Part One - The Ingenue in New York

In 1990, I was a year out of highschool...and as wide eyed and green as any small town girl could be. For years I had dreamed of traveling. Of escaping the tiny orchard town that I grew up in, and heading out on an adventure of my own making. I still had all of the National Geographic maps that I had carefully pinned up on my bedroom wall, marking the different places across the world that I knew I would visit someday.

My opportunity came one day when two good friends of mine, Cori and Tammy, proposed an amazing trek. They told me that they were planning on flying to New York for a five day tour, and they asked if I would like to go along with them. New York City!! A world away. A universe away! Mars seemed closer to me than New York City! A full on swarm of butterflies took flight in my stomach when I told them yes. YES! Count... me.... IN!

It wasn't long before I was collecting money to go on my first real trip as an 'adult'. I worked hard all summer, saving the money I earned as an apple sorter in a tin roof packing shed. I remember looking in the eyes of all the haggard women who worked there alongside me, their faces reflecting the tired lives spent beneath the burning neon lights of the sorting table. I swore my time there was only temporary. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life hunched over an endless rush of apples...picking out the rotten from the good. I wasn't going to be sitting on that splintered wooden bench outside on a smoke break, rubbing my arthritic fingers and wondering what life could have been like. I was only a visitor there in that open air shed.... and this trip was my ticket out.

I dressed up for the flight. Perhaps I really am an old soul, as my grandmother used to say. I just couldn't see heading out on such a life changing trip dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. I wore a simple black skirt, with a black and red paisley blouse. I wore my chestnut hair in a smooth french braid. There was an ornate silver and black pin at my throat. I would later rue that damned pin... because it set the metal detectors off at the airport. After I had sheepishly emptied out my purse and showed the attendants that I had no pockets...they glanced at my broach and waved me through.

I settled in my designated seat by the window, and stared out the window as Cori and Tammy chatted happily between themselves. I had the distinct impression that to them... this was simply a trip. A place to go, where there would be shopping and sights to see. For me... it was the beginning of a dream come true. I *knew* that the moment was a memory in the making. I wasn't going to let it slip by without really being IN it.

It was well into the night in Seattle by the time our plane taxied down the runway. We were taking the redeye, and the pilot told us we would be seeing the sunrise on the East Coast when we landed again. I was going to chase the night across the sky...and I felt light headed with the thought. When the engines went full throttle and we lifted off... all my senses reeled as if I were spinning on a playground tire swing. The lights of the city were fading away below, and although that ascent was smooth and perfect, I could feel panic well up in my throat that there was nothing between me and thousands of feet to the ground below. My hands gripped eachother with white knuckled anxiety. I had forced myself not to think of my fear of flying the months leading up to the trip... and now there was no turning back. Fears and all, my whole future as a traveler was beginning right then and there, on takeoff.

The tiny lights soon disappeared beneath dark clouds, and I marveled at what the moon looked like, hovering above it all. Cori and Tammy soon dozed off and left me to my thoughts. Left me to my purse full of more money than I ever had at one time. My suitcase stuffed with clothes and shoes, and the addresses of everyone I knew. I wanted to make sure I sent them a postcard... a real, true blue postcard from New York City. Heck, I even wanted to send one to myself, just so I could hold it in my hand when I got home and smile... knowing that I had really done it.

And true to the pilot's promise, the sun was rising as we started our descent over New York. I elbowed Cori and Tammy awake, and they leaned over to catch a glimpse out the window. We gaped at the miles upon miles of houses spread out beneath us... an unbelievable tapestry of lives being lived. I could fit my whole hometown in a few blocks of what I was seeing beneath me. 'And they don't even know I exist....' I remember thinking to myself. None of those people knew they were being looked at from high up above, by a 19 year old girl fresh out of her apple orchard existance. It made me feel suddenly so very small. Coming out of a community where I knew everyone... and they knew me, my sisters...my brother... my parents. I was truly anonymous. I was going to step foot off that plane and simply... be... me. A mysterious green eyed girl with a sparkle in her eyes.

The dreamer in me was thrilled.

The little girl in me was frightened.

The traveler in me was cool, calm and collected... and ready to face whatever came her way.

And so the plane descended down into LaGuardia, as I smoothed back my French braid and readied myself for landing.
I closed my eyes, and counted my heartbeats until I felt the lurch of the plane and heard the squeel of tires on the tarmac.

New York... meet Aimee. Aimee... meet New York City.


~*~To Be Continued~*~