The four engine propellor plane rattled and buzzed with waves and ripples of sound.  That flight seemed to last forever. It was a chartered plane; I believe a DC 6 very like the one in the photo above. We were headed for New York with other missionary families going on leave to their home places to rest and raise funds. My sister and I were

jammed into one seat between mom and dad.

We traveled via many refueling stop, including Khartoum, I had heard “cartoon”, instead of Khartoum, and thought we were going to stop somewhere a bit like Disney Land. Instead, we looked out the plane’s tiny windows onto a dry and dusty empty space with a dirty runway. What a disappointment!!

The next stop was Cairo, and that was more interesting. We were allowed out of the plane into the terminal for a break. Walking across the pavement to the terminal was hot! Much hotter than Kenya. But there was strange cool air in the building, air conditioning!  That wasn’t the only new thing. My sister and I and the other young missionary kids on board discovered automatic doors for the first time. We ran in and out, delighted with the magic doors, until airport staff stopped us because we were letting out the cool air.

Back in the plane, the interminable flight continued. My sister and I took turns sleeping on the floor or our seat, or on our parents. Mom read to us for hours. I remember kneeling to with coloring book and crayons crammed close to my sister. We stopped in Paris, and dad took photos of mom, my sister and I in front of the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower. I don’t remember much besides being very tired despite dad’s enthusiasm.

The long difficult trip emphasized the great gap between the world we were leaving and the world our parents called home. Our parents had made us memorize the American Pledge of Allegiance so we would be ready to say it at school in the US every morning. Mom and Dad had rehearsed with us the names of our aunts, uncles and cousins.  We were to see dad’s parents first and then to on to stay at Grandpa and Grandma Nichols.  We were to be very polite and obedient. I did remember mom’s parents a bit, and I knew Duke and Trixie, the black and white ponies, lived with them so I was happy about that.

Finally, we were in New York. Dizzy with jet lag and exhaustion, I clung to dad’s hand. We got through customs, and it seemed like a group of people rushed at us. Dad dopped my hand. I stood stiffly as people who seemed like strangers hugged me.  Names flew around.  Mom and dad talked excitedly.  We got into what seemed to me to be an enormous car.  The seats were squishy, and the car swayed gently over bumps, very different from our VW bug in Kenya. I think my dad’s father had arranged that car for us to use while we were in the US. It was huge light brown thing, maybe a Buick.  We stopped to see an elderly relative of some kind, maybe a great aunt.  They took a photo of us with the great aunt that maybe shows a bit of the dazed being hugged by strangers feeling.

Some of the people who had met us were my mom’s younger sister Ruth and her family. We went to their house in Philadelphia next, I think. Uncle John was a missionary pastor to inner city there. My cousin Rick, near my age and his little sister Donna Joe who was born after we were in Kenya were there. Rick moved in a clunky determined way and always wore cowboy boots. He had curly hair and seemed so sure of himself. When we went to go out into the yard to play, there wasn’t a yard!  Only a little paved area!  There was nothing green anywhere near their house.  All night we heard traffic and sirens.  In the morning everything was covered with gritty soot. Whew! Kenya was WAY better. They had a hard missionary job!

From there we drove to Spartansburg, the tiny Northwestern Pennsylvania town near which mom’s parents lived. “Make sure you say hello and visit BEFORE you ask about the ponies!” mom said. Getting out of the car was interesting. Even though I didn’t consciously remember it, oddly I knew this place!  It felt right. There was the huge maple tree with a swing in it, the green lawn and rich, humid, and hot summer air, the porch swing. Strange to me, but weirdly familiar. Mom had kept my memories of my Grandparents alive; I’d seen my grandparents’ pictures and heard some of their weekly blue airmail letters read aloud.  I was okay with getting a hug from them!   In the house, although it seemed a strange new place to me, I knew where things were. The living room was through there; the kitchen was that way. The bathroom was right in there. The core of that farmhouse had been built right after the civil war. The uneven and slightly tilted wooden floors felt different and kind of soft after the cement floors in Kenya, but still familiar. The smell was familiar too, barn coats, old wood, and woodsmoke from the Ben Franklin stove.  The room my sister and I shared was familiar too, but I saw it with new more understanding eyes. I could tell now that the bricks in the corner were part of the chimney for the Ben Franklin stove downstairs. The marks in the big beam over my sister’s bed were the ax marks from where it had been hewed by hand. My sister had a double bed with a white cast iron bedstead. I had a twin bed near the chimney with a brass headboard that bonged like a bell if I bumped it. Between us was a gable window with a yellowish handmade desk rather like a big table under it. There were books in a row on the back of the desk. Already I loved books. Among the books was a “reader” published more than 100 years earlier with the most amazing short stories and poems. I think it was McGuffy’s Fifth Reader. They way I felt staying in that room was a weird mixture of being a stranger in a strange land and being oddly comfortable and at home.