Vacation

• Picked up by a super fly 73 year old black woman driving like me that is, turning her neck to the right to check that blind spot.
• The closer I get to France, the more French it becomes. Check out is literally two minutes long. At the gates where America is already left behind after a long walk, French kids are running around and the hostesses are way too confused about the usual?
• I have a KN95 hugging my face. A child is coughing every 20 seconds not far from me. Turns out, she does that for 10 hours. A few folks started coughing when we landed. I feel OK.
• It’s raining and 15°/59° in Paris. Summer rain could have waited a day or two I think.
• Picked up by a not so super fly 70+ year old white man but he’s my dad and pretty damn awesome.
• Summer road work ahead, it takes us one hour instead of 30mn to get back home.
• Sipping on coffee like a vampire on a cute neck.
• Quiet room plus insane amount of sleep missing: slept like a bear in winter.
• France and not being cold. I had completely forgotten about the feeling and it is noice. Oh, and it’s so green.
• Morning in grandma’s attic moving out 50 year old invoices, just a gazillion boxes of those. My nose is stuffy from the dust but a few gems were found, like a vintage Sony Transistor TV Receiver 9-90UM in its leather case, yessir.
• I go back to my adolescence mall to swap a sim card for a nano sim card for my French phone. Not much has changed. Same Sephora, same place, different scents I guess.
• The density of construction and the number of buildings in the suburbs stay insane. You simply look at walls and windows all the time. There’s no void, no breathing. It’s insane.
• Hitting the road to go to my uncle’s birthday party. It’s raining, duh.
• Four straight days with mom and pop. They can’t stop talking. I’m in the back of the car and put music in my ears.
• Four hours in I take over driving. I have 3 GPS: the car, pop with his memory and mom with an old paper map. It’s a mess and we keep getting on the wrong path yet in the right direction.
• Running out of gas right before hitting the city we’re supposed to hit. We barely make it to the gas station.
• But we’re there! We finally recognize our landmarks and proceed through winding roads up and down the beautiful French countryside. It is warm and humid. I haven’t been here in almost twenty years.
• I finally see my cousin Anne who jumps on me and we hug for long minutes. It is so good to see everyone. I missed all the funerals in the past ten years.
• Catching up with all the kids and kids’ kids. We’re about to be 50 at the table.
• My uncle is overwhelmed and can’t finish his speech. He finds a way to give me a special shoutout for answering emails rapidly. We all laugh and take pictures, grabbing shoulders and touching backs.
• Our airBnB is super dope. Walls are 48” thick. Quiet and sleep are supreme here. I feel refreshed even though I didn’t sleep much, had too much food and too many drinks.
• It’s time to leave. A few tears and long hugs (which are rare in France).
• Time to go see my foster mom. I’ve never done the trip from one family to the other in a single day. Emotionally super wild.
• She’s 86 and she is chilling in front of the TV when I arrive. She can barely walk now and this is concerning. Her kids and grandkids around are tired of her being so goddamn stubborn, not listening to nothing.
• Anyway, I take her and her daughter and half sister for me, to the restaurant in Sancerre. I want to order everything on the menu.
• We make her walk a bit to the car and she is going way too fast with her cane, like she’s a Formula 1 at Magny-Cours.
• I leave the next day after lunch at 11:30am. We take a couple nice pictures together.
• Back on the road, direction Touraine. It’s grey and it rains, and it’s windy as hell.
• I take a freeway, which doesn’t have any gas station on it. The light comes on as I pull over in a gas station, on the next freeway. Not stressful at all.
• In front of me a couple from the Netherlands tries to make sense of where to select diesel on the touchscreen. They can’t and I cannot either. It feels good to speak English with them.
• I finally arrive at the New Passivehaus Crib. Under construction. I visit and explore with my sister. It’s going to be great!
• Emotionally exhausted, I sleep through the wind blowing like crazy outside.
• We leave the next day. Three hours later we are back in Paris suburbs. More invoices to get rid of, I mown the lawn.
• I go out to go see an ex. Stuck in traffic, taking 45mn instead of 20. I’m a little sick of driving those tiny streets at this point.
• We’re at a brasserie and it is dope. Catching up and smiling.
• One last day doing nothing besides going through the blues. Starting to pack, etc. It’s pouring regularly outside and I’m giving up on seeing another friend. Family time.
• Mom is not great at goodbyes. She immediately looks away after I give her a hug. I understand.
• Dad drives me to the airport an drops me off. He is sad and I am too, but we hug, smile, and say nice words. It’s hard to travel alone in those moments. I observe him driving away, until I see the back of his Toyota.
• CDG. Here we go ‘gain. Security is a whole mess, the plane takes off one hour late, which makes me miss my shuttle at LAX. I have a bunch of drunk French mfs who never did this trip next to me and it is tedious.
• LAX’ smell when you get out. Yikes. But on a parking lot 5mn away, the breeze is good, the sun is good and now I feel like I’m on vacation. Except that I’m not anymore.
• I’m on the phone with Supershuttle and Supershuttle orders a Lyft for me.
• Fly ass ageless black woman shows up. Yes, she drives like me too. Friend texts me to ask if I’m back. I am. I take the wind, the sun, my beautiful hills with SUVs and trap music all in. 16 hours of travel, I’m home.

And now everything feels like a giant dream I had recently. A trip, indeed.