metal detector.
In any other circumstance, I would find his slowed and gentle speech insulting. But today, I like it. He sounds nice.
“Thank you,” he says to me after he takes my ticket and he writes something on the back of it. He points me toward the x-ray conveyor belt. I exhale.
The last time I flew to Taiwan, it was because we had just learned of my grandfather’s terminal diagnosis.
My mom rushed to purchase our tickets the week after her brother called.
“Yours cost me $700,” she told me, letting the silence hang for a while before moving on.
In the garage on the day of departure, she grabbed a tree stump my dad had dug out the backyard and beat the hell out of the stubborn, plastic handle of her suitcase, her hair and tears flying off in crazy directions like the pieces of plastic. I watched in silence.
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” she hissed wildly. My dad went into the hallway closet to bring out another suitcase. We transferred all her things over in less than a minute.
Two months later she kicked me out of the house. We didn’t speak for almost a year.
This time, my mom and I end up staggering our visits. Your grandfather is deteriorating, she tells me before I leave. He has lived almost a year beyond what doctors first projected. My mom left to see him six weeks before.
“Call me if there’s a problem,” she says before she drives off. I push my luggage to the check-in counter. She calls me an hour later.
At the boarding gate, I watch an interracial couple share a bottle of water. Her stage-like make-up is the first thing I notice. Her giant, shiny ring, the second. Our eyes meet when she sees me watching; I don’t look away.
“All women want to feel secure and safe,” I say to you on the phone while waiting to board. I can’t hear you nod or roll your eyes.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask, not completely serious.
“What is wrong with you?” you counter.
On the plane, the couple sits in the aisle in front of me. The girl notices as soon as I do and occasionally turns around to look at me. After the plane takes off, I watch her weep at a sad movie and help serve the ahma sitting in the window seat beside her. She seems nice.
I tell everyone before I leave that I am excited for this trip. “It’ll be good to see family,” I repeat. But there’s nothing I can do to help him. There’s nothing I can do to make it better. Or make it less bad. Or change anything. The space behind my sternum feels thick and weighty when I think about this.
“Now it really feels like Fall.”
“I love this weather.”
…
Something about the sharp turn of the front door barometer makes me feel simultaneously comforted and lonely. I grew up in Southern California, and arid, summer memories blur together, stretching through my time line as one long and never ending sunny day. It’s no wonder infrequent moments of chill become punctuated for me.
It’s probably their rarity, their minority status in my day-to-day encounters, that make cold days stand at the forefront of my attention. Distinct memories emerge at will. I stop to relive the past– just briefly.
I’ve always said I hate feeling cold. And I do. Cold fingers awkwardly typing on unforgiving keyboards. Cold feet tucked in to siphon body warmth. It’s not comfortable. And it’s not inviting.
But so far, I’ve collected enough various cold-weather memories that needing a sweater and a down comforter is no longer exasperating. It can be kinda nice.
Before my brother and I had even hit double-digit ages, my parents were packing blankets in the backseat of our aged, pale blue Honda so he and I could be comfortable during the drives to Big Bear. My mom doesn’t even like the snow. She stayed inside the miserable, damp skiiers’ cafeteria all day, dutifully waiting for us to get tired of zipping down blindingly white mountains before cleaning us off and repacking the car for the drive home.
In high school, I had one relationship that lasted a year. Or almost a year, I can’t remember. There was a day that students didn’t have to show up for the first two hours or so in the morning. We met for breakfast at a local brunch place and slid into the squeaky, vinyl booths hand-in-hand. Thick slices of french toast coated with gleaming maple syrup. Orange juice that was too sweet. We lasted a full range of seasons together, yet it’s only when it’s cold do I think back on it. Its amateur nature unforgettable.
Years after I fell in love for the first time. I moved out to the desert to be with him, needing nothing except the spinning of the earth and its wide, flat expanse. Desert winter is something else. It’s as if the volume gets gradually turned low and everything goes sleepy. We had just finished eating at some cheap diner that served insurmountably large portions. Climbing the metal and stone staircase back up to our apartment, I pulled my hair into my sweater to protect my ears from the quiet cold. I listened to the quiet steps behind mine.
Predictably, years after, I experienced my first heartbreak. After spending months successfully eluding sobriety at my parents’ house, I bought a plane ticket for a small island across the Pacific to escape the rest. My first winter in Taiwan was colder and rainier than my second. At night, feeling small and empty in an apartment that lacked any reasonable insulation, I’d grab my umbrella and gingerly walk down the austere cement stairs, press out the clangy metal door, shuffle down the moist asphalt alley to the neighborhood tangyuan stand. Sweet black sesame mochi in steaming hot peanut broth. Flimsy plastic spoons. Tired, wobbly, fold-up tables. Gudan hai xinfu.
It went from creepy to funny to totally okay. Internet stalking reminds me of being labeled “nerd” years back. What was once so not cool now has everybody claiming, and to be honest I kind of like it.
It doesn’t bug me the same way as when people proclaim themselves nerds. I found that to be obnoxious.
But this internet stalking thing, hey, I can get behind it. Before moving into the house I live now, I looked up all potential housemates on google and facebook. Open profiles are simultaneously free game and jackpots! Google even picked up a few pre-facebook era pages like friendster and I was able to read my way toward a first impression.
Obviously, evaluating a person based on their interweb presence is not completely accurate. But like a job interview, it can give a little insight as to the type of person you’re searching. Friends’ and acquaintances’ wall messages act as reference letters. Interests and hobbies, like cover letters. Status updates, like mission statements. Photos? Well, we all judge a person’s looks to some degree.
Naturally, a majority of us claiming “internet stalking” aren’t truly internet stalkers (…uh, right?). Like claiming “nerd,” we do it because it’s no longer a fringe activity. It’s funny, self-deprecating, and totally socially accepted. Out of those three, the third is what brings us around to admission.
Soberingly enough, there comes a day when we’re forced to take responsibility for our own actions. By law, that’s when we turn 18. By internet dictum, that’s the day we create our profiles. No longer valid are complaints about creepiness when someone clicks through your personal vacation photos. Why upload them if not to show the world?
Guaranteed your boss is on facebook. Your mom has seen your profile. Your nieces and nephews know you’re a lush. But on the plus side, you now have way more friends than you did before you registered.
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