Welcome to America
We have just been released from an immigration hold at Memphis Airport.
They kept us waiting for over two hours, but the officer was so kind in the end.
Satisfied that we were coming for a long vacation, just the kids and I, he stamped our passports.
After all, who in their right mind would leave their family, a thriving business, and everything they ever had and cared about to go to another country and start over?
“Welcome to America”, he smiled before waving us through.
The truth is we do not know what the next few months will bring. But for right now, we need a place to lay low for a while, away from the danger back at home.
Now we have a connection to catch. And we are already late.
A great time for my five-year-old daughter to start crying. She is hungry and cranky.
I scoop her up on my hip, and with my eight-year-old son trailing behind, we start moving. I’d like to run, but that is not going to happen.
It is late in the evening, and shops are closed. The terminal looks almost deserted.
I am sweating now, my heartbeat ringing in my ears. If we don’t catch this flight, we might be stuck here, at Memphis airport, overnight.
I have never had a panic attack, but I’m feeling like I might right now. I am having an out-of-body experience. It is as if I am floating above, under the ceiling of this long, cold airport corridor. The fluorescent light is so uninviting.
There is me, down below, carrying my daughter, trying to jog. Behind me, my son, falling more and more behind. He is carrying his backpack. In it, his whole world.
“Can we bring the dog with us?” he asked me two days ago when I told him we would leave.
“No, honey, the dog can’t come”.
“What about Grandma and Grandpa?”
“They can’t come either, but they will come to visit later.”
“What can I bring, then?”
“Just what fits into your backpack.”
He nods and goes to his room to select the precious few toys. It breaks my heart that he didn’t need to ask why we were going.
Just last week, my son and my daughter waited at home with hired bodyguards while I went to my last divorce hearing. Just two weeks ago, my son heard a message his father left for me on our answering machine:
“You know what? Maybe I should kill the kids. I am thinking that if you have nothing else to live for, you will come back to me, after all”.
“Mom!”
The wail stops my mind in its tracks. I see myself turning around to look at my son.
He is just standing there. Behind him is a trail of toys falling out of his backpack. His face is contorted in a desperate grimace.
Everything familiar left from his short life is now on the floor of this strange place in a strange country, at risk of being destroyed by the feet of strangers or lost forever.
“Mom!” he screams again before he breaks down in tears.
I set my daughter down, grab her hand, and we walk toward him.
Screw the plane. We help him pick up his matchbox cars and his stuffies. A man with kind eyes bends down and picks up a puzzle book. “Looks like the zipper on his backpack came undone”, he remarks before walking away.
We put everything back into the backpack, and then we hug. A sense of calm finally washes over me. We are here, and we are safe. We put distance between ourselves and evil. Nothing else matters.
Slowly, we start heading to the gate.
Marie H. Anne, Mom, Twin Soul, Entrepreneur, Writer. Full of Gratitude. Boldly walking toward my dreams. I write memoirs, short stories, and auto-fiction about surviving violence and abuse and how amazing life has become despite and because of it.
