2001-08-02 - 11:25 a.m.
all that you can't leave behind (ii)

i'd sooner chew my leg off than get trapped in this

Three hours on a train. After a while, I switch CDs to U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind." I was going to use this travel time to write letters or read one of the books I brought, but I can:t. I watch the scenery and think about my family. I don:t even know yet that compared to the rest of the day, this will be serene down time. Every now and then, the conductor comes through or we make a stop and I have to go back to my real seat, next to my brother, right behind my parents. I keep my headphones on.

My tendency is to take my brother:s side in disputes between him and my mother. Her complaint is usually that he:s "surly" or "grumpy," and she gets deeply offended by the fact that he doesn:t respond effusively to her attempts at small talk. I:ve tried to explain to her that there have been other 15-year-olds in the history of the world who have, upon getting older, ceased to behave in the same way they did when they were younger; I:ve mentioned, furthermore, that a certain reticence in discussing one:s day-to-day affairs with one:s parents is often a sign not of emotional disturbance or hatred of one:s parents but of adolescence. And since my mother and I have had such major problems, it is easier for me to identify with the complaints my brother has, having had similar (sometimes the very same) issues.

But I spent the last year 635 miles away, and had plenty of time to forget what it:s like on the other end of it. 15-year-olds, for the most part, have no tact, and it:s easier to allow for this from a distance than from close up.

all the beauty trapped inside

My mother thinks my brother hasn:t gotten any personality traits from her. I asked her where she thought his ludicrous effusiveness, his performing personality, came from. My mother might be the silliest person I know, and I know some pretty silly people. I can:t go out to dinner with her without having to shush her a few times for her weird free-associating, or singing, or sheer hebephrenia.[1]

It:s not my dad:s influence that brought us such hits as "Pay Attention To Me."

But if you just met my mom, you would only get the nervous, brittle side. People who:ve only talked to her on the phone keep telling me that she made them nervous, like they:d done something wrong, or there was some big problem they didn:t know about. There:s a running joke in the movie Almost Famous, where different characters end up talking to the main character's mom on the phone, and they always end up saying something like, "You know, your mom kind of freaked me out."

My mom freaks herself out. She can:t help it. It would be too scary to stop.

More green terrain goes by. More villages, more cemetaries--lots and lots of cemetaries. Lots of tunnels, too. We fly into the blackness of the tunnel without warning, and it:s like the sun went out. Then we burst out into the light and the green trees again. It:s a reassuring feeling. It was still there, even when I couldn:t see it.

My mom is talking about some food or other. My mom:s gastrointestinal obsessions mystify me, but whatever. She says she can:t eat all of something because whatever it is will "Have an effect on me."

My brother replies, "What *doesn:t* have an effect on you?"

i'd rather be anywhere doing anything

We get to our station, lug out our bags. My dad begins the process of finding out how we get to our next train. We sit by the bags, mostly. I:m compressing a lot of time into one paragraph here because it:s just not that interesting. My dad tries to call the hotel, but the number we got was missing a digit. My mom says the best thing for us all to do is try to be serene in order to balance out my dad:s agitation. I do not comment.

My dad finds an information desk and asks them what train we take next. They tell us we take the #5 bus.

Okay, then. We go out, find the bus stop, catch the #5 bus. They have no baggage facilities either. We share the back row of the bus with our stuff.

that is obscene

I amend that statement in my mind. Next time, just me. Just me and a backpack. I:ll ditch my big stupid suitcase for one of those really big backpacks from Europe Through the Back Door, stay in youth hostels and take care of my damn self. Just me, my big Rick Steves backpack, and my little Jansport backpack.

That sounds really good right now.

At one stop, my mom goes up front with the one printout of hotel information we have to ask the bus driver whether this is, in fact, taking us anywhere near the hotel. He has little English and she has less Japanese. The Japanese locals--this isn:t exactly a bustling tourist area--on the bus sigh and shift in their seats. Stupid Americans, their collective ki says loud and clear. I am suddenly pissed off at them. My mother is doing what she needs to do to try to get her family from one place to another. Yeah, stupid Americans trying to get where they're going, asking questions. You have no idea what our day has been like. Don't you judge us.

Someone up front speaks good English and tells my mother what stop to get off at, that he:s getting off at the same stop. We go along and along, and we get to what:s probably the end of the line.

The bus fare, for the four of us, is about forty-five dollars.

The helpful guy gets us into a taxi, gets us oriented and on our way. We thank him effusively and try not to think about what would have happened to us had he not been there. "God sent you," my mother tells him. He laughs, embarrassed, and says "You're welcome."

[1] The tendency to laugh inappropriately.

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