“I think they have balsamic dressing packets like that in the food court.” 

I laughed. “How does that help me now, Ma’am?” said my id. My superego suggested I keep quiet and won by a hair. The next security gentleman was not so nice. Let’s call him Marv. “Is this your bag, ma’am?”

“Yes.” I would have to clean up my backpack when he was done going through my suitcase. I took my laptop out and my shoes off. What else did they want?

“I need to see if you have food items.”

“Oh I don’t think I do. Oh wait I have peanuts.”

Marv sputtered air through his lips as if to say: “Unbelievable.”

I said: “Pardon?”

Marv said: “You said there were no food items and now you tell me there are peanuts. I apologize but you say one thing and then you say another.” 

My id was quick to provide two options: “Life is hard” or “Is someone making you do this job?”

My superego suggested silence. I accepted. And was that an apology wedged in there somewhere? It was like the balsamic vinaigrette container: useless.

I retreated to the bathroom and what followed was the patient practice of wiping off all of my cosmetics inside the bag that absorbed the dressing. That is my Revlon perfume roller stick, eyebrow brush, eyebrow paint, purple eyeliner, lip brush, Sugarplum Fairy Wet N’ Wild lipstick, Mauve lipstick I bought in Panajachel, color-changing flower lipgloss (gift from Eunice), mascara and hand-sanitizer. Why do I remember everything? Because I had to wipe off each item individually. And I thought I was a minimalist.

I’ve sworn to myself that having children is too much bother but as I wipe this emulsion that I so carefully concocted and tightly sealed in my repurposed plastic container and now resembled the contents of a diaper, I wondered if I was more trouble than a toddler. They would never pack salad dressing and bring it to the airport. Maybe my decisions need a diaper, too.

While I unpacked each layer of my Amazon Basics backpack (a birthday gift for hiking from my sister), there was ample time to unpack all my thoughts, wipe them all down, determine whether or not to dispose of them and return the remaining to their resting places in my brain until something else in my bag explodes.

I also had time to look in the mirror and decide: “Hey, I like how my hair looks today” among the other thoughts traipsing through.

A woman said: “Oops did you have a spill?” I responded: “You know these small airports get so uptight about food in your bag but in big airports they never notice.” What did this have to do with my balsamic vinegar exploding? Nothing at all. She said: “Well have a safe trip.”

As I continued to rinse and pad down all of my things, I got more frustrated: my journal had been balsamicked. And my library book. And the corner of another library book. It could have spilled on things I could wash like the million other things in my bag. And yet, the spill steered clear of my electronics and that would have been much more dire. I thought about how I lived in a pueblo of people who did not know what the inside of an airport looked like, much less the inside of a plane. And here I was, inconvenienced from travel snafus, and annoyed. I thought about how excited, nervous, maybe even scared my host sister would be to be less than 20 minutes from her first flight ever. And I was grumbling to myself as I cleaned up a culinary crime scene in the airport bathroom.

Here I was priding myself on being a low-key, efficient, minimalist traveler who refuses to check bags and knows how to get through security in a jiffy but when my salad dressing exploded, all of that changed and Marv had sentiments about my peanuts. And I would probably have to buy this balsamic scented library book now.

The night before, I found the feeling very odd: packing to fly out of a place I hardly know. I’ve never even seen the Tucson Airport. And somehow traveling from a place via airplane makes the place feel like an anchor in my life. But Tucson doesn’t feel like an anchor. Tucson doesn’t even have water to drop an anchor in. The result was a bit of anxiety which surprised me. I don’t get anxious about traveling. “I am so used to traveling that I hardly even notice it” I tell myself. But I find that something scary is catching up to me and traveling is harder than it used to be because guess what, I’m getting older. No not like crotchety old, but perhaps the kind of older where I feel annoyed when I have to pack. Or anxious I won’t bring the right things. Normally I LOVE PACKING. I pack days in advance and I pride myself on packing not too much or too little BUT just what I need.

However, last night, I felt the pena of having to decide what to bring to two places I love: Seattle and Ketchikan. And I thought about what a weird feeling that is, to not like packing… to be frazzled at the thought of leaving a place. But then again, it wouldn’t be as weird if Tucson was like a home to me and not a strange place to land during this bizarre transition from Peace Corps to The Next Thing. I’ve passed a lot of life by wondering about The Next Thing. Can you relate?

And as I continue to waste paper towels as I go back for balsamic revisions, I wonder about things like my future in partnership and if I’ll get worn down by performing all of these tasks alone: travel, grocery store errands, asking for rides to the airport, packing, making decisions. Existing. And then I remember that I am on an EFFING ADVENTURE. And that FLYING PLACES is a luxury. I bought a Southwest credit card and booked a flight using my sign-up bonus points.

I called my host family on Saturday and I felt genuinely joyous deep down in my heart to hear their voices. I wish I could be sitting in that kitchen right now, listening to the stupid roosters or Abuelita’s buoyant laugh and cursing the bombas. And eating the same potatoes and beans with the same hot sauce. I get to go to ALASKA and many people in the US don’t even know what Alaska is like. I’ve had all these stunning experiences! Who cares about this stupid bag!

Southwest Airlines is its own travel experience. You stand in line with numbers based on how early you checked-in and then you don’t have assigned seats and it’s all just confusing if you’ve never done it before… I asked a woman who had an open seat next to her (with a bag set on it) “Ma’am is this seat open?” She looked at me, very put-out, and huffed: ”Well she has two seats open why don’t you ask her?” and pointed across the aisle. Out of deference for her age and in the name of flexibility I asked the woman with the two seats: “Are these seats taken?” And she said: “yes they are” and I continued down the aisle as quickly as possible. I came to an open aisle seat and saw that the man in the middle seat was very large. I could see that if I took that aisle seat we would be touching each other. So I kept walking and lambasted myself for caring about something so stupid and wondered if I was a horrible person.

Why do we care so much about personal space in a society where we are isolated from people? To the point where I would argue that it is very detrimental to our mental health as functioning individuals? I thought about how people practically crawl on top of each other in camionetas and no one is bothered. But here you can’t even feel someone else’s body without being uncomfortable, it seems.

I sat in an emergency exit row, not ungrateful for the extra leg room. After the first flight I noticed that I got antsy in the bathroom to wait for a stall to open up. And I remembered how long the line would be in Guatemala and how no one would seem rushed, simply patient. Somehow this didn’t help me because everyone around me was huffing and puffing over the line, too. I really miss a culture of patience. I miss being the antsiest person in the room. I miss taking time. Everyone is in a hurry here, and to get to what? I had a connecting flight but I had plenty of time. We learn in this culture, from a young age, that waiting is inherently wrong. That making someone wait is rude, bad service: unacceptable. Because we think our time is so gosh-darn valuable and, you know why?, because WE think we are so gosh-darn valuable. Really we just want to get home to our devices and sit behind lit-up screens swiping at things.

I miss Guatemala. I miss it and still I counted the months I was there since the very beginning. It was challenging, it was hard. And now I can’t put a price on how it’s changed my outlook. If for no other reason, it’s exposed all the things I do simply because of the influence of my culture. It really separates me from myself and my culture. I used to think I loved my hair long and now I think of growing my hair long and I think “fuck the patriarchy.” Honestly it’s exhausting. And I wouldn’t trade any of it.

But it will take a long time before I make peace with my culture again, or decide to simply leave it. I don’t have to stay here. But wherever I go it’s not going to be easier. I know that now. It will probably be simpler, but it won’t be easier.

And then I remember how magical it is to be way up high in an airplane, and land in one piece. And there is magic everywhere, you just have to look. And don’t take balsamic vinaigrette with you.