.traveling while dominican.

My government job* of the past six years involves a lot of trips to places in Europe and Latin America, an occupational requirement that has turned me into a well-oiled business-traveling machine. I’ve got my routine down pat: pack only enough as will fit into my NY&Co** roller suitcase and black backpack; get to the airport two hours before my flight and breeze through check-in and security thanks to my Silver Medallion status***; isolate myself with my [ipod/laptop/trashy romance novel/silent judgment of parents with unruly children] until it’s time to board the plane; eat my crappy vegetarian mean; pop two Tylenol Simply Sleep, drink a Dewar’s on the rocks, and wake up on the other side of Atlantic. If I’m lucky, I get to head to my hotel for a few hours of actual sleep; if not, I go straight into meetings.

But this experience is completely, totally, unbelievably different that of my previous life as a traveler. Today I travel while armed with my laptop, itinerary, and corporate Amex card; back then, I traveled while Dominican.

From the time I was a few months old until I hit my late teens, I accompanied by immigrant parents on their yearly trip back to their homeland, the Dominican Republic, usually around the Christmas holidays. More than any other memory of those annual pilgrimages, what sticks most in my mind is the experience of the journey itself – the physical displacement from our Manhattan apartment whatever house we were staying in the Santiago.  Year after year, it proved to be an exercise in frenzied, overstuffed, stressed, anticipatory sensory overload.

The night before the flight was spent watching my mother and aunts finish packing the 12 suitcases stuffed with all manner of gifts (clothes, deodorant, Avon bubble bath, school supplies, Tang juice mix, whathaveyou), one of them sitting on top of the case while the other two struggled to get the zippers around. All the women in the family gotten their hair done earlier in the day – straightened and shined and styled for that one minute of perfection before the Dominican humidity curled it all back up. We set out our “airplane clothes” before going to sleep for a few hours (to this day, I feel like I’m betraying my dad whenever I wear jeans on a plane), waking up at 3AM for a 10AM flight. Somehow we managed to fit ourselves, 12 suitcases and the three pieces of carry-on bags per passenger into two cars, speeding off to the American Airlines terminal before the sun had risen.

At the airport we’d wait on an interminable line of other Dominicans making the same trip. Sometimes my parents would run into people they hadn’t seen in 20 years on these check-in lines. Impatient, sleep-deprived children danced around tired grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My mom would shush us with the homemade snacks she’d brought: boiled eggs, puré de papa, Wonder-Bread-cheese-and-butter sandwiches, and molassessy malta. Everyone was dressed in their finest – whatever stood for the height of Dominican-York fashion at that particular time. Women wore uncomfortable shoes, party dresses, and boobalicious shirts; men wore fedoras, ill-fitting suits, crisp new jeans – the cheesiest, most show-offy among them weighted down with gold chains, bracelets and Christ-on-the-cross medallions. (Tiny rubies stood in for the suffering J.C.’s eyes.)

We’d board the plane slowly, chaotically. Passengers struggled to find their seats, to fit their myriad carry-on packages (boomboxes, necessaries, chenille bedspread sets, giant stuffed animals), to settle their in their little children.  The flight lasted 3½ hours – a sixth of day during which our parents started to breathe easier, the shedding of our winter layers mimicking their loosening attitude. The trip – from the grey, vertical, unfriendly, unknowable New York to the sunny, colorful, sprawling cities of the Dominican Republic – seemed at once too short and interminable.  Every single time the plane touched Dominican soil, the entire plane crossed their hearts and erupted into applause.

And after deplaning, after being greeted by the Brugal girls with their trays full of rums-on-shaved ice and the house musicians playing their tamboras and güiras, after surviving the MMA-style battle for the luggage at baggage claim, after giving a regalito to the customs agents, after counting the luggage one final time, we’d exit the terminal to a throng of people held at bay by two metal barriers. It resembled nothing so much as an airport red carpet, except instead of movie starts walking down the aisle it was retuning migrants. The arrivees searched the crowd for their families, erupting into shrieks and pogo stick hugs once they found them. Spouses hugged silently, tearfully; grandparents exclaimed at how much their grandchildren had grown in the past year; little boys and girls shyly greeted the dad they hadn’t seen in years, the cousins they’d never met before. It was the moment our parents had worked for all year, the payoff to their long hours as factory workers, taxi drivers, bodega clerks, busboys, babysitters and all the other jobs open to first generation immigrants.

And that air, that smell. It hit you as soon as the terminal doors opened onto the Dominican Republic proper. It was the country itself wrapped up in wall of a sweetness, humidity, heat, ripe tropical fruits, and gasoline fumes. It was unmistakable, hard to describe, a tangible sign that we were home – or at least home as our parents conceived of it.

And after three or four weeks**** of family reunions, of visiting hours, of rekindling relationships with the neighborhood kids, of visits to el Monumento, Panchito’s Pizza, El Pez Dorado and other touristy highlights, of eating freshly picked mangoes, of rides on our uncles’ ancient Yamaha bikes, of cold Presidente beers, of showers-by-garden-hose, of happy parents in familiar geographies, we would make the trip in reverse. Our suitcases would be emptier and we’d be crying not in excitement but in sadness. Our parents hugged their families tight, taking in every last sensation so that it would last them until next year’s trip. On the plane we’d bundle up for New York in January, and then we’d pick up our flaccid luggage and pile into a Manhattan-bound taxi, getting reacquainted with the city through the dark windows of the cab. Next year: Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It’s been almost 15 years since I’ve taken one of these trips, and I’m sure the experience has changed in the interim. These are the days of ipods, of fake Louis Vuitton bags, of baggage limits and no-liquids-on-board regulations. There are limits on how much luggage one can check, and the little bottle of alcohols are no longer free. The internet has arrived in the Dominican Republic, and with it easier communication facilitated by Facebook, Skype, MySpace, and email. Dominicans are a few generations into our settlement in the United States – a fact which I hope has only helped our collective sense of style.

But who knows? There might still be that same old homecoming energy around Christmas time. I wouldn’t know, as these days I generally travel there during the off-season months. My trips back to the Dominican Republic are generally business-related, so there I go with my sensible on-flight outfit, my small suitcase, and a why-even-bother ponytail. Even so, the minute the doors open onto the airport and I smell that get hit with that wall of sweet tropical air, part of me recognizes that I am coming home - that version of home that is imprinted into my very chromosomes.

*Meaning my real life job, not an actual job with the US government.
**Oh yes, my luggage is the height of luxury. Whatever. I effin love NY&Co
***Don’t worry – I still fly exclusively coach class.
**** I missed a lot of January school days.

© Chommo, 2009.