The Adventure of a Seventy-Four-Year-Old Wrinkled Teenager

Months ago, I started the complicated process of trying to participate on-site at a United Nations Headquarters intergovernmental meeting on migration. Hey, it was not easy, as I am just a representative of a Dallas institution that happens to have status as a non-governmental organization with that world body, and migration, legal and illegal, is something that impacts not only this city but the region and the whole state of Texas. However, you, whether you are in the US or abroad, might know about that, and it is not the point of this story.

I got in!! Wow!!

That’s where the adventure started. Since I have a rather limited budget, I used miles I had accumulated in better times to get a round trip ticket. A very close friend, a brother for more than three decades, offered me plush accommodations for the week but was told by the place that they were full and could only put me up for two nights. The meeting was for five days, and my round-trip ticket was for eight nights, the last three at my friend’s Long Island beach house.

How was I going to cover three nights, hotels being out of sight? There was no way I could afford even afford seventy dollars a night in a cheap Airbnb. I called one friend, but that did not work. I thought and thought and called a second friend. Yes, even though she was renting what had been her bedroom there was a place for me, either in a kind of tiny loft above her apartment (I had slept there before) or her couch, as she was leaving for a trip to visit her family abroad. Yeah! Of course, I was going to sleep on the couch! I wouldn’t have to juggle getting down from the platform that I had slept on in the mini loft.

But as the time for going came closer, I realized I didn’t even have the two to three hundred dollars to cover the subway, the bus, the cheap pizza slices, the coffees, the yoghurts I would have to buy to survive before going to Long Island. And, what if something went wrong? Hey, I had survived working on the floor and eating with chickens walking around on a mission in Cambodia but that was three decades ago when I was just in my forties.

Scrapping and bowing down to ask for an advance partial payment for something I was renting, I managed to have the two hundred.

However, almost fifty disappeared when my dearest producer could not take me to the airport, and I could not take the train. You see, I had put myself on a six in the morning flight, as that was a way of using fewer miles for the plane. Of course, the train was off duty at three and four!

At the airport, there was another surprise. The super cheap ticket did not entitle one to have a real carryon. Would I have to pay thirty dollars to have it checked? Pfew! A young man told me that it did not apply to those who had used miles. I barely managed to stow the super-heavy carryon above my seat. Well, a wonderful, smiling, young, male flight attendant helped. After all, I am an old lady!

You see, I had to have a suit for the meetings, a lovely skirt and top in case of some event (I was already invited to one), several other tops as the suit, one of my favorite safari outfits full of pockets included a skirt and pants, but I certainly couldn’t appear looking the same every day, two pairs of pretty, low-heeled shoes, and a silk nightgown. After all, I had even been a high-level consultant on some UN missions! Yes, vanity!

What was I wearing? A dark gray jogging suit, matching black running shoes all topped by a light gray, nineteen seventies almost designer raincoat.

Arriving at Newark Airport, I had to haul that heavy carryon to the platform where I could take the air train to the rail station for the train to Penn Station. I almost didn’t make it, as in addition to that carryon I had a what can be called a flexible computer case which included, beside the computer I am using right now, my toiletries, and other necessities. It made going down a long staircase, because the escalator did not work, something that made me smile with a wince. But I am a runner!!

Worse was the walk from Penn Station to the glamor of the club where I would be staying for two nights. My tongue almost sticking out after hauling everything for more than ten blocks, I offered a great smile to clerk on duty at the club. Finally in the room, after heaving all that stuff up a couple of staircases, as the prestigious club dates from the nineteenth century and the part I was staying in had been renovated but no elevator put in, I plunked myself on the room’s impeccable bed.

I went out that evening with my ‘brother’ to hear a choir in a church. The singing was sad and joyful, uplifting and sometimes very thought provoking. It provoked me into forgetting my favorite combined sun and reading classes in the bathroom. After many calls, a pair was brought to me a couple of days later — wrong ones. You can’t win everything.

The next day, off I went to the UN, where little envelopes were given to each of the non-governmental, registered participants, right before we started the now standard procedure of getting in, that is showing your ID, your vaccination cards, taking off your coat, going through the machine that checked whether you were carrying something dangerous and finally smiling to the security guard on the other side. Inwardly, I cringed but widened my lips. Guess what? The guards, men and women from different parts of the world, did the same. Looking around it dawned upon me that they were reacting to the fact that I was probably one of the oldest coming into that hollowed place!!

As others walked from the security section into the giant terrace outside the building, two ladies and I started talking. We wound up taking pictures together before entering the building itself.

Had a little problem that day trying to find a place to have lunch that would not take up too much of my dwindling card or cash reserves. Then, I remembered one and actually ate very well on less than fifteen dollars, with the young people there smiling when I told them I remembered when the place had been opened in the nineteen nineties. Had a second problem. The shoes I was wearing, beautiful Ferragamo loafers, were a little tight and not meant for hopping on and off busses and walking quickly several blocks at a time. I came back to the prestigious club to find two of my right foot toes covered in blood.

Next day, I wore my safari suit with a pair of what I had always thought were fake snakeskin loafers I had bought in a sale in Geneva years ago. Turns out, the skin is very real. One of the UN guards noticed and with a wink came out with, “Now we know who the well-dressed rich are!” The guard on the other side of the dreaded scanner somehow noticed I was cold. After all, the day I left Dallas, we had reached some nine five degrees. In New York it was in the sixties. I gave her a hand. She felt my almost frozen fingers. The day after she asked me if I was better. The same happened with another guard who would not let me pass through a gate to get to a meeting room — not being a delegate or staff, one could only use specific gates!! The next day, when he was at the door of the balcony General Assembly room where we, as observers were relegated to, he and I had a rather long conversation. A joke I made in an elevator got the elevator attendant to even laugh. By Friday, they were all asking when they would see me again.

These were all firsts. The quirky, quick, lively older lady was somehow good for them who had so little contact with people for the two years the UN had been had been essentially closed to live humans during the pandemic lockdown.

Of course, by this time I was no longer at the prestigious club but had had to walk my way to the nearest busses that took me cross and uptown almost all the way to Columbia University to my girlfriend’s apartment. I wore my jogging outfit and shoes to do that and plunked myself on her sofa when I finally made it. Thankfully, normal, large food stores were close by so that I bought the essentials to feed myself properly. However, my funds went really down. They had dwindled to less than fifty dollars by Friday afternoon when I had to haul my stuff to the jitney to Long Island.

There was a ten blocks walk to the bus. And guess what? It started raining, not simply raining but pouring. As I dragged the carryon, barely able to keep the computer bag from turning over, while holding an umbrella over my head and shoulders, I could see that water was covering the wheels of the carryon. What would be soaked? Then, at the stop where the jitney was supposed to pick me up, I learned that I would have to wait as everything was late because of a big accident. Thankfully, I and those who also there for their jitneys, as there were different ones, were protected by the roofed scaffolding of the building at the stop. Luck was holding out!

I made it to Long Island and a wonderful welcome of my ‘brother’ just a bit before midnight. For the first time that week, I slept like a log in the guestroom of a very comfortable house.

No worries for Saturday or Sunday. There was a leisurely trip through the flea markets of the area, where my brother was looking for picture frames, and I stumbled upon an English, that is American English, translation of Jewish sacred books, one printed in 1922. We got that for free.

The Saturday evening we had dinner at the neighbors, people I had first met at least ten years ago. As the hostess and I started our own little conversation after desert, we fell upon something which brought us very close. It turned out we both had German Shepherds we loved dearly. She had three, and I had two, though one of mine is still happy and alive across the Atlantic Ocean.

Sunday morning I ran, not much, probably not covering more than two miles, but it was good, with the ocean and the boats of a marina giving the run its special air.

However, Monday morning, I had to pack again and wondered if I should take the heavy book of Jewish Holy Scripture with me. I somehow managed to push it into the carryon which now seemed to weigh a ton. My friend brought me to the jitney. I stopped at the place where there was supposed to be a bus to LaGuardia Airport. Instead, there were taxi hawkers. It was getting dangerously close to departure time for my plane.

I was losing hope when one young man told me to cross the street and take the number forty-four bus. When I was about to do that the bus driver told me to cross back and take the air train after taking same bus in the other direction. I crossed again. However, that bus driver told me to go back to the original side as that would take me to the number forty-eight bus which would drive directly into the airport. I was sure I was going to miss my plane.

When the driver of the second forty-four bus stopped, I told him to have patience as I got the money out to pay him. He waved me in and told me to sit down. One free ride. Time was flying. He also told me when to get off and cross the street, one overflowing with people glad to be free from the bounds of the pandemic. I saw the number forty-eight bus and ran as quickly as I could, dragging the carryon and barely holding on to the bulging computer bag.

Again, this second bus driver waived me in. I did not pay. I counted the minutes as we went the length of a main street in Queens, then down towards LaGuardia. I breathed in relief only to be struck by the hundreds of people in the security lines.

I made it to discover, as I stopped to check things after taking the escalator, that I had left my cellphone in one of those pans that go through the screening mechanism. I literally got on my knees and cried out but went down to the screening floor to try to see if I could recuperate it. After all, the cellphone had everything, including my ticket to the plane. Miracle! The security guards found it. Like the crazy woman I was, I ran up the escalator and down the halls to my gate. I was the last person on the plane, one with my stuff.

But that was not the end. I had a stopover in Washington DC and feared that I would have to pay for the carryon bag to be checked. By this time, I had a total of less than ten dollars. Incredibly, the attendants at the gate announced that there were so many people and so much luggage that they would check bags for free. I almost jumped to the counter and offered my carryon. My fears turned to thanks from the attendants as those of us who volunteered our bags even got to be put in the second group of people to come on board. I had been in group number four.

So, I made it back to Dallas, where my dear producer was waiting with his car. I even got to go and buy milk for the coffee I am drinking today.

Though I am not Jewish, I have kissed the Holy Book that is now by my side. Its added weight and profound meaning did a play a role in the teenlike responses and the unexpected positive outcomes to the final challenges on this trip of a lifetime.