The States, 1978: A Preschooler’s Travel Review (Side A)

Back when my parents were serving in Thailand as missionaries, the expectation was that every four or five years, the family took a year-long furlough in their passport country. The time away from what had become the homeland was spent connecting with supporting churches, speaking and giving updates, visiting family, and hopefully getting rest and enjoying what the country we called "The States" had to offer.

Our first furlough was in 1978. I was four years old and retain a whirl of impressions that, although vague, are real and are anchored in time and place by subsequent conversations with my mom.

It was a time of firsts: my first ride in an airplane, first time meeting grandparents, aunts, and uncles, who had only met my toddler sister and me through pictures, letters, and taped narrations. There was so much to learn: my first snow, first McDonald's, (mostly first) TV, American theme parks, treats, travels, churches, relatives, and the concepts of Christmas, birthday parties, and chicken pox. My world before then, at least the most familiar, had been a remote village in Thailand--simple, quiet, with lots of outside playtime and candlelit nights. If my parents had not been the constant in our lives, our sojourn in the place our birth certificates declared we belonged would have been overwhelming.

The airplanes were so big. My siblings and I stood at the window of the Bangkok airport pointing out the aircraft and their various sizes. I can still see their round nosecones and giant, window-lined fuselages bespeaking grace and power. "Yes, they are big," my mother agreed, to my satisfaction. "And these are even bigger than the ones we saw earlier." My mother, who knew things, helping me place these planes according to size. We were having a good time at that window.

Our furlough was divided in two: our time before the missionary training camp in Pennsylvania, where my little brother was born, and the months after. I'm not sure on which side all of these events fall, but I'm guessing our earliest days involved a lot of relatives in Central New York State.

One of the places I remember best in New York is the house on Franklin Street we rented in Auburn. I see the sheets on my bed, and TV. Who wouldn't keep an impression of yellow sheets with a pattern of shrinking and swelling flowers running up and down them? And rough orange coverlets so that my sister and I had matching beds? That TV in the living room is unforgettable. It's where I saw Big Bird mispronouncing "Mr. Hooper," and watched a cartoon Lucy and Susan peering out in anguish as Aslan's killers marched by. TVs in others' homes is where the MASH theme song became a backdrop to American life--even if I wasn't watching it, I heard it, and the helicopters and wise-cracking doctors and their familiar faces were all connected to life in The States. Gilligan's Island has stayed with me as well.

It was on Franklin Street that my mom made a refrigerator-box playhouse for my sister and me in the backyard. And it was in New York that we went to junior church at Second Baptist, where the serious older lady up front would call out the prize seats at the end, and I felt that I had been good, but never won. (Years later, as an eleven-year-old, I went back and was surprised at how tiny the junior church set-up was. I had the impression of a large hall, where I had to crane my neck to view the teacher. I remembered her as being on a stage because I was looking up, but there was no stage, no hall, just some rows of chairs in a basement room; I had grown and the place had stayed the same. And those prize seats had probably been pre-determined.)

Second Baptist had the four-year-old Sunday school where two older ladies talked to us kindly and played the piano. For birthdays, they would bring out a little cake and sing to us. My eyes followed the attractive confection with its stiff white icing and pastel-colored candles. I so wanted it to be sweet, real, and accessible, but it didn't take long for me to realize that it was a representation of the genuine article. Despite my disappointment in the birthday charade, I didn't mind Sunday school. However, when we came back from Pennsylvania after a rather elaborate commemoration of my fifth year, I remember standing at a basement door at Second Baptist. I must have been upset, because I was looking up at the sign that my mom was pointing out while she said soothingly, "See? This sign says 4 AND 5-year-olds." Thus persuaded, I entered, and in due time was feted with the usual ceremony in recognition of turning a year older.

Furlough meant being in the car, traveling to see people and visiting churches. I don't really remember what would have been a series of Sunday services and new faces, but I know the view of the front of the car, my dad driving and the tape deck in the middle of the dash. "Dumbo" was the Disney tape my parents put up with on repeat. I was a little muddled on the story, with Timothy the mouse and the singing crows; at some point then or later, I realized that we'd listen to side B and then circle back around to the beginning of the tale later on.

In one vehicle, probably a station wagon, my sister and I sat in the very back and watched the scenery retreat from the rear window. Seatbelts were not a priority. I remember my dad picking each of us up and unceremoniously loading us into our compartment from the tailgate. When we got out later, my dad hurriedly brushed carpet threads from our dresses and stockings. My sister at two had a finely-tuned restaurant alert system where she would call out "Mc-DONallldss" any time we passed a brightly lit golden 'M.' We had apparently been exposed to an effective ad campaign.

(Story continues on Side B. Companion illustrations included below.)