Airborne

By Charlotte Watters

     What defines “coming of age”? Obvious things come to mind, such as taking on responsibility or having to sort out a situation too complex for your years. Yet, growing up can occur in something as simple as a decision one suddenly has to make––something slapped upon you like that unwelcome, yet inevitable, cold spout of shower water. It does not have to involve life or death, a harrowing consequence or even someone dear to you. In my case, all it takes is the all-too-real possibility of being alone in a foreign country for two weeks, and somehow navigating Europe and Los Angeles to get myself home.

       In June, I packed my suitcase with hands flushed from excitement, pressing random clothing into plastic bags, haphazardly squashing the air out and thrusting them into the awaiting maw of luggage. I shook with nervous energy, waiting those painstaking hours until that agonizing plane landed. I waited until I was sure I would choke the next toddler who sneezed and I was dangerously close to screaming for air conditioning. The day I chose to fly, apparently the pilots were being attacked by snowmen––and my seat remained a sticky toaster for fourteen hours. Forever later, my mother and I landed in Zürich, Switzerland, ready to collapse from nauseating airplane food and a tarmac-in-Phoenix temperature cabin. Needless to say, I certainly was not enthusiastic about jumping on a plane soon. In fact, I was pretty much dreading ever boarding an aircraft ever again, though I knew I had to get home somehow. We spent about two days recouping in Zürich before gathering up my two forty-pound bags, and my mother’s own bag, and taking the local tram to the central train station. Once aboard the ICE train, we faced our three station changes, each about five minutes apart and a country we had never been, nor knew anyone who had. We left civilized, organized, and rather boring German-Switzerland and emerged into breathtakingly beautiful, cluttered and rude French-Switzerland. We passed Lake Geneva after miraculously making one train change, and I looked out over what seemed like the biggest, more pure expanse of ocean I had ever seen. But no, astonishingly, it was a humbly clear lake. I looked out at pine trees and aspens, rolling fields of honey wheat and plush grass, at sleepy villages and racing cities.

     What felt like millions of miles later, I somehow ended up in Leysin, Switzerland. Leysin is a town of about one thousand people, positioned at an altitude of 4,144 feet up the side of the Bernuse Alps Region. It is a ridiculous concept of a city, built on the side of a rocky outcropping, with roads nearing a vertical incline and half the year is spent under five feet of snow––yet it stands there anyways. Known for its pure air and phenomenal skiing, there is one other thing that Leysin is world-renowned because of: international schools. There are about six in that little area, and the town’s population triples during the school year. In fact, I was attending a one-month summer program at the Swiss-American International School of Leysin, a place built to look like a modernized Swiss cabin. The dorms were photocopies of an Ikea magazine, the roads cobblestone and the walls pine paneling. Radiators dotted the walls, and rain eternally streaked the windows.

     I could go on about the fantastic adventures I had at camp itself, the inside jokes and the bonding moments, the European-club-like dances and the tennis I played. Jumping off a mountain and soaring above the Moléson peak, more than 6,500 feet in the air, and white-water rafting down an abandoned quarry runoff stream. The people I met, singing the national anthems from our 42 countries, (screaming America’s at the top of our lungs) and the culture I soaked in. And truly, I could go on forever about what happened there, and I would like absolutely nothing more. Yet, that was not what made me actually, well, grow up.

     I was having the time of my life, about one week in. I had friends, there was a dance tonight and positively everyone was dressing to the nines––when my mother called. She had been staying in Barcelona, Spain, practicing her Spanish and having just a miserable time. She was sick, missing work, and readily desperate to go home. She took the train to Leysin, with her luggage, and came to me at the camp. We talked for a long while, as she was leaving the very next morning for Zürich, to fly home. I could join her, leave the greatest experience I had ever had, and . . . leave. The thought alone of dropping everything I had going in this absolutely amazing place made my heart melt away. So we continued talking.

     Everything was booked from the week before I was scheduled to leave until a week after, with no way to move anything around. It was tomorrow or two and a half weeks, nothing more, nothing less. The school provided transportation to Geneva’s airport, but not to Zürich’s. I had to leave the next day or navigate the trains and fly home alone for the first time in my life, on a fourteen hour plane with a connection in Los Angeles. And, honestly, it took me a while to decide.

     My mother was making some phone calls to various airlines, and I walked back into the main building (called Savoy) and had dinner with my friends in the cafeteria. Laughing, talking, forgetting about absolutely everything else in the entire world. While sipping mineral water and eating pasta with mystery meat sprinkled in, swapping gossip from the day and making plans of shoe exchanges, I gathered my strength and walked back out to my mom. I stared directly into her throughly exhausted eyes and said with a bubbling heart and a desperate soul: “I want to stay.” 

     Miracles of miracles, she let me. Even to this day, it's hard for me to believe that she did.  You’re not staying in foreign country with no relatives to call and taking three trains to a foreign airport where you do not speak the language and flying home next to a stranger. You will fly home with me, saving us tons of money and you will be safe. You're not leaving, no, no, you are not.

     Yet, yet––I did. I did it all, on my own. That last day in my dorm room, after a trip to Italy for a week with the camp, I felt the nervousness sink into my bones. Had I had an eighth, no, a sixteenth, of an ounce of energy left, I would have been terrified. Yet, I had cried and cried, saying goodbye to friends I will keep for a lifetime, and cried through packing my suitcases and cried in my empty room, my dear roommate long gone. When I was sure my eyes were painfully dry, I let exhaustion keep away every other emotion and for a second, absolutely everything in the world was okay. Sleep overwhelmed and peace ensued. 

     I rode on three different trains for four hours, finding the platforms in under five minutes, not losing a bag and even buying myself breakfast. I got to the airport in plenty of time, relaxed a little and shopped, nursing a calm-yourself-Charlotte-Ellen Ben&Jerry’s cup of brownie ice cream. I sat in that same little, oddly moist, roasting seat for that same 14 hours, watched the same movies, ate the same hideous food, and endured cranky passenger after hungry baby and landed in Los Angeles. There, I got hopelessly lost after navigating customs, and would have burst out sobbing when I saw my mother standing there, waiting for me, holding a Starbucks latte, smiling. Instead, I was so zoned out with exhaustion, I burst out laughing. I stood somber for a moment, not quite comprehending, and in a sudden realization it occurred to me that in those 30 hours I had been awake, I had managed to get out of a foreign country with 70 pounds of luggage, not speaking the language and, for at least a few minutes, had absolutely no more responsibility.

     So, my coming of age story is not the most dramatic tale of my grandmother dying or me getting caught in a jet turbine. I could have spiced it up, I suppose, and added in an alien attack or some shooting scene, but in reality, the hardest thing I had to do was walk over to my mother and relinquish all of my security. Before then, this whole adventure was a carnival ride––a rush, a thrill, a controlled stunt. Spinning upside down, your instincts running wild, but somewhere in your adrenalin-clogged mind, you know there are steel rods ready to catch you. You’re not in any real danger, it says, but scream your head off anyways. It’s all in good fun, and this ticket was outrageously expensive. My thrill ride consisted of staying at a boarding school alone in a foreign country with limited money and means of travel, but my mother was an hour plane ride away––my steel rods were solid. When I said I wanted to stay, I said I wanted to keep spinning, keep my crazed epinephrin experience rolling. It was like saying I wanted to sit on top of the ferris wheel and drink in the view, knowing the brakes were being cut. I would swirl around the mechanism, and maybe I would glide in for a landing––or maybe I wouldn’t. Never fear, reader, you already know I succeeded. And maybe that is why I feel that this changed me so significantly. Either I was incredibly lucky and the world’s transportation system is kind to minors, or I outsmarted an insane circus of epic proportions.