No. Privado

6:46 am. My alarm goes off, just like it always does. I hit snooze, just like I always do.

6:51 am. My travel alarm clock goes off again. Again, I hit snooze, knowing it will only go off one more time.

6:56 am. If I hit snooze this time, the alarm won’t go off again. There’s no Kevin Bowles snoozing with this clock. Three warnings and it’s done. “I don’t have to be at work until 8:30,” I think. Even on days when I have to be at work at 8 I trust my internal clock to let me sleep an extra twenty minutes or so until 7:15. So far it’s worked.

7:04 am. My phone rings. I groggily look at my phone. “No. Privado.” Private number. That’s what it says when someone from home calls me from their calling card. It’s all I need know. They would never call this early. I’m prepared to pick up the phone and say, “I’m on my way home.” I already knew my parents had ended a kayaking trip my dad was taking in western Maryland a day early to head back to Boston. “Did I wake you up?” my dad asks. I lie and say no.

12:30 pm. I’m picked up by Moreno, my organization’s go-to taxi driver, at my apartment. “You’re leaving already?” he asks. I tell him I’m just going home for a week. I feel so detached from home I’m not ready to say why I’m going home. We both sit quietly and listen to the static laced radio for the twenty-minute ride to the airport.

2:55 pm. I board my plane. A large southern flight attendant greets everyone. When an Indian man in the row in front of me attempts to put his carry-on bag under the seat in front of him she demands that he put it in the overhead compartment. This turns into a JetBlue security officer getting on the plane and one of the pilots coming into the fuselage to ask the man to apologize (I’m not sure what for). The flight attendant is very antagonistic. I wonder if she thinks he’s Middle Eastern. I’m sure she does. I think she’s going to keep at it until he’s kicked off the plane. Things finally smooth over.

3:10 pm. We are taxiing onto the lone runway at the airport. “Well folks, welcome back to reality!” the same flight attendant says over the intercom. Hmm, I think to myself. I’m not so sure that this applies to me. I think of the long warm shower I’ll take when I get home. I think of my comfortable bed, my dog, and New England foliage. I think about how when I get home I don’t have to guess if there’s going to be electricity, or water for that matter. Her connotation of reality seems to be a bad thing. Despite the somber circumstances I think I’m looking forward to this reality.

6:30 pm. JFK. Immigration. My bag. Customs.

7:08 pm. Re-checking my bag I ask if I can get on an earlier flight (than my scheduled 10:30 pm flight). “Oh yeah, I’m sure we have one before then…oh no it just left at 7.”

7:30 pm. Dunkin Donuts in the terminal.

11:30 pm. After an hour delay, boarding begins. At the gates next to me, passengers wait to board their flight to Santiago, Dominican Republic. A Hispanic man in a Kansas City Royals hat goes down the boarding line for my flight asking if anyone has change for a dollar. He gets to me. “Creo que si.” I reach into my pocket; I hold out three quarters, and two 10 peso Dominican coins in my palm. The man looks at where my flight is going, and then back at me, he’s flabbergasted. “Hang on.” I find a fourth quarter in my other pocket.

1:00 am. Logan. Despite resorting to pre-1990 methods of communication I still get picked up. I know where to wait. My dad knows where to pick me up. I get in the car. He had hit his head on a rock over the weekend while rolling over in his whitewater kayak. The gash on his forehead makes him look like Mikhail Gorbachev. I comment. “It looks a lot better than it did before,” I’m eventually told.

1:30 am. I spend about forty-five minutes in the shower and go to bed.

9:30 am. I wake up. Complete silence. “It must be seven in the morning,” I think to myself. That’s the only way it could be this quiet. There are no people hawking produce outside, no constant drone of motoconcho engines. I get up and walk downstairs. It’s 9:30. Everyone else is already up. The floor is freezing. I put on socks for the first time in a long time. Welcome back to reality.