Illustration by Marc Johns
It's cute and all that I'm home for Christmas but don't think that last year's holiday memories haven't been creeping in, especially with this down time without the distraction of the rush of my life in Paris. Idle time really is the devil's playground when left alone with my thoughts. While I certainly wouldn't want it to be last year, I can't help but reminisce a bit...please don't hate me for doing so.
Last Christmas, I supposed to spend it in New York alone and MF was supposed to fly out the day after with my mom who was working a Paris Christmas trip, but because of last year's snowstorms in London and Paris (two inches that sent the country in a crisis), I was stuck in France for the holidays. It wasn't a big deal because my mom was coming and we were invited to spend the day with MF and his wonderful family out in the suburbs where the three of us would fly out together the following day on the 26th. The plan was perfect, it worked out even better than our original plan we all thought....famous last words.
Being that there were two flights going to JFK, we chose to book ourselves stand-by on the first flight out - the flight that my mom was working on. My mom left us at security and check-in and joined the rest of her crew at the gate to prepare the cabin for the flight. Excited for our trip to America, MF and I arrived at the check-in counter, happy and in-love when the agent asked us for MF's visa. Visa? What? His ESTA. What the fuck is an ESTA? I remember asking myself. She explained that there are no longer green forms for foreigners entering into the U.S and documenting visitors is now done online - for a fee of course. Upon seeing my frustration and search for answers, she smiled at me and with satisfaction said, "Je ne sais pas. C'est votre pays." Yes, it is my country and I don't know either...
Despite her snide comment, she was quite helpful in offering information and advice on how to quickly obtain this document by directing us to the airport brasserie that offers free wi-fi. Thanks to her help and letting us cut the line once she saw us again, the turnaround time for this extra step was less than fifteen minutes. Before issuing us our stand-by boarding passes, she regretfully informed us that there is news of a snowstorm hitting New York and that many passengers from the later flight had moved over to the earlier flight, including the New York based flight crew who didn't want to be stuck in Paris for a week. Shit. She handed us our boarding pass and holding up crossed fingers, she wished us "Courage". Little did we know that we needed it...
Upon arrival at our gate, the flight that was fairly empty a mere 24 hour prior was now packed with huffy passengers as the gate agents were trying to consolidate two flights onto one aircraft. My mom came storming out of the plane to let us know that there would no way in hell that we could fly out, gave us a both a hug and kiss goodbye because she had her hands full as well. I looked at MF and he suggested that we go back to Paris and try again the next day but after spending a month with his family partaking in their holiday get-togethers and helping out in the restaurant during their busy season, the idea of going back to hear him bicker with his brother, hear his mother tell him what to do and his grandmother ask me how I put up with him, sounded like shit - fresh shit. So I made an executive decision and booked us on a flight to Chicago in the hopes of catching the last flight out to New York. How hard would it be to get from Chicago to New York? There are flights every 30 minutes, right?
Getting to Chicago was a piece of cake, we sat in first class, clinked our champagne glasses and enjoyed a lovely nine hour flight in the friendly skies thinking that everything was going to work out just fine. We arrived at O'Hare, looked at the connecting flight screens to find them bleeding with "cancelled" notifications next to every east coast city. Philly - cancelled, Boston - cancelled, Washington D.C - cancelled, JFK and LGA - cancelled, Raleigh-Durham - cancelled! We were stuck in Chicago and this was MF's first trip to the States.
We got to customs and I stood in the visitors line with MF in order to translate where I wasn't allowed to answer the questions, I was merely the translator. "What are you doing in the United States?" the officer asked, "Qu'est-ce que vous faites aux Etats-Unis?" I repeated. "Je viens visiter sa famille - la famille de ma fiancee" "He's here to visit my family," I responded. He looked at MF and said "Coming to meet the fam? Sure you don't want to go back?", MF looked at him and didn't respond because he didn't understand which didn't stop the officer from then leaning over the counter and whispering, "I'll save you, buddy." while hovering the stamp over his passport in a way to let him know that he could back out now. Somehow MF understood this part and laughed - what a miracle, the boy can speak English now. I snatched the passport, shoved it in MF's bag, said thank you and with MF in tow heading for the exit to figure out what the hell we were going to do now.
All the New York airports were closed for days due to the massive snowstorm so we had no choice but to spend three nights in the O'Hare Airport Marriott with the flu that we both got overnight. We were stuffed up, sweating profusely, sneezing, coughing and sore. We trekked into the city on our second day to try and enjoy the fact that we were in a beautiful city but because we were jetlagged, cold and sick, we we're just miserable.
Culture shock is funny, it comes in when you least expect it and MF experienced his first bout of culture shock when we went to a bank to change our euros into dollars. The teller, a friendly black woman kept calling us baby, was singling along to the musak ("Angel" by Train) and before we left took our hands to wish us (her babies) a Happy New Year. MF, who comes from France where bankers are the least happy, least friendly, least helpful people in all of France was blown away. It took him an hour to except the fact that bank was not only nice to us but offered us complimentary flavored coffee with little holiday cookies set out. After our Chicago attempt where MF kept asking me questions about Al Capone because suddenly I was an expert on mid-west gangsters. The rest of our trip was either spent dying in our room or force feeding ourselves sandwiches at the hotel bar where the bartender, Tito shared his "bar art" with us.
"Bar Art"After three painful days feeling deathly ill and once news broke that east coats airports had reopened, we decided to brave the O'Hare airport and try to fly out - again. We arrived at 5:00 am and realized that we weren't the only ones smart enough to get there as early as possible because we were numbers 150 and 157 on the stand-by list and only four passengers per flight were making it out. If full revenue passengers were being shut out and sleeping in terminals there was no way that we going anywhere before January.
I refused to except this option of sleeping in another airport hotel or worse, the terminal with luck found an amazingly helpful gate agent who went through all of our flying options. We decided to take a flight out to Buffalo where where the plan was to take the train down to Manhattan. Per my mom who was following our whereabouts through her work server saw that all of the passengers trying to get to LGA and JFK flights got hip to jumping on other flights and Buffalo became the next hot ticket out of O'Hare. Luckily, we were well into the air holding a Bloody Mary when these epiphanies took place.We arrived in Buffalo where it was pouring rain and learned that both Amtrak and Greyhound were sold-out. At this point, I had a nervous break-down where after MF had his cigarette outside the Buffalo airport, he found me smashing the handset of a dirty pay-phone against the receiver because the calling card only gave me 15 seconds and I was cut off mid-sentence while trying to communicate with my mom. We only had our French cellphones.
After we both calmed down, where MF himself was starting to get snippy but when I threatened to leave him in Buffalo forever where he would have to fend for himself, we both realized that fighting amongst each other wasn't going to help matters. Despite everything, we spent a relaxing night in Buffalo, where we ordered room service, watched E.T and Married..with Children reruns and the following morning took the next Greyhound bus down to New York City. The bus was packed with passengers who were also stuck and couldn't fly out leaving the only available double seat next to the bathroom where the door would burst open every time we'd hit a bump which would then stink up the entire bus because someone went to the bathroom on the toilet seat. A married couple from the Bronx sat across from us where the woman informed me in her thick New York accent that someone "did cocky" on the seat. Mind you, I'm having to translate all of this for MF.
After ten hours on the bus and the priceless look for MF's face when he saw the New York City skyline as the bus was approaching the Holland Tunnel, we were let off in the armpit of Manhattan; The Port Authority where we took the subway down one stop to Penn Station - another beauty of the city. After what felt like an hour on the Long Island Railroad and hearing really loud girls from Ronkonkoma complaining that they thought their Christmas presents from their boyfriends "sucked", we arrived at the train station where my mother was waiting for us.
We got to my grandmother's house where we both took hot baths where she then had a vodka on the rocks waiting for MF and a large glass of red for me and leftover truffle mushroom risotto. Although this trip was a nightmare, we made the most of it and look back on it fondly. This experience always reminds me of the The Beatle's song "The Ballad of John and Yoko" where they are bouncing all around Europe - although our experience was less glamourous.
Starting in Paris going to Chicago to Buffalo took a Greyhound bus to the New York City Subway to the Long Island Railroad to a Long Island taxi to finally my grandmother's house. I'm going to say it again, this was MF's first time in the U.S...
