A Young Girl's Dream

I can imagine myself sitting in the airport terminal freaking out right before my plane is about to board. My hands begin to shake and the ticket I am gripping tightly wrinkles because of the build up of sweat on my palms. People walk by not even noticing my pale façade or erratic breathing. I have probably been sitting here for hours waiting for the announcement telling me to board—I have a tendency to show up very early when doing something for the first time. When I was younger, I would stand at the top of the stairs and beg my mother to drive me to my volleyball tryouts an hour early. When I arrived I would be too nervous to get out of the car; I usually spent fifteen minutes trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t be there. I can imagine that is how I would be now: too scared to leave my comfortable seat on the ground for one in the sky.

From my position on a bench in the middle of the airport, I will watch women in Banana Republic dresses and $800 Jimmy Choo shoes walking by and drool over every beautiful stitch of their clothes and the perfection of their patent leather pumps. Men will arrogantly strut by wearing tailored Armani suits with their Blackberries pressed against their ears, yelling at someone on the other line. Their expressions are ones of impatience, as if they have no time to listen to other people’s worries, and if something doesn’t go as planned their tempers would explode into a million little pieces. Then there are those dressed in sweatpants and sweatshirts bending over to unlace their running sneakers so they can go through security; they are not there to make a fashion statement but to get where they need to go with as little hassle as possible. Mothers will be hustling their children into the proper line while scolding one for acting inappropriately. But no one will notice the girl who has never flown before; who is shaking at the thought of even getting on the plane.

I will lift my head towards the speaker when they call for my plane to board—the butterflies in my stomach will take flight, leaving me feeling weak and nauseous. I will somehow find the courage to walk to the Jetway. Handing the woman my ticket, I enter the enclosed bridge that smells of day old air and wet shoes. People walk in front and behind me with confident strides; they don’t seem to be silently screaming for the need to turn back as I am. My feet move one in front of the other until I finally reach my seat via first class. I walk past the people I had watched in the airport with their Louis Vuitton bags and brown leather Kenneth Cole slip-on loafers, feeling my cheeks turn red knowing I will never be able to afford flying first class. I can imagine it smells like a mixture of pretzels, peanuts, and body odor. I have a perverted sense of how planes smell because my close friend hates the smell of pretzels and peanuts and uses words like “rank” and “disgusting” to describe the pungent smell of planes.

It is surprising to many that I haven’t been remotely close to a plane or that I hadn’t handed in the passport application that I had filled out for two years until two days ago. I had it pinned on my bulletin board at home—I would stare at it for a few minutes every day trying to get myself to remember to bring it with me when I ran errands. But I never did, and I continued to stare at the yellow piece of paper tacked to my wall. Finally, the other day, my stepfather asked my mother if I had handed in the application. “Oh my god,” my mother said in her normal frantic fashion. “Lenn, I don’t think she did.” Next thing I knew she was gripping me by the arm and interrogating me on the status of the form. Without me answering she grabbed the phone to call the post office to see if they could fit me in for a last minute appointment. “Hello, my name is Beth Monteleone,” she said as if her name held some high authority in my town, or that she could get some discount for having the last name of “Monteleone” or the first name of “Beth”. “It’s kind of an emergency. You see we’re going to Michigan in December, and it would be fine but we are going through Canada to get there.” A lot of babbling and “okaying” went on until she finally hung up. “You have an appointment for tomorrow morning,” she said. “This is going to cost a lot, but it will be worth it.”

I just smiled at her. Some part of me was really excited to finally have this bureaucratic process out of the way, but the other was wondering why we couldn’t just go through Pennsylvania on our trip. The dream of traveling was so real for me yet I had begun to be scared of ever leaving home—of leaving the security I felt being where I was. Oh shit, I thought. I’m one step closer to being on the plane. One step closer to turbulence, and malaria, and being mugged by some European pickpocket.

Even before I handed in the form I could see myself packing my bags and struggling over what to put in my suitcase for the numerous trips I imagine myself taking: a goose-down coat and boots to go hiking in the Alps; a bathing suit to go swimming in the Mediterranean; an umbrella for the rainy United Kingdom; or I could pack a map of Okinawa and paper and pens to make protest signs.

I have wanted to travel since I was little. I used to close my eyes and spin the globe in my brother’s room, and, placing my finger on a random city, I would imagine what it would be like to go there. If I could major in packing my bags and falling in love with foreign lands I would. When I came to Ithaca I had plans to spend a semester abroad, but my ambitions got the best of me—I took on three majors and buried myself under a mountain of work. I am a politics major because I could naively see myself making the world a better place. I am a history major because I have an obsession with how things were and how they affect the way we act now—how we as people have politically and culturally evolved over the centuries. And I am a writing major because I want to write about my adventures in distant lands.

I can see myself writing about slowly hiking up Mount Kilimanjaro, like my roommate did, and the feeling of altitude sickness as it slowly overcomes my body. I will help AIDs victims in central Africa and find homes for Sudanese refugees in Egypt. I will write a diary of my time in Rome. Travelling to the Colosseum and picturing myself watching gladiators fight to the death:

Today I traveled to the Colosseum. I stood outside the beautiful stone structure and wondered what it would be like to stand in front of it a thousand years ago. Would I travel by foot in my fashionable stolla or by cisiarius, in which my servants would drive, or would I be a poor peasant who wouldn’t have time to go and watch the gladiators fight?

I must have stood outside it for hours imagining myself as an ancient Roman. But I didn’t quite grasp the true impact of the crumbling structure until I took my first step inside the building and glimpsed what is left of the once towering arena...

I won’t stop with the Colosseum, I will travel to Great Britain and sit in on a House of Commons session and watch them argue with each other—enjoying the blatant display of free speech and the parliamentary system. I will watch a polo match with a wide brimmed hat to shield my fair skin from the sun—like the hat Julia Roberts wore in Pretty Woman.

I will most likely buy myself a new camera before I leave on my adventure; one of those sleek black cameras that reporters carry around. I would take pictures of everything just to prove to myself later in life that I was there—that I stood before the pyramids and inhaled the smell of the sands in Egypt, dipped my feet in the Tigris-Euphrates river on a hot day, slowly sipped coffee in front of the Eiffel tower while watching the sun set. I will walk the Great Wall of China and imagine what it felt like to be the guard in the watchtower who realized the Xiongnu army was advancing. Or I might wonder how many people have taken these steps before me. If I find the courage, I will peer over the side of the wall only to feel my heart jump to my throat at the magnitude of its height.

When I’m done visiting all these places and find my way back home, I will probably dream of other countries to visit. My insatiable appetite for mysterious lands keeps my imagination wandering from one era to another. In my head I have been a queen, a peasant, the first woman president, a nurse during the American Revolution, and a fighter pilot in the air force. But for now I will sit behind a desk 3,000 miles away from my dreams and continue to imagine myself packing and repacking my suitcase, always ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

~~~

Our conversation starts off the same way, “When I have a lot of money, I am going to…”

“…have a big fountain in the middle of a garden where I can sit to write and read.” This was my latest prophetic statement.

“Who is going to take care of it? Are you going to weed it?” She asked, being the lone realist in my delusionally optimistic world.

“Nope. Someone is going to do that for me,” I said smiling down at her.

“Keep dreaming, honey. It’s free,” my mother said to me in the middle of Adams Fairacre Farms in upstate New York. We were hunting for gourds for a centerpiece for her Thanksgiving table. We had stopped for a few seconds to look at some plants when I spotted an enormous pot with water cascading down its ceramic blue sides into a large bowl underneath. The sound the water made as it hit the ceramic surface mesmerized me—I could have sat there for hours inhaling the smell of the flowers surrounding me.

As I write this I imagine myself owning a quaint bookstore in San Diego, or Hilton Head Island, or along the waterfront in Savannah—somewhere warm where I don’t have to wear a parka for below zero temperatures during the winter. Or maybe I could marry a movie star/singer/philanthropist-type guy—that’s easy, isn’t it?

I always imagine myself with money; money that I made myself. Before I have even written the first line, I imagine my stories becoming books and those books becoming an academy-award winning movie. I have always been a dreamer.

The other day I was sitting on my couch talking to my mother about perhaps going to graduate school for history. “I would really like to go to grad-school for Greek and Roman history instead of American.” I said this to her right after watching Troy the night before. “But you need to know Greek and Latin—I don’t know either. I guess I could just learn.” Wouldn’t it be cool if I could read things in Latin or go to Greece and speak to the people there in their native language? I thought to myself.

“Why don’t you focus on what you’re going to do today? Take life a day at a time,” my mother said to me.
“Okay, well I am going to go take a shower and then tomorrow I am going to learn Greek.” She rolled her eyes at me and laughed as I walked out of the room. I spent the next few hours figuring out how I could rearrange my schedule so that I could take Latin 101 in the fall.

On a normal day my mind races in a million directions—I have so many interests that I tend to start one project only to start another one ten minutes later, then ten minutes after that finish one that I started months ago. I love writing stories but I have yet to finish one; usually, I never get past twenty pages.

But it’s all a dream. When I read the first part of this essay to my mother, she rolled her eyes. “You’re my procrastinating dreamer,” she said to me as she cleaned the green island in our kitchen. Did she think my dreams were funny? Did she think they were unreachable?

This isn’t the first time that I proposed my future plans to travel and she laughed. About a year ago I decided that I wanted to do a semester at sea. I picked up the phone eager to tell my mother what I had discovered and how perfect this would be for me—I would spend ninety days at sea traveling to numerous countries, delving into different cultures while learning in a hands-on environment. I was thrilled—this was absolutely perfect and there was no way my mother could deny me this one request. To be truthful I hadn’t been denied much in my life. But the moment I heard the laughter on the other end of the line, my cheeks flushed with anger. How dare she deny me this chance; I was about to break free from the confines I had placed on myself. I was ready to hand in my passport and board a ship for northern Africa.

Not only was my mother laughing, but my grandmother had also joined in. She had put me on speakerphone so that she could drive the car while listening to what I had to say. If my mother had denied me, I thought that I had my grandmother to convince her otherwise—how wrong I was. My mother said there was no way that I could go to countries that were disease ridden. I am sure that she knew that vaccines were a necessity for traveling to third-world countries. My aunt shook her head when I told her. “What about pirates?” She asked as she reclined in her brown leather chair in the basement of her house. She was being serious, but the moment she said pirates I thought of the handsome ones in all the romance novels I read, and I burst out laughing.

If that wasn’t reason enough, the money issue was thrown in my face. If I want to do anything that involved money and traveling I would have to go through my grandmother to get there. She holds the key to my financial aid—if I wanted to go anywhere I was going to have to convince the matriarch of my family to allow it, or at least allow me the financial means to go.

After Thanksgiving dinner I got up and went to check on my dogs in the other room. Leaning against the doorframe I could hear my aunt telling my relatives about how I would like to travel one day. “I don’t know how she thinks she is going to afford this—Semester at Sea, England, and grad-school. I could barely manage to scrape up twenty-five dollars to give her for her trip this weekend,” she scoffed.

“I know,” my mother joined in. “She told me the other day she wanted to start saving up for a car. She needs to set priorities.”

When I walked down the hall they fell silent—like a bunch of children being caught doing something naughty. Car? Hell, I don’t even have my license. My need to travel is overwhelming yet I am nineteen and without a license—I can’t even travel outside my driveway without a family member at the wheel.

It’s my own fault, I know. When I was learning how to drive, I would drive to the end of my driveway then turn to my mother and ask her to take over—the sight of the paved road in front of me made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t swallow the idea that by being behind the wheel I was not only jeopardizing my life but the lives of others on the road. This fear leads me to drive at an average speed of thirty. I hunch over the wheel, determined to do everything right. I will not cause an accident. I will not cause an accident, I would repeatedly think to myself. Oh shit, I’m going to cause an accident.

At one point I was driving with my brother and stopped twenty feet before a stop sign because there was a kid standing at the corner. I didn’t want the kid to see my shotty breaking abilities; I stopped for three seconds then took off, blowing past the sign and the kid. My brother squealed with laughter—squealed like a hyena. He was curled up in a ball in his seat shaking with mirth. I didn’t find this funny but apparently he did. When we got home he bolted out of the car and into the house to inform my family that I am a horrible driver.

No matter how many times I get angry with my family I realize that I am the true culprit in my quest to point a finger at the person who has caused me the pain of not being able to touch something I have been craving for years. This dream I have coveted has become an obsession, and I have managed to overlook the things that could get me to the places I want to go. I had over looked the necessity for a passport or my driver’s license.

But what if, when I get there, what I have been dreaming about is better then what is actually in front of me? What if the sands of Egypt are better left in pictures than stuck in the bottom of my socks? What if rainy London is better across the pond than being wet and cold running down Oxford Street when I forget my umbrella? What if Hyde Park isn’t much better than the Hyde Park I grew up in, in New York?

~~~

Now I can, after all the time I have spent contemplating traveling, imagine myself getting off the plane tired and weary and ready to go home. My back hurts from sitting up straight for hours on end—the person seated behind me kept pressing his knees into the back of my seat and the child next to me wouldn’t stop crying. At this point, all I want is a hot cup of tea and my own bed. I head towards the escalator with my winter jacket draped over my arm and my luggage trailing behind me. More than once on the way my suitcase tips to one side, jerking my hand.

I have to tug my loose fitting jeans up multiple times, for if I don’t I will trip over the hem. My hair is haphazardly pulled back into a messy bun—small stray hairs stick out around my face. I applied no make-up this morning because I care not of my appearance; I would much rather be comfortable during the long flight than be stuck in three inch heels and a dress that clings a little too tightly. It’s much easier to roll out of a hotel bed and throw on a pair of faded denim jeans and a sweatshirt with the name of my brother’s college on it—I stole it from him when we were younger and I love it too much to give it back. My tennis shoes are the most comfortable, easy to slip on and off. Although, at this point I would much rather be wrapped in a matching flannel pajama set curled up on my couch. I can almost imagine the smell of my stepfather’s cooking wafting through the air beckoning me home as I head deeper into the crowd.

I try my best to weave in and out of the mass of people before me. I apologize to those I bump into and groan at those who don’t move out of my way. Reaching the top of the escalator I peer over the crowd searching for those who are waiting for me. I hope they recognize me, I thought. I know I look different; my skin is tanned compared to the pale, nearly translucent shade it was before I had left. It has been months since I have looked upon their smiling faces. My mother’s face probably looks exactly the same; her eyes a deep green and her face lineless even for her age. My grandmother is probably wearing a white blouse with a pair of pale blue cut-off denim pants and a tissue in her “lady pockets”—unbeknownst to many, she has a quirky habit of sticking a tissue in between her breasts for those times when she sneezes.

Holding on to the black railing next to me, I press up on my toes to see a group of people frantically waving at me. I see my mother, stepfather, grandmother, and aunt huddled next to each other. My aunt holds up a sign with a name on it jokingly—she points at it and laughs. It’s not that funny, but I laugh anyway. Tears stream down my face as I feel the urge to sprint the rest of the way down the moving stairs to my family waiting below. I am happy to finally be home and to see the people who care about me the most.

I notice my mother first. She is wearing the same jeans she wears all the time—the pair that fit the best and were the most comfortable for time spent waiting for my plane to land. They are slightly faded around the seams yet still hold the dark dye that was present when she originally purchased them. She also wears a purple tunic with a dark sweater over it. The shirt fits loose over her plump figure, hiding, to her, what is the most embarrassing part of her body: her stomach. Her spiky red hair—a result of a hair-dying routine—gives her a youthful appearance. Although the short cropped hair and bright color is an act of rebellion, each strand is perfectly placed, displaying her knack for materialistic perfection.

When I reach the bottom of the escalator I charge forward, sprinting towards my mother’s open arms. I imagine that I drop everything in my hands when I am an inch away from her. When her arms encircle my body I can feel her love surround me. She is not a strong woman nor is she able hold me tightly, yet her emotional strength could move mountains if needed. I can feel emotions boiling over in the hug and see the tears that start to spill over and cascade down her cheeks. It has only been three months since I saw her last but she hugs me as if it has been years. She pulls back and holds me at an arms length, assessing me with a motherly gaze as she combs her fingers through my hair.

Everyone gets a hug. I can’t count how many kisses I receive at that moment. I spot my cousin standing behind them; we have been best friends since the day she was born. I scream and push past my mother and grandmother to get at her. She envelops me in a hug that cracks most of my back. “I can’t believe you came,” I say, happy to see her.

“So, how was it?” The question comes from my stepfather as he grabs my coat and suitcase off the floor and starts heading towards the exit of the airport.

“Great,” I exclaim, smiling. I put my arm around my mother’s waist as we walk away. “I will tell you all about it later. All I want to do right now is go home.”