Aaaaand Me Off!

AAAAND ME OFF!

3 a.m. the same morning I embark on my great European adventure and I’m stumbling over the clothes, books and trivial nick-nackeries I’ve strewn about my brothers old room in an attempt to relieve myself of the useless crap I insist on crushing myself with at the starting line of every trip abroad. No doubt in less than a week I’ll be tempted to burn half of it, and the other half will be so smelly and smudged I’ll give myself away as the ragamuffin yooper child that I am. Heaving a sigh and a giant “mini” printer into my overstuffed pack I look at the clock and give it the saddest puppy-dog eyes I can muster, only unlike my parents or the poor boys blind enough to mistake my grimace for something cute, the hands don’t give way to my pouting lip and just keep on ticking. Screw this. I’m going to bed. An hour of sleep is better and nothing, and with my well honed skills of procrastination and justification of general poor decision making its inevitable that I will be over packed and under prepared. Lucky for me my middle-class Midwestern familia are accompanying me in Finland a few hours after I arrive. I’m counting on their similarly too large suitcases to bear the burden of my materialism by the end of our three weeks together, so that I might enjoy a less Sherpa-esque trek across the motherland Europe.
An hour later I’m bear-hugging my load and forcing it into the backseat of our Toyota. My dad asks “Okay, do you have your passport?” Of course I do. Duh. How stupid do you think I am. I flop in the seat next to him and as we round the corning it occurs to me, no, I do not have my credit card, drivers license or passport. They are sitting in the copier, right where I left them. I did however have the copies, as useful as that is… “STOP! Turn around. I was just kidding and I don’t have my passport.” He of course is not phased by this having lived with my for my first 18 years and , more recently, the past 6 months. Some things never change, and one of them is my desperate need for a full Velcro bodysuit to which I can attach everything necessary to function in life.
My arrival and departure from the Houghton airport was simple and unceremonious. I hugged and kissed my dude goodbye (that’s dad in Lucy-speak), got in line and started chatting with Pete, a local chap who works with my Uncle Al. Pete’s cool. Smiley and warm he talks about how he knows my parents, where he’s going, and what he likes to do. He’s a climber and a surfer, the outdoorsy type that the U.P. attracts as transplants. A different breed from a lot of the locals, but easy going in a way that compliments the slow pace of life in a small town. I can relate to that. A little adventure to make a splash in the calm. We parted ways on the plane, but chatted again in the Minneapolis airport. He was on his way to meet his girlfriend and catch a flight to San Francisco for some surf and sun. Sounds fun. Sounds romantic. Have a good time Pete! See you when I get back!
I make my way to the gate and onto the plane. Scoping out the seating I have my proverbial fingers crossed in hopes of sitting next to someone interesting to talk to. I spot my seat and an old gentleman in the same row. I wiggle passed the sea of passengers and plunk down into familiarly cramped quarters. We say hi and exchange pleasantries, but I have little hope of connecting with this seemingly solemn old dude in this adjoining seat. Ten minutes into the flight he asks where I’m heading. “Helsinki.” *smile*… I love saying that. Every time I do I picture my little pocket Lucy doing exactly what I feel inside; eyes cast down, kicking the dirt, wringing her hands behind her back shyly and then jumping up and down inappropriately thrash-dancing and doing high kicks. Yep! If only public spazz-attacks were socially acceptable. “Ah, Helsinki!” he says. “What brings you there?” I told him of my planoodles to gallivant around Europe with and without my family, and his big dyke sprung a leak. He unloads on me stories of his own family adventures; his kids, his ex-wife, traveling for jobs, traveling for heritage… basically his legacy in a nutshell. Bill Paris would have been Parisi if they hadn’t dropped the “eeeee” sound on Elis Island. He has two adorable grand-chickies, little blonde boys with shit-eating grins and crust in their noses I’m sure. His daughters were smart and he was SO proud. His boys did construction like their pappy. They work hard and they’re successful, but partied in school and dropped the heck out. We sat marveling at the variety of individuals that can result from similarly provided circumstance (aka growing up together).
I’ve often wondered at how my siblings and I came about. Me, the ever-loving flake, endlessly daydreaming and losing myself in music, dancing, theatre and love; Leah with all her logic, her sharp edge cutting my balloon string and bringing me back to this world, keeping me from getting lost with her proverbial leash but afraid to venture out (completely) on her own, and Graham, quirky sweet and lonely, swinging, singing and bustin-a-move to a musical dance number that someone special has yet to hear. I am the doctor who forgets the scalpel inside her patient, Leah is the stylist that would have been an engineer if machines were prettier and math didn’t suck, and Graham is the artist who’s life would be much simpler if the rest of us just weren’t so oblivious. Duh. The thing is I WILL be a great doctor, Leah WILL venture out and find herself and her confidence, and Graham WILL find love and his place in joy and art. There’s my familial analysis in a Kinder-egg… tasty outer shell but just cheap plastic crap at the center. Who comes up with this shit anyway? Oh yeah, me. If I’m crucified for these simplified soliloquies by my sibs, remember all my valuables are to be distributed to the needy. I have a semi-automatic vibrator named Dexter that goes to the person hasn’t gotten any for the longest period of time.
Forgive my wandering thought bubbles, we’re back to Bill Paris. After an hour and a half of the kind of conversation that turns strangers into good friends, we bumped and glided onto the DTW landing strip. “Goodbye Lucy, and good luck. It was sincerely a pleasure to talk with you.” Goodbye Bill. Thanks for the preview into what has clearly been a wonderful and satisfying life, if not for anything but your attitude. It really has been a pleasure.
Once again crossing my fingers for another amiable flying companion, I slipped down the isle and tucked my junk-filled overflow carry-on into the treacherous overhead compartments that threaten to drop briefcase style luggage bombs on any passenger fool enough to need their nose wipes mid-flight. Two young guys are sitting next to me and I crack a joke about the foggy air pouring into the cabin from above the windows. “it’s a bit creepy, the smoke rolling in. Ya think its dry ice?” One guy laughs and says
“It feels more like we’re going on a ride than on a plane.” Good. Nice guys. I’m ready.
The fellow next to me is tall and his knees are just about touching the seat in front of him He is wearing a dew rag and 20s style mobster cap. His braids are poking out the bottom over the top of this denim jacket. He looks to me like he’s part of the hip-hop scene in Boston. I ask him where he’s going and he says Cambridge. Well I’m not all that well edumacated, so I immediately assumed he meant Cambridge England. I still didn’t make the connection when he said he was going to Harvard for a semester. I grew up where we go mudding in our free time. You can’t fault me for it. Anyway, the dude’s got an accent and so Europeans fly to Europe right? Nope, I’m just and idiot. So TOBI is from Germany. I tell him I’m going to Mannheim and he just about jumps out of his shoes. He’s from HEIDELBERG and goes to school in MANNHEIM. WOW! His excitement is pretty contagious so we promptly exchange face book info (of course) and delve into some details about our travels. He goes to one of the top business schools in the world in Mannheim and plays basketball A LOT. A German jock! How fun! He has no place to go when he gets to Harvard so together we decide he is going to live under a bridge with the trolls, ducks and bums, and wake up every morning to the Harvard crew team rowing past. Sounds nice. We get off the plane and I go with him to get his luggage. As he walks me to my terminal every other sentence out of our mouths is sarcastic or absurd. “How do you say ‘You are sooo pretty’ in German?”
“Du bist soooooo shun.”
“Thaaaank youuuuuuu!”
“What?! Ooohhh.”
I’m hilarious. I think I’ll do that in every language.
We say our goodbyes and I pass through security unscathed and un-groped. Fabulous! Things are swell. My stomach is eating itself. I buy some Sbarro pizza and the first thing I do is pop a brilliantly uncooked, untempered, painfully strong piece of garlic into my mouth thinking its onion. On an empty stomach that’s like swallowing a puke grenade. And I almost do, puke that is. Oooh I can taste that metallic gastric juice burning my throat DARING me to try to talk to the lady at the register. I scope out my closest safety can and prepare for the embarrassing dash and blow but it doesn’t come. PHEW! I gingerly pick apart my crust until my stomach is settled, then inhale the za like it’s my personal last supper. I’m going to FINLAND!
After 9 hours on an uneventful flight where I sat with a Finish woman so shy I’m sure she didn’t utter a word to me the entire time, I prepare myself for customs. “How long will you be here?” He says.
“Ummmm, in Finland only a few weeks, but I fly out from here again in 5 and a half months.”
“Do you have a Visa?”
“… No?”
“You will need one.”
“Can’t I just leave and come back?”
“You must be gone for six months.”
“Oh, okay, I’ll get one. Thank you. Bye!"

*Thought bubble* …. SHIT BALLS!
I’m NERVOUS! Waiting by the carousel for my pack to ride by I’m wondering what to say to Tomas, my Finish face book compadre. I don’t really KNOW him… I left my passport in the jungle in Guatemala (unfortunately I’m afraid many of my stories will begin with “I forgot my… I left my… my head is in my…”) and stayed a few extra days to visit the capitol, grovel, kiss feet, cry and give myself up to the mercy of the U.S. embassy. With a copy of my passport (a faded photo of my seven year old self looking mousy and mischievous) and an expired drivers license (sixteen years old with a bad haircut and an oversized hoop in my nose) I watched as the 20 families in front of me were denied, rejected, turned down, thrown out and all together smote by the sweet/hardened Asian American speaking Spanish in a tired voice brought out most certainly by her utterly depressing job. I rose when my number was called, showed her my crappy expired scanned Ids, and left with a new passport 15 minutes later, no questions asked. All they wanted was my $$$. Ah the American way!
So how I know Tomas… His father Matti was sitting alone drinking wine at a restaurant across the street from my hotel back in Antigua. He invited me to join him and talked to me about his great adventure, a trip around the world, traveling for an entire year. I told him of my Finish heritage, my mother’s maiden name “Koivunen” and my desire to visit Finland. He told me if I ever came to Helsinki that his sons would show me around the city. Fast-forward two years and I’m trying to organize my disaster of a room after moving my painful accumulation of useless crap home from Kalamazoo to be with my mamasita while she faced the ugly ogre called cancer, I, by some miracle, stumbled across Matti’s card and driven by kitty-type curiosity checked his blog from August 2007. Sure enough he wrote that he’d met “Pretty Lucy Kurtz” (minor ego boost) from Michigan with Finnish heritage, and if she ever comes to Helsinki his boys could show her (me) around the city. Conveniently we live in an e-social-Facebook-obsessed-wasteyouryouthonthecomputer time so I took a shot and friended the Ahjopalo boys. After a two hour chat with Tomas I had a hotel booked for my fam and a ride from the airport from my first Finn friend. Lucky for me he’s cute. I don’t take rides from ugly blokes and I told him as much.