When I stepped off the plane in the Miami International airport, I felt as if I was treading on a brand new planet, or pulling my rolling-suitecase into a brand new era. Everything seemed so shiny, and colossal; the ceilings, the moving walkways, the effervescent, fluorescent lights, the doors that opened automatically. I felt like I was being swallowed by it all. My head throbbed, trying to appraise the diversity of the human beings that moved around me in swirling synergy.
At least in Nicaragua I knew who to speak Spanish to, here in this maze of eyes and hair, sound and bustle, suites and sweatpants, I had no idea who was what. I was muted and frozen. My eyes felt tired from all that they were seeing. I didn't know anyone’s context. All I could do was guess at stories and stereotype with imprecision.
It wasn't like the chaos of a Latin American street. No. That venue had ceased to baffle my sensory capabilities. On the contrary, the Latin American street was ordered rather clearly in my mind's eye, now. I knew there would always be under-fed dogs underfoot, swerving taxis to avoid, men riding motorcycles with machetes slung over their shoulders, bus drivers incessantly repeating their destinations "MANAGUA! MANAGUA! MANAGUA!" and the lady on the corner yelling "Maaaaangoooooo!!!" I knew where all of those dogs and sounds and people fit. They belonged there. I could count on them to be there and I didn't have to guess why they were there. They existed, in my mind’s map, as dependable and trustworthy realities.
Customs of the Miami airport was completely different. Everyone belonged there, and at the same time, no one did. We were all going somewhere or coming from somewhere else. It was a strange and hurried neutral site of limbo.
I resolved that I would feel comfortable once I was on the other side, once I was truly in America. Naively, I expected to feel immediately comfortable when I was finally able to read signs and hear public announcements in English, and if all else failed, I knew I’d feel at home when I finally could choose exactly what I wanted to eat at Panera.
This didn’t really happen though. As I picked through my salad before my flight to Boston, then sailed silently in a highbred through the cool New Hampshire night air on my way up I-93 North towards home, I felt an irreversible strangeness within myself. My ears probed the night, hungry for the obnoxiously loud diesel engines of Nicaraguan taxis. My nose inhaled the air, slapped by the sterility of it. Where was the subtle sting of the scent of trash fires?
It’s easy to come home and live in a house with carpet, breath fresh air, sleep under a blanket without sweating and not be woken up at 5:30 a.m. by roosters in the street and crows on my roof. I won’t pretend that, somehow, life in Nicaragua was more comfortable, but I certainly did get used to it.
I forgot about all the clothes that sit in my closet, here, and how to dress myself when I have two full drawers of pants and t-shirts to choose from.
I forgot how to sit still and make small talk during a manicure. I forgot that here, in this context, it makes sense to go with your girlfriends and pay $18 (enough for 3 meals – or more – in Nicaragua) to make your nails look shiny and colorful for a few days until you inevitably mess them up.
I guess what I really want to say is that life here is just as chaotic as life is in Nicaragua, and it definitely isn't any more logical. After all, who can really say that a sky-tram makes any more sense than a dude on a motorcycle carrying a machete? What the heck is a sky-tram anyways? Why should that robot lady who’s telling me what to do be any more comforting than the Nicaraguan bus drivers who get very close to my face and yell “MANAGUA CHICA?!”
If you live somewhere long enough, the order of things there, in that particular place, make the most sense. You become part of the context, and comfort is really nothing more than understanding your place in any given context.
In Nicaragua, I was the girl who gave the Mango Lady 10 Cordoba for a bag of pre-sliced mango every other Tuesday. In America, I’m still trying to remember what my place was, or perhaps, trying to create a new one.
