“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Elliott
One of the very specific memories that I have of being a child is the day that I left Lima, Peru for the United States…
March 25, 1975
I have never seen that many tears flow from adults in a single day.
Possibly not even during my sisters funerals.
The ENTIRE family and some close friends came to my grandmother’s house.
Long, long heartfelt hugs
Tears on top of tears
Words of affirmation and love exchanged like coins at the market
My grandmother hugged me and spoke to me with a seriousness that I had never heard before…
“You must take care of your mother and your sisters” she said,
“They are going to need you.”
I promised her I would.
I was 7 years old. I didn’t want to leave.
I remember the airport most of all.
Jorge Chavez International Airport… I remember standing by the door wailing… crying like I had never cried before… feeling the anxiety, the sadness, the pain of separation… of extraction.
And, we left that night…
It would be almost 3 years before I came back to Peru.
When I returned in December of 1977 and walked off the steps of the airplane, I could see the family in the distance.
Everyone came to welcome me. There were literally 40 people or more at the airport.
They were waving standing on top of the terminal where people could stand to see who was getting out of the planes.
I had flown by myself at the age of 10.
I waved like a foreign dignitary, and finally made my way through customs to the awaiting crowd.
The same hugs were tears had been now brought smiles. I was home. And, they were all there to welcome me.
My sister Ana died days after my return to the United States that year… she died on February 13, 1978. When I got home from Peru, her drawings filled my doorway. She missed me, and she wasn’t afraid to tell me just how much. My grandmother, on my father’s side, died less than a month later. I never really helped my father grief… I didn’t understand the pain he must have felt.
I am not sure how many times I went back to Peru in the following years.
The crowds were there to meet me. It was always a little awkward. My mother’s side and father’s side of the family both came to meet me. I always stayed with my mother’s family. I felt bad that my father’s side of the family drove all that way, and often waited hours just to say “welcome”… and, then we would hug and kiss, and they would go their own way. I always felt guilty about that.
When we traveled as a family, my father would go with his sister, and we would go with my mother to her family’s house. That always felt wrong.
We visited Peru in December of 1980 as a family. I remember my oldest sister Dee was very sick that trip. But, she was often sick it seemed. Dee died soon after we came back to the United States. She died on January 21st, 1980. (The day after Iran released the U.S. Hostages… I don’t know why I remember that…)
I don’t remember ever traveling back to Peru after that as a family.
A lot of things changed after that as a family…
We left Peru in 1975 as a family of 5… but after 1981, we started coming back as three individuals, often at different times.
On the trips back, fewer and fewer people seemed to come to the airport to welcome me.
My cousins where in school, or had school the next day, others were in college.
The family was no longer allowed to go out on top of the terminal to see who was coming down the steps of the plane.
I did realize that when I came back by myself, I was the center of attention. When I had come back with my sisters, they always seemed to take center stage.
I came back through the 1980’s… the country was changing. Terrorists started surfacing. The streets were emptier at night. It was often just my mother’s sisters and their husbands picking me up at the airport. I had to decide whose car I was going to ride in back to the house. I always felt guilty for the people I chose not to ride with.
In 1989, I came to Peru with my two closest American friends. There were a handful of people at the airport.
In 1991, was the first time I brought Susy with me. Life was changing. There were a handful of people at the airport.
I can’t believe that was 26 years ago…
My dad moved back to Peru in 1988 by himself. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to move back by himself, having left Peru a family of 5 just 13 years before… These are things I did not fully think through as a kid.
The terrorists made visits in the 1980’s exciting in a different way. You could hear bombs going off in the distance with regularity, and “apagones” or light outages were a common occurance.
My mother stayed behind in the US for a few years. We rented out a room at our 3 bedroom apartment to make ends meet.
When I graduated from college in 1990, I left for Ohio. My mother later that year moved out of the apartment that had been home for over 15 years. I didn’t think a lot about it at the time, but that must have been a really hard day.
Susy and I got married in January of 1993, so after that most trips happened together.
My mother moved back late in 1993 (possibly 1994), and moved back in with my dad.
We came to visit them in 1995 right before we moved to China. My mother and father picked us up at the airport. We now stayed with them when we visited. The family no longer came to welcome us. Clearly, that made all the sense in the world. Everyone had their own lives, in some cases their own children.
Susy and I moved to China and our visits where less often. In December of 1996 we came out with Susy nearly 7 months pregnant. We lived in China at the time and had been back in the US visiting Susy’s family.
The dynamic was interesting… we now were coming home to the US much like I used to come home to Peru…I was a Peruvian twice removed. We had a nice visit. Tension between my parents was always high… which made tension between me and everyone also high.
Nicholas was born in 1997, so our first trip back to Peru as a family of 3 was in September of 1997. We were in Korea on a weekend trip and my aunt called me. I have NO idea how she got my number at the Shilla hotel in Korea, but she did. My father was in critical condition at the hospital. We got on a plane from Korea via San Francisco and got to Peru the next day.
I remember that trip because we had a massive fight with my mother… She didn’t talk to me for months after that. The fight was about her trying to feed Nicholas when he wasn’t hungry… but I think the fight was much more about my mother feeling me a world away and feeling our lives diverging at an unprecendented rate. I also think, that may have been the early stages of dementia starting to show up…
We moved back from China to Cincinnati in 1998. And, then about a month after Lucas was born in 1999, we moved to Austin, Texas. We made a trip to Peru sometime in 2000. Visited my parents.
Wow, that was 16 years ago.
I remember when we would visit Peru… my mother would get SO worked up. She wanted to repaint the house, refinish the floors… she wanted to redo the whole apartment every time we visited. My father as always didn’t want to spend a dime. So, our trips to Peru always came with great disagreement and tension between my parents.
When we would leave Peru after our visits with the kids, my mother would start getting distant days before our departure. It would lead to arguments, fierce arguments with my dad, and at times eventually with me. She would leave the house, and not spend time with us often on our final days. For awhile I thought it was crazy, but then I realized it was just more sadness than she could rationally handle.
Marco came in 2003.
We visited about every 18 months after that.
The trips were always tense between my parents, and delightful for the children.
The attention and love that I had felt as a child, my children got to taste in their early years.
I am so grateful for that.
I came back in 2008 for my father’s 80th birthday.
We came with the family a few times.
I came back in 2013 for my parents 50th anniversary. I was torn about that one, but wanted to make them happy. That was in June of 2013.
We came back in the Spring of 2014 and my mother was continually more lost, and the fights between my mother and father had reached epic proportions. I left so deeply sad after that trip. I don’t know that I realized it at the time, but that was the end of something. I now wept in the modern and brightly lit eatery of the airport, not the dark entrance way that I had wept in 1975. And, I was not the young boy, but the grown man and father, with my own family of 5 in tow.
In May of that year, my mother went into a home. My father was depressed and angry by how little he was consulted, but it was time.
I now come to Peru 2 – 4 times a year to check in on my parents.
Yesterday, I flew to Peru, and the drastic difference in my experience is hard to ignore. It is not sad… quite on the contrary… it is wonderful. Nobody was waiting at the airport. Why should they? Travel between Peru and the US is now a common occurrence and we are all adults. I rented my own car, and listened to the radio on my way to my father’s apartment. There was a time where my father argued with me on the phone that he should come to pick me up. His age, and the late hour of the arrivals makes that no longer an issue.
I walked into his apartment and sat on his bed. I held his hand and hugged him. He was so very happy to see me, and his body laid still in the night. He will soon be 89 and I will soon be 50.
I still feel this very connected sense to Peru… it’s deep and hard to put into words.
It is no longer the place where I belong, but more the place where I am from.
It’s funny as a child I “left” Peru… and now, Peru goes with me in some form, wherever I go.
I walked off the plane last night into the cool breeze. I looked up at the sky and was grateful… grateful for the ability to be able to skip between continents easily and safely, grateful to have the means to make that happen, grateful to have all of this be a part of who I am, grateful to be past the deep tensions between my parents… grateful for my family in Peru and in the US... grateful to be my own man... grateful for all of it.
I left as 5 in 1975 and I, God willing, I will return as 5 (4 physically present) in 2017 when I turn 50…
For so many years I WISHED... I wished I never left, I wished I didn't have to leave when I came to visit, I wished my parents didn't feel as they did toward each other...I wished and wished... so full of disharmony.
It has been 41 years since I left Peru... and there has been a continuous flow into greater harmony and less disharmony along the way... It has not been linear, it's been exponential. And, it's been only in the last few years that the corner was fully turned... and I continue to turn it.
Life has been full and good and amazing and sad…
Growing up, I never realized is not a process that ends, but rather flows… and then transitions…
The son becomes the father, the father becomes the son, and the circle of life continues…
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Elliott
HOME is where the HARMONY "IS"...
Nestor