It wasn’t supposed to happen. I did everything I could to avoid it. I generously budgeted the precious commodity–time–to have plenty of it to spend with friends grabbing a last beer, or final coffee, a closing conversation, a definitive night of debauchery etc., where we could all sigh nostalgically and offer mutual allowences of how we would miss each other, but still see each other soon.
But when the goodbye gatherings had ended, the adíoses said, the prospect of leaving Guatemala after four years felt like I was attending my own funeral. The cab ride to the airport seemed more like a trip to an abortion clinic. My heartbeat made my entire body vibrate and a nervous snake awoke in my stomach.
One Last Coffee, Better Add Some Alcohol
8am, I grabbed an Irish coffee to say goodbye to Lori, one of the first people I had said hello to in Guatemala. “I’m not happy about this, Armstrong,” she told me outside the cab.
“I know,” I said. “I’m not either.”
After spending a hungover day on planes an in airports (my last night spent in Guatemala I partied like there was no tomorrow. Because, well, there wasn’t).
My brother Tyler met me at baggage claim in Pensacola, Florida. He gave me a high five and a swig from the gallon jug of water he was carrying (he’s a thirsty guy) and this was how one story ends and another begins.
It ends a 5 year chapter beginning with me finishing college in Chile, hitch-hiking from Chile to Guatemala, and settling in Guatemala for 4 years to work in educational development and health.
Travel cuts your spirit into pieces. The idea of home blurs and you never feel fully at home, since the people you love are here, there and everywhere.
Coast To Coast
Meeting up with my brother Tyler, we have vague plans to drive from the East Coast to the West playing music, writing, me finishing and my novel, writing songs, and eventually settling in Portland, Oregon.
This is Tyler’s first time on the road like this and I see a flame in him that I’ve learned to recognize in the mirror. He’s not settling, he’s throwing himself out into the world resolved only to settle when he finds a life that meets his hopes, expectations, and dreams.
I’m in that same boat again, and whenever trouble we run into along the way, we’ll face together.
That’s the way it’s always been for us. When we were kids our parents called us Lewis and Clark, always off on some eccentric adventure in the woods, or sewers, or gullies away from boring seriousness of the adult world.
-LA
