Culture Shock: a Motion-Sick Meditation

Where are you?

In an alley, in a taxi. Buildings keep rising up to the right and to the left. They obliterate the sky. Lights flash. I can't see past them. We're lurching forward. We're slamming back. Families zip past us on motorbikes: moms, dads, babies in the middle. They turn their heads as they rush by. They peer at us through our rolled-up windows, flashing eyes in the flashing light, and I squint back at them, blinded by the series: eyes and lights and passings. City smells waft toward me, petroleum and sewage. Somewhere ahead, someone's making curry. Oh God, I can't do this. I can't do this.

My wrists are numb. My hands are shaking.

NO.

Where are you?

I closed my eyes! I closed my eyes!

Focus. Where are you?

Oklahoma.

Good.

It's night and my dad is driving. The streetlights are dim. The road is smooth. I'm eight-years-old, and there isn't any traffic. My dad has one hand on the wheel, his wrist is straight, and his other hand is resting on my mom's shoulder. She's half asleep in the seat beside him. I'm in the backseat with my legs tucked up. My head is resting against the cold, glass window. If I breathe deeply enough I can smell the night air and the sweet, prairie grasses. Everything is wide and dark and quiet.

But, oh God, now someone's burning incense. It's so hot here. My back is sweating. We're getting closer to the curry. The smell is stronger.  Why does everyone keep honking? Jolting, jangling, jerking, stopping, my ears can't find the rhythm. I'm shaking. I'm shaking!

NO! Stay focused. Where are you?

Vietnam, and the motorbikes keep whizzing past us. The eyes keep looking. I'm spinning!

I'm shaking!

Comfort

My stomach muscles ached from heaving.

"Are you okay, Mommy," Katherine asked, looking up at me with wide, startled eyes. From the front seat, Chris turned around and patted my knee. "We're almost there, sweetie," he reassured, "just a few more minutes." Then Penelope took over the conversation. "Daddy gave me a bag to hold," she announced proudly. "If you need to throw up again, I will give it to you, but if you don't need to throw up," she shook her head, "then I will hold it. Are sure you're okay, Mommy?" She was holding the bag high up over her head and swinging her feet while she talked. "Do you need to throw up again? Do you want your bag?"

"No, sweetie," I shook my head. "I'm feeling better now. Thank you." I tried to unfurrow my brow, and failed, so I rested my hand in her hair, but in that moment, in that disembodied, flashing moment, I didn't see my hand. I saw my mother's hand, cool and soft and smelling like lavender, brushing the hair off my forehead. I straightened my back. I lowered my shoulders. And the thought came, inchoate and rushing forward:

I'm getting older.

I'm turning into my mother, and it turns out that's a gift; it turns out that's a comfort.