Allan and I have been together for over a decade. During that time we went on one boat trip to Rota. That’s it. Until last year that is.
Late 2016 we lost my grandfather. My dad had been taking care of him for about 6 months. He was battling cancer again and in and out of the hospital and doctor’s offices constantly. I talked to both dad and grandpa weekly. I would call them and unless he was admitted to the hospital Grandpa would always answer. He’d update me on his week and I’d try to find something interesting about my week to perk him up. He was struggling really hard with losing the physical ability to independently take care of himself.
Grandpa left us right before Christmas. I knew he didn’t have long left, but I was hoping he’d make it to the end of the holidays. The one thing that made it easier was that before he died the Cubs won the World Series. Grandpa was an avid sports fan and he was always rooting for Chicago. So he left with that win he had been waiting for for so long.
There was so much left for my dad to take care of before he could come back home to Guam. My grandmother had passed years before, so dad had to take care of Grandpa’s car, the house, and everything in it. My uncle came up a few times to help, but dad needed some extra support from home. So Allan and I got some friends to watch our apartment and the pets and flew 8,169 miles to Florida.
I’ve made the trip from Guam to Florida twice before this time, but the last time was over a decade ago. Allan’s last trip was to New York around the same time I headed to Florida last – a couple years before we met. So we knew what to expect from these long flights, but we’ve never done one together. It was actually really awesome though. I mean I’d rather teleport, but traveling with Allan wasn’t bad at all.
We went from Guam to Narita, Narita to Dulles, and Dulles to Tampa. Dad picked us up in Tampa and we drove a couple hours to Sarasota. Of course our luggage was filled with goodies from home and we were also toting the prized Narita shopping bags filled with a variety of mochi, rice crackers, and my favorite, Tokyo Banana snacks. We brought extras to share with the neighbors who were very supportive to dad while he was caring for grandpa.
It had been so long since I had been back in my grandparents’ Sarasota neighborhood. The last time I was there I was 18. I had warned Allan that it was very much a retirement area. There were very few young people and there weren’t very many people of color. I remember feeling very brown for the first time, during my first trip to visit. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the trips and never experienced any prejudice while I was there. Coming from Guam, a pretty ethnically diverse island though, I just felt hyper aware of my color. To my surprise, that had changed quite a bit. There were more families with children on our street. Right next door was my dad’s good friends and their young grandson. Across the street were more friends with two teenage children. We got to drive to Tampa to watch their daughter compete in a BMX race. It was really exciting. And age diversity wasn’t the only change. There was a lot more ethnic diversity not just in the down town areas, but also in the neighborhood.
So that’s how we wound up in Sarasota on our first trip together. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series if you want to hear about our food adventures and the surprising selection of local beers we encountered on our trip.
illusdreted Life 