Before I “get into it,” I want to affirm how great my family is, on so many levels, and I appreciate them perhaps more than ever because absence, time and tortillas make the heart grow fonder. Having said that, New York City and New York Logistics go together like long-suffering bowels and eggplant parmesan paninis. And even though I was away for 9 months, a human gestational period, I could not stuff my exasperation over the moving parts and mixed levels of preparation. And my parents are in their 60s now (well my mom turns 60 soon) so as they age, traveling changes, communication becomes more confusing for everyone and personalities emerge stronger (if that’s even possible between the five of us). Actually as we ALL age New York becomes more overwhelming, or maybe wisdom makes me realize that I can’t compete with that kind of pace without a good warm up. With that in mind, read below:

The first New York thing I ate was a eggplant parmesan panini.

My sweet papa met me at the airport and I remembered how small LaGuardia is. I essentially walked right off the plane and found my dad who’d made friends with a lady also greeting her son flying in from Guatemala. Naturally my dad thought they were best friends and pointed to this woman’s son and said: “This is my daughter, she lives in Guatemala too!” Even at 31 I was like.. “OK Dad…” Face to palm. But I was so happy to see my dad. He’s coming from a rooftop bar rehearsal dinner after party in Manhattan in his typical collared shirt, a ball cap and what appeared to be gym shorts with tennis shoes.. This is my dad. If I were to ask him about his attire he would say: “Everyone’s real casual.”

He pulled a green card from his wallet: “Here,” an unlimited 7-day subway ticket, light green with a black stripe, which he had already bought for me. I felt spoiled and a little embarrassed. “What would Guatemala think of me?!” Dichosa they would chide me, I’m sure. We caught up on the bus ride into town, but we didn’t talk that much. I just caught up with the feeling of being with my dad again when he traveled to the front of the bus to ask the bus driver twice where we were supposed to get off.

Eventually a mother and daughter duo graciously asked: “Where ya headed?” noting my dad’s paces back and forth to the front of the bus. The mother wore hijab and I wondered if my conservative, republican, Christian dad took note in light of the recent election and ensuing political hogwash. They ensured us of our stop and we transferred to the train to downtown Manhattan, my dad repeating: “…Not Train R that will take us the wrong direction. But we can take S or..” The details escape me because this is how my dad gets when he’s in charge of directions. Thank God I could not be held responsible for even the slightest navigation.

We stopped at a corner cafe to address my lack of dinner and we checked out with an energy bar and an eggplant panini. I hadn’t remembered that panini is Italian for ’bunch of cheese’. As my dad paid for my meal I felt the sting again. Dichosa. And as I sat in the taxi while my dad had an embarrassing exchange with the taxi driver, not sure of where exactly the storage lockers were and giving the taxi driver directions, I tried to distract myself with the panini which was so delicious and so rich compared to my usual tortillas, beans and eggs. My pre-volunteer self subsisted on bulk variety slices of cheese from the top drawer of my parents’ fridge, accompanied with hummus and wheat thins: diet of champions until you feel rounder than you did before. But that was my life pre-Alaska and pre-Guatemala. Now I’m mid-Guatemala and mid-New York for the weekend and quickly remembered the agony and ecstasy of mozzarella.

De repente everything got more logistical than I could handle: we had to find the other three members of my family in Times’ Square, get our bags from storage and get on the subway to Jersey going the right direction.

I was monitoring my own reaction to seeing my family, the first time in 9 months, knowing that they would be assessing how I was doing. But I was happy I made it, I was happy to be with them, and I was happy to be in New York. Even though I’m quite accustomed to calling the shots on my own, I found my place again quickly as one cog in the gears of a family of five in Times’ Square. I feel more in control of the elements in a second language on my own in Guatemala.

While the taxi driver and my dad got our bags as we sat in an emergency lane in Times’ Square, I attempted a full disappearance act into my panini. Once we arrived to the other three family members, we greeted each other as we disembarked the cab and began to lug our bags onto the subway and west to Jersey. My mom’s ankle is warped, my dad’s hearing well, doesn’t hear, and my brother-in-law is experiencing New York for the first time while I am still adjusting to the term brother-in-law. We had to add more money to our cards once we bajared the subway. That was another cosmic event: mixed opinions on whether or not we needed to re-up our unlimited weekly passes, some machines working and others not, trying to survive the prompts of the screens while staying out of the way with all of our luggage. My mom handed me her credit card to pay the additional $10. I’m so not a grown-up.

Had my Nana still been present, the prescription for logistics would have been entirely different. We would have been split and assigned to a wheelchair, cheetah-print pink luggage, spinning out between her dementia and our hurts-so-good love of this buzzing metropolis. Even without Nana, travel was stressful because we didn’t have to make exceptions for her health, only all the other elements of our humanity. Even without the stress of transporting Nana, I missed her too.

My mom must have packed a lifetime supply of elephant food in her tall, rolly suitcase. Has my Guatemalan host mom ever seen a rolly suitcase? What would they think of the New York subway? I’m picturing them in traje típico, following my lead as Clara repeats things in K’iche’ to her mother. And how would Abuelita manage on a subway? One slight shove to her small frame and she might topple like a jenga blocks. Or she’d magically pass through the underground network of New York City unscathed because she has that kind of magic.

And we made it between weakened smiles and luggagetopia to the other side: New Jersey. I’d never stepped foot in New Jersey. Nothing like ‘coming home’ and going somewhere new. And unlike New York City, the energy west of the Hudson River was calm, spread out, thin. It already felt more human than New York. The air was just as hot but it felt lighter, maybe because the heat of humanity was more dispersed per square inch. And we rolled our way to the VRBO, vacation rental by owner, arranged by my mother, throughout which we fumbled over the address, not sure exactly where “Zen Suites” was. Finding it was so not zen. My dad asking my mom: “Cindy, where is this place?” (“If I had been in charge, we would know..”)  and eventually the MEN go inside a hotel and ask for directions, “Where is Zen Suites.” Zen Suites is a name the VRBO owners affixed to it online, there will be no sign that says “Zen Suites.”

Eventually we entered “our home away from home,” relieved that the place is close to the hotel where everyone else is staying, and congratulating mom on the good find. I wasn’t paying for it so what could I say but thanks as I ambled through my culture shock? The A/C was off, that was an easy fix, but the lack of internet was a personal crisis. Everyone else picked their bedrooms and I was in mine, the living room, while it came to light that I came from a third world country, lugged my bags across an actual state border under a body of water, to find no internet. I wasn’t infuriated, I was indignant. “Parents: this is a problem that needs to be fixed IMMEDIATELY.” Flipping through the “informational booklet” and finding that none of the contraseñas worked. “Did the add say internet?” “Yes, it did.” It was not fixed, not at that moment or until we checked out of the place. My glorious country still has it’s glitches.

Eventually I stopped caring about internet except that I should specify one thing: I had a Guatemalan phone plan so I was not able to send or receive texts, log-on, my phone was essentially an expensive camera and alarm clock. So I needed wifi not because I needed to make my internet faster, it was that I couldn’t make a phone call or send a text without it. I did not want to be unplugged in my own country. But I was plugged in other ways, I had what could easily rival not of the most painful poops of my life. I am not sure what it is that I ate, one panini can’t pack that kind of power can it? But something sent me to the toilet seat to suffer.

I looked out over the city skyline. “New York, it’s so good to see you.” I think of my pueblo in Guatemala, the mountains my skyline with the soundtrack of relentless chicken bus horns and mounds of donkey poop on the street. I will never be Sarah Jessica Parker but I don’t love New York any less.

Where do we start? Should I estrenar K’iche’ greetings, flexing my comfort with glotal stops, ask about the status of the sicknesses in our extended family and who is getting treatment where and what we are waiting to hear, as we sit in the still hot strange apartment-gone-hotel in New Jersey as the AC putters? It feels like Christmas morning post-gifts, we’re all tired and we sit around all of our spoils fiddling over our latest gadgets. But there’s not much time to think because the pressure of meeting up with family is rising with every minute that we sit. Mom wants us to be connected, even though she doesn’t say this, but it’s expected because we came all this way to be with them. But I am more concerned that my phone is not connected.

We opt to sleep. Tomorrow is a new day. We will go see a matinee of Wicked, we will eat cheesecake at Junior’s, Chris will see New York City. We will wake up early and do it all.

I went to sleep on an IKEA pull-out mattress, hardly caring. I was the fifth wheel in my family because Nana was not there, but I didn’t care about that either (being the fifth wheel). I was just happy. I was happy to be with my family, in New York, breathing, lucky and comfortable. My life path always feeling more nebulous than that of my relatives, I just planned to look for what makes me happy: iced coffee and hugs, Broadway standby lines and slowly unpacking the pile of cards and some gifts friends had sent from near and far to my parents to bring to me.

I survived my first day back on US soil.