travel stories – Marilyn R. Gardner

Airports – Spaces Between Goodbye & Hello

Published on February 1, 2018May 6, 2019 by Marilyn3 Comments

I love airports. Whether they are small regional airports in the middle of Pakistan or large, metropolitan mega centers of the world – I love them.

I find that airports are contemplative places. They provide a place of quiet watching in the middle of chaos; they allow me to stare out at nothing in particular without interruption; they offer me cinnamon buns, with gorgeous thick icing and gooey middles.

Today I’m sitting at JFK airport in the Jet Blue terminal. It’s a relatively quiet Thursday morning with few family travelers. As I was settling in for a long layover, I suddenly heard my name paged over the loudspeaker. Because I am who I am, in 30 seconds I had gone through a list of catastrophes. By the end of the list, most of the people I love more than life itself had died.

And then I mentally kicked myself and told myself that God doesn’t give us grace for our imagined tragedies. It’s amazing how quickly the brain can go from slow contemplation to imagination induced funerals to relief. I headed to the Jet Blue “Just Ask” spot, and I “just asked” why they had paged me. It was my license. It must have slipped out as I was walking between gates.

The kindness of strangers always amazes me in airports. Just a small incident of a misplaced license is an example — the anonymous person who found the license and turned it in; the person who paged me; and then the person who met me halfway between gates just to make it easier.

I see other acts of kindness – the person who gave up their seat for an older woman who looked like she needed rest; employees who work day in and day out seeing anonymous people and still smile when they serve you; the mother/daughter duo who stop to help a young mom struggling with a toddler and a baby.

Airports are liminal spaces, spaces between hello and goodbye. They are spaces where little is required and much is anticipated. Airports are bridges between places and the people who travel through them are the bridge-builders. Airports are also non-places and though I love them, most people don’t.

The Terminal, a 2004 Spielberg film, tells the story of an Eastern European man trapped in the same airport where I now sit. He is caught between worlds in “diplomatic limbo” as his fictitious country experiences a coup rendering his visa and passport useless. The country he comes from no longer exists, so he is not allowed to set foot on U.S soil. Instead, he makes his home in the international departure lounge.

The main character (Victor Navorski played by Tom Hanks) is sympathetic and pure. He doesn’t lie or try to take advantage of the situation, instead he gets to know the people in the airport as human beings. He intervenes in what could have been a tragedy and he drives the customs and immigration official, Dixon played by Stanley Tucci, crazy.

I love this film. I love the pace. I love the characters. But most of all, I love the story. It’s a story of people stuck in the space between who end up opening up to each other and becoming friends.

My friend, Mariuca, says that my life is like The Terminal. I laugh when she says it, because in recent months I’ve done little traveling, but I’m also the only person I know who wouldn’t mind if my life was The Terminal. The idea of befriending airport employees and driving immigration officials crazy sounds incredibly appealing.

But I don’t live in the terminal. I live in real life where this morning I said goodbye to my husband and in a bit I will say hello to my mom. And that’s the thing that every person in this airport has in common, no matter their age or nationality; no matter if they are airport employees or travelers; no matter what their occupations. Every single person is between goodbye and hello. Every single person left wherever they left this morning saying goodbye. It could have been a painful, poignant, or relieved goodbye and it will end with a painful, poignant, or a relieved – perhaps ecstatic – hello.

We’re fellow life-travelers between goodbye and hello. Some of us know to make the moments count, others haven’t seen enough of life to know that moments matter.

Living between worlds in the liminal space of an airport may not be what many would enjoy, but I sit in happy contemplation.

I am content in the terminal, content between goodbye and hello.

Guest Post – Witnesses to Our Lives

Published on July 25, 2013 by Marilyn6 Comments

Lately I’ve been missing stories. Somehow my world has been too narrow, too tired, my ears too closed. It’s as though my eyesight needs healing and my ears need cleaning, for there are stories all around me.

Over a year and a half ago I posted on The Power of the Narrative. In that post I said this:

“I think that the power of the narrative, the story, needs to be revived in our country. We hang ourselves on sound bites and 140 characters and have lost the ability to concentrate on stories that are longer than a 500 word blog post. How often can the tweet of 140 characters make you feel and cry, rejoice and laugh, rage and empathize. Stories do. Narratives of life lived and our response to how it was lived. There is a power in stories – a power in the telling, and a power through the listening.”

The responses on that post were wonderful. They gave witness to the impact stories had on readers and why they were important.

It is one of those comments that I am posting today – a powerful reminder of why we need stories.

It’s a reminder I need today.

Join Pari Ali – a long time reader of Communicating Across Boundaries in “Witnesses to Our Lives”

There is always a story. Each life has many short stories, a few plays, innumerable anecdotes and at least one full length novel. People always tell me their stories, even in the rest room. Maybe that is my big story. I have this face that invites confidences, a face that invites stories.

Some I will not forget – they are so unexpected. There I was in the restroom of one of Kuwait’s malls, Marina Mall and the attendant was a Sri Lankan woman. As I washed and dried my hands and brushed my hair, she told me about herself, how she was from a well to do family but had married a poor man of another religion against the wishes of her family and they had broken all relations with her. This man had later deserted her and here she was– forced by her circumstances to make her living cleaning out the toilets.

When I was admitted to the fever hospital for malaria, there was a lady in the next bed who worked as a maid for a Kuwaiti woman. She had just returned from India like me and also contracted malaria. She spoke Telegu and Arabic, my Arabic was not good and Telegu non-existent but that did not hinder her telling of her life story.

She had married the man she loved only to lose him three months later to a snake bite. A young widow, she then discovered she was pregnant. After delivering her son she had to leave her infant and come to Kuwait to earn a living. She began working for a Kuwaiti family but soon after the husband divorced his wife who also had a small baby. The two women became close and 11 years later she was still working for the same employer who took great care of her.

One day I was going home in an auto, it was raining very heavily, I saw a woman standing in the rain fully drenched waiting for a bus, I wondered what was her story? Rich or poor? Educated or illiterate? Town bred or country-bred? Each one of us has a story. All that is needed for them to come out is some compassion and interest.

Why do we tell our stories? I think because we need witnesses to our lives or perhaps a desire to leave our mark that says we were here, came, we felt, we suffered, we enjoyed, we loved, we gave, we received, but most of all we lived and in all that we did and all those we met we left our mark.

What about you? What are your stories? Do you believe we need witnesses to our lives?

About the author: Pari Ali is a poet, a writer, and a photographer. She now lives in Kuwait with her husband and two daughters.

Stories of Lost Luggage

Published on May 9, 2013November 5, 2013 by Marilyn29 Comments

Okay – let’s hear them! The stories of lost luggage and distraught travelers.

After years of traveling with a clean record of luggage arrival, the spell ended when my boyfriend (now husband) and I went to Pakistan by way of Cairo to get engaged.

We had planned the trip for weeks. While I didn’t know we were getting engaged, I knew for sure we were serious and my parents had to meet him. Who was this “Cliff” that they heard about through long letters punctuated with a thousand exclamation marks?

So we planned. And we purchased. And we packed.

We headed out about ten days before Christmas leaving bitter Chicago weather and traveling to Pakistan with a 3 day stop in Cairo planned. Our suitcases were full of Christmas presents. We had the Little House on the Prairie series of books for our Cairo friends; packets, jars, and bags of food that they could not get in either Pakistan or Cairo – we even carried a fake Christmas tree in a duffel bag.

We arrived in Cairo and our luggage did not. It was a sad day.

For 3 days we talked about what they ‘would have’ received and how exciting it ‘would have’ been. The worst thing for me personally was that I had no clothes. I was a woman who was in love, soon to be engaged, and insecure in a place I didn’t know. If I had lost my baggage in Karachi – no problem! I knew how to shop, I was in control – I knew the ways. But this was Cairo – my first visit to Cairo. I borrowed clothes from a woman with a completely different figure type and to this day the pictures taken on that trip were the most uncomplimentary pictures that I’ve ever had taken in my life. I look as awkward as I remember feeling.

No matter, for we arrived in Pakistan 3 days later and I was home! Greeted by my parents, introducing Cliff to both parents and Pakistan for the first time, collecting money from PIA (Pakistan International Airline) so I could shop in my favorite bazaars in Karachi – pure magic.

One week later we received word that the luggage had indeed arrived in the Karachi airport, all but one piece. My boyfriend (turned fiancee one day after arrival who is now my husband) and my brother took a train ride to Karachi to pick up the luggage in time for Christmas – and that’s a blog post in itself, but not mine to tell. All except one piece. Six months later a duffel bag arrived on our door step – in it was a fake Christmas tree that had traveled the world and arrived at our Chicago apartment in the summer. M & M’s and other candy that had broken out of its packages was strewn through out the branches, giving it a particularly decorative look. The humor of the whole thing still has us telling the story.

So what’s your story of lost luggage?

Since I had so few takers on the giveaway announced on Saturday – here’s your chance to take part. Add your story to the comments and you will be put into the pool to receive a book! Take a look here for what that book might be~