I am, most decidedly, back
July 5, 2015
As I walked to the waiting area for my morning flight, I glanced into the gate area where I first left for the Marshall Islands in 1990. Several memories flickered through my imagination. The tall Marshallese gentleman must have read some nervousness in my demeanor which prompted him to ask me if it was my first trip to Majuro. When I confirmed his guess, we got to chatting about my reason for the visit. He was very encouraging about my journey, which helped relax me as I faced one of my first international adventures.
I stopped off at a coffee place and as I detailed my order, the woman serving me said, ‘Don’t I know you?’ I had to ask how as, taken out of context, it was hard for me to place her. She asked about the youth program I was even then heading off to work with, noting she had briefly participated and remembered me from that. It was kind of lovely, in its own way, encountering someone with such a strong experienced memory that, even though only a brief encounter, it meant enough to be recalled in an airport coffee shop, of all places.
When I arrived at my current gate (now some 25 years later), a very different man approached me than my first gate experience. He recognized me from some storytelling event I performed and asked if and why I was headed to the islands. He noted it was his first time, and we got to chatting about why he was going and what he had to look forward to. For me that conversation included a movie montage in my mind, as 25 years of visiting the Marshall Islands played out, the many changes of place and people emphasized as I mentioned a few reasons to be excited about the coming journey for this gentleman.
We stood together in a line entering the gate area. Well, most of us were entering, as an airline employee was rigorously measuring bags and not letting people enter the waiting area whose bags were too big. They had to step out and repack. Another set of memories flooded in from my early journeys to Majuro. Long, slow lines of people checking into the flight with multiple, enormous boxes and bags that patient, but slightly tense airline clerks were trying to sort and tag. People arrived so very early because the process plodded on as people traded off boxes and bags, taping them up as others handed them presents or objects to give to relatives in the islands. I quickly learned to engage a porter who would shuttle me to the front of the line and help me avoid the chaotic process.
This jumped me to the memory of boarded the plane back in those early journeys when the overhead compartment on the plane was more like the shelf on a train. In fact, I couldn’t even put a bag up there. People around me carried bags in their laps. I remember a young man with a huge boom box that was tucked under his arm for the entire flight.
As my 2015 flight took off, I noticed a young passenger who had recently been a student of mine in a Hawaii school. Marshallese, I imagined she was traveling with family to visit relatives for the summer. When our flight landed, this 9 year old noticed me and shyly said, ‘I know you.’ As we deplaned, she told me she didn’t know too much about where she was going, only that it was to Ebeye. She pointed me out to her mother and brother, that kind of child pride of actually knowing another adult.
25 years later, who knew the memories and personal connections that would flow from making that initial, nerve-wracking trip to a set of tiny islands far from anything I had experienced to that moment. Now, like the 9 year old, I feel more like I am returning to a comfortable, home-like place, made especially clear when, upon arrival, my hosts and I fall easily back into friendly banter.
And while I write this last sentence in my small apartment, the electricity cuts out. Just in my apartment. And it’s late at night. And I have no phone. I am, most decidedly, back.