Passports and Plum Blossoms

by Barbara Oliverio

  “Are you packed?”

  “I have everything laid out and just need to put it in my bags. I am packing very lightly and making sure everything coordinates. My theme is black, white, and gray. I have two pairs of pants, a reversible sleeveless dress, and short and long-sleeve T-shirts in white and black plus some incidentals—you know, scarves and things.”

  I picked up each item as I mentioned them to her.

  “Hmm. Where did you get that idea?” she teased.

  “Okay, fashionista, I admit it was from your magazine article on ‘Packing for a Trip in a Capsule.’ But it does make sense, and it’s a lot less to drag around. Don’t get too excited, though. Auntie Lil made the same recommendation, and—no offense—she doesn’t read your magazine.”

  “She’s always been ahead of the times, hasn’t she?”

  “I have always like raiding her closet,” I admitted. “She has the best in vintage. And it’s all because she has kept everything she’s ever bought in such good shape.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Rory paused. “I am jealous of you.”

  “Because I can find awesome kitten heel pumps in Auntie Lil’s closet?”

  “Well, that, and because not only is this trip going to be amazing, but spending time with her will be so much fun. I can’t think of anyone her age that is so cool or that I would want to travel with.”

  “I know what you mean. I know I’m supposed to be her paid ‘companion,’ but this is really just an excuse for a great vacation. Hold on a second, I hear Ma yelling for me up the stairs. I’m sure she’s found another amazing travel necessity or read another horrifying tidbit about the air quality in China that she needs to share with me.”

  I muted the phone and walked out of my room to lean over the oak railing on the stairs.

  “Annalise!” my mother shouted again. “I was at the camping store and found something you absolutely must take with you.”

  Camping? Did my mother forget that we were booked in nothing but 4-star hotels for the duration of our trip? Wearily, I took Rory off mute.

  “Rory, I need to address this issue and call you back. Ma found something at the camping goods store that apparently I cannot travel without.”

  “Camping? You? You won’t even camp here much less in a foreign country. Your idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service.”

  “Very funny. But whatever it is, she’s very excited about it. I’ll call you back.”

  I took a deep breath and went downstairs to see what my mother could possibly have discovered.

  “Okay,” she began and pulled me over to the dining room table where a veritable cornucopia of purchases were laid out.

  “Okay,” I began, “why were you even in the camping store—”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

  “Sit, sit, sit. Let me show you what I found. First, here’s a nice small flashlight.”

  “Because ... they don’t have electricity there?” I took the slim light that was smaller than my thumb from her and flicked it on and off.

  “No, dear, because the article said you should have one just in case.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Another article? I thought you had already read every one that existed.”

  My mother was a great one for reading articles. If they were on the web, she forwarded them. If they were in print, she copied them and sent them. In either case, she usually made plans based on recommendations given by the author. We were generally supportive of her, although I was really happy that I was away at school when she read the article on the magical benefits of quinoa. I did notice that Pop’s quota of “business dinners” at restaurants spiked for a week or so during that time period. Ever since we had started planning for this trip, she had become the expert on travel to Asia. I had to admit that she’d discovered some interesting tips, but as usual, she was bordering on overinforming.

  “Well, this article actually had more tips about hygiene.”

  “If it is about drinking water, I already know, Ma. I am not going to drink or brush my teeth with any water that isn’t bottled, and I’ll be sure not to accidentally open my mouth in the shower, either.”

  “Good, good, but this one focused on the other end.”

  “Ma! Please!”

  “Only in China, dear, you’ll be fine in Singapore. The facilities are more Western there. But you need to be prepared in any case.”

  She piled several rolls of travel-size toilet tissue, packages of hygienic wipes, and travel bottles of hand sanitizer of different brands into my arms.

  “Thank you, Ma, I’ll be sure to weigh down the luggage with this extra paraphernalia. If you remember, another of the articles you read advised to keep luggage as light as possible.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  She tut-tutted in that way only a mother could.

  “Well, you’ll thank me for this,” she said, handing me a small pink tube roughly the length and twice the diameter of a roll of quarters. What could this contain?

  “What on earth?” I turned it over and read the label. “She-Whiz, the female device for—”

  I stared at my mother. Unbelievable.

  “Ma! You mean to tell me you bought me a funnel? To use for ... for ...”

  “For when you need to urinate in a ladies room that doesn’t have a Western-style toilet,” she whispered.

  My mother.

  “Well,” she said as if she had discovered gold, “you tell me that isn’t the most clever thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “Oh, I can’t begin to describe it, Ma.” I placed all my newfound potty necessities in the chair next to me. “What else do you have there?”

  “Well, the article said you’ll need to hide your valuables, so here is a belted wallet to wear under your clothes. Very slim, see? And here is moleskin for your heels so that your shoes won’t rub. And walking socks—”

  “Walking socks? As opposed to what?”

  “As opposed to socks that don’t let your feet breathe when you’re walking all over Asia, Missy. Oh, and here are some disposable underpants.”

  “STOP!”

  I had to draw the line at that one. Disposable underpants?

  “Like, what? Disposable diapers? Ma, are you obsessed.”

  “No! Not like that. It’s so you can use them and throw them away and leave more room in your suitcase for purchases on your return trip.”

  “Because my undies take up so much room? Wouldn’t it just make more sense to take some of my oldest undies with me and throw those out?”

  “That’s wasteful!”

  “No more wasteful than buying what I’m sure are paper-thin undies JUST to throw out.”

  She paused.

  “I’m just trying to help, dear.”

  “I know you are, Ma, but I think I’m ready. Really. And we’re not going to Antarctica or the middle of the desert. They will have stores everywhere we are going.”

  But from her look, I knew she had at least one more item, and Marie Fontana was not a woman to be stopped.

  “Okay, Ma, what else?” I was weary.

  “You’ll thank me for these.”

  I examined the stark white kneesocks that reminded me of the footgear that my elderly Nonni used to wear.

  “They’re compression socks. You’ll wear them on the flight to help your blood flow. The article said that no one should fly without them. And that you should get up every so often and walk around. And that you should drink plenty of WATER in flight.”

  I opened my mouth to assure her that I was old enough to remember to hydrate, for heaven’s sake, then caught sight of her eager face. How could I not appreciate this woman who just wanted to make sure that her baby daughter was safe, warm, and comfortable halfway across the world?

  “Oh, Ma,” I grabbed her, “what would I do without you?”

  Chapter Six

  No matter how many times I’ve flown, I have never gotten used to the lengthy trek through TSA. We patient
ly snaked our way through the first queue—amazingly long for 5:30 a.m.—and made it through to the inevitable shedding of shoes, belts, and other random accessories. One of these days, I thought, I’m just going to travel in pajamas and slippers and avoid a lot of this.

  “This would be so much simpler if we just traveled in our pajamas and slippers, wouldn’t?” muttered the man in line ahead of me.

  “That’s just what I was thinking!” I smiled and nodded to him.

  We finally made it through, redressed, reassembled, recombombulated, and boarded the underground train to the concourse. The doors closed a split second before a very attractive man darted across the platform and missed making it onto the train. My mind wandered—what if that was the love of my life and we missed our chance at meeting because he wore shoes that were difficult to lace up and cost him that extra second he needed to make this train? How many missed opportunities could be chalked up to delays in the security area?

  “What on earth are you thinking about?” asked Auntie Lil, bouncing back and forth as we dangled from the grips that hung from the ceiling of the train. “You look so far away.”

  I put forth my theory.

  “More likely, he would have been someone who would have stepped on your toe and not apologized,” she shook her head ruefully.

  “Auntie Lil, you are being too pragmatic for this early in the morning!”

  She broke into a smile, and her face—wreathed in the kind of gorgeous wrinkles that one earns from a life well lived and well loved—betrayed her true romantic self. The twinkle in her hazel eyes spoke of her own girlish dreams and escapades.

  “Maybe I just need a cup of coffee before I can be too philosophical, dear.”

  “I think we can take care of that. Our flight doesn’t leave for an hour and a half.”

  The train jolted to a stop, and we joined the rest of the passengers ascending the escalator to the concourse.

  Moments later, we were relaxing in a small bakery cafe with steaming cups of tea and coffee and pastries alongside for good measure. We reviewed our itinerary.

  “Two days in Singapore on our own, then we fly into China and join your tour group in Xian for a day, then on to Beijing for the remainder of the time,” I said. “And the schedule looks jam-packed. Tell me again how you hooked up with these people if they aren’t your regular group of traveling buddies?”

  “I just saw the ad in the Catholic Register and thought it looked like a great trip for the money. No one else from St. Anthony’s wanted to go, but I didn’t want that to stop me. I’ve always wanted to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and the Terracotta Soldiers, and I’m not getting younger, you know.”

  “Ha!” I nudged her. “You’ll be traveling for another ten or fifteen years before you even think about slowing down.”

  “If my siblings have any say, they’ll chain me to a rocking chair someday soon.”

  “Oh, Pop and the other aunties are just worriers.” I shook my head. “Personally, I think I want to be you when I grow up.”

  “Well, the first thing to do is not ‘grow up’ then.”

  “What?”

  “I mean just what I said. Don’t grow up. Sure, you’ll get older and you’ll need to work at a job and hopefully you’ll get married, but that doesn’t mean you have to be too stable.”

  “But Auntie Lil, you’re one of the must stable people I know! You worked so hard at your job before you retired, and you took care of Nonni and Poppy.”

  “Sure. I’ve always been serious about my responsibilities, but you know I’ve never taken life seriously. We’re put here to enjoy all that we’re given, sweetheart, and to use our gifts and talents as best we can. No one ever said we had to be glum while we did it.”

  I pondered that for a moment. One of the reasons I loved Auntie Lil was for her adventuresome spirit. Definitely no one could ever accuse her of being glum. Sure, she was careful with money, but her motto is that there is a time to save and a time to spend. This trip was an example of a time to spend, all right. Everything was costing double with me along.

  “Thanks again for taking me with you, Auntie Lil. I’m sure you weren’t thinking that your bargain trip would be compromised by having to pay for a ‘companion.’”

  “Look,” she took my hand into hers. “Now that we’re not around your father, we can drop the ‘companion’ business. Good lord, it made me feel like an elderly frump out of a Jane Austen novel every time he said it.”

  “That’s what I said!”

  “No, dear,” she shook her head, “I know my brother. He would have worn me down to a nub with his objections to this journey unless I agreed to have someone travel with me. Do you realize his first recommendation was that HE come along?”

  “Noo!”

  She lowered her head and covered her face with both hands.

  “Auntie Lil, I can’t imagine!”

  She raised her face. “Oh, I can. It would have been endless rounds of ‘Lilliana, do you need to sit down, dear?’ or ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit spicy for you?”

  “Or ‘Lilliana, really, another glass of wine?’” I imitated my father’s gravelly voice.

  We broke into laughter.

  “Oh, he means well,” she said.

  “I know, I know. He just feels that he is so—”

  “Responsible for us all?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, he’s the only boy in the family,” Lil said. “And your Nonni and Poppy drilled that into him, you know, that he was the brother and had to take care of all of us sisters.”

  “Even though you were all so much older. That’s so funny.”

  “It’s just our way. You know it’s that way with you and Nicky, even though you are the older one.”

  “What! He’s the prince of the house!” I cried.

  “Sure. But think about it for a minute.”

  She was right, darn it. Even though my mother babied him more than I thought was necessary while we were growing up, both of my parents never let him forget that he would have responsibilities when he grew up. Nicky was a pretty sturdy kind of guy—funny and sweet—but definitely a responsible person.

  “Nicky is just like Pop isn’t he?”

  “Is that so bad Annalise? Your father and I may disagree on whether I need a ‘companion’ on this trip or not, but I’d rather have him looking after me than not.”

  “I think he worries more about you because you’re the sister that isn’t married. The other aunties have husbands to take care of them.”

  I looked across the table at my beautiful aunt. I had seen pictures of her when she was my age. She was a stunner. Even in black and white, her eyes were bright and sparkly and her wide smile accented her high cheekbones. In all the photos, her haircut was a variation of the way she wore it in her high school graduation picture, a shoulder-length style reminiscent of one that Lauren Bacall wore, flowing from the side and ending just above her shoulders.

  “Auntie Lil, why did you never get married?” I had never asked the question before and hoped I wouldn’t upset her. “Is it because you felt you needed to stay home to take care of Nonni and Poppy?”

  She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, now gone completely white and cut in that short, aggressive hairstyle that older women adopt because it’s easy to care for. She looked off to the side.

  “I’m sorry.” Great. I started the trip by offending her.

  She turned back toward me and her eyes glistened.

  “No, sweetheart, it’s fine. I let people think that. Oh, I let people think whatever they want. But do you want the truth?”

  “Oh, Auntie Lil, I didn’t mean to upset you before we started our journey! No, no, no.”

  I reached for a napkin from the dispenser to hand her, but, ever classy, she pulled a neatly pressed handkerchief from her bag to dab her eyes.

  “No. It’s okay. You can hear this.” She smiled and began.

  “After I graduated from high sc
hool, I was planning to go to secretarial school. During the summer before classes started, I was dating several nice young men.”

  “Auntie Lil!”

  “Don’t raise your eyebrows. Back in the day, ‘dating’ meant going to the movies or going on picnics or skating. We usually did things like that in groups of couples. I don’t know what young people do today.”

  “Well, Auntie Lil, I can’t speak for other girls, but that’s still what ‘dating’ means to me and my girlfriends. If guys expect anything more, then they’re sadly mistaken. It’s just that we date one guy at a time and don’t have multiple guys calling on us.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, maybe if you didn’t put all your eggs in one basket, it wouldn’t hurt so much when you parted company with one of them.”

  Ouch. That was a subtle jab at my recent depression over losing Dylan.

  “But—”

  “Annalise,” she shook her head. “All I’m saying is you might date more than one fellow at a time to compare and narrow down until you find the one. It’s more efficient.”

  “Right,” I said ruefully. “Efficiency. That’s what dating is all about. But we’re not talking about me, right now.”

  “Anyway, as I was saying, I was dating several nice young men, but then I met someone who was obviously different.”

  Her eyes shone again.

  “His name was Antonio. He came here from Italy with his uncle to help run the family restaurant. He was so handsome—tall, with black hair and flashing eyes and a smile that could melt your heart. He didn’t speak English, and his uncle asked if I could teach him, because he knew that I was fluent in Italian.”

  “Auntie Lil! Why, that’s the stuff of romantic novels.”

  “Oh, it was, sweetie, it was. At first, we just spent time together with me teaching him English in the corner of the restaurant after it closed, but soon we started talking about more than Italian lessons, and he would come over to our house to get to know the family. One day, he asked me to come for the lessons at a later time. Before it was time for me to get there, apparently he had strung beautiful lights all around the garden and even inside the main part of the restaurant.