If Only There Was A Word Called Adulting ~ Chapter 1

Part I - Anne

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way – Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell

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September 1985, Orlando, Florida

Lizzie’s been doing tons and tons of pageants this year. She won the ones in our state, and so now we’re doing all the faraway ones too. Mary didn’t come with us, ‘cos she’s too little, and so she gets to stay home with her nanny. But I have to sit and watch while our au pair does Lizzie’s hair and makeup, making twisty curls from her blond hair one by one, and painting her lips red like roses. I don’t know how she stands it, ‘cos it hurts to get your hair pulled and twisted on a hot rod like that.

I’ve got all my books with me, so I won’t get bored. There’s Little Women, and the whole Ramona series, and Charlotte’s Web too. And Father promised we can go to Disney World when Liz is done and ride the magic teacups and go to Epcot to see the world. He’s said that so many times already and we never ended up doing it. But maybe, just maybe, this time it’ll happen for real.

“Little girl, what is your name?” The lady sitting next to me has her hair all done up in curls and is wearing a bright pink suit with matching heels. “Oh, you’re reading Little Women, are you? How sweet. Which sister do you want to be?”

“I’m Anne Elliot,” I say. I’m not sure if I really like this lady. She looks fierce and snooty, like Aunt March if she were real. “My sister Lizzie – Elizabeth – is in the pageant. And I think I want to be Beth, ‘cause she’s good and kind.”

“Hmph. Do you know what happened to Beth? She died,” the lady says in a sniffy kind of voice. “My daughter’s name is also Anne, and she’s got the spirit of Jo and the beauty of Amy. There she is – see that girl right over there?”

Where she’s pointing, there is this small, thin girl standing next to Lizzie, with brown hair and a grumpy look on her face. I don’t think she’s prettier than my sister, but of course, I can’t say that.

“She’s really pretty,” It’s a lie, but you have to be polite to grown-ups. “Ma’am? What’s your name?”

“You can call me Mrs. de Bourgh. Mrs. Catherine de Bourgh.”

The music starts, so Mrs. de Bourgh stops talking to me. And if Beth has to die, that’s so unfair. She’s the nicest sister, after all. It’s so confusing, how they tell you in school that you have to be good and polite and nice and kind, but all the time, it’s the mean girls who win. Like Lizzie, who gets the trophy tonight, just like I expected.

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December 1985, John F. Kennedy Airport, New York

Father didn’t bring us to Disney World after the pageant in the end. He said we skipped too much school, so we had to go back. But he’s trying to make up for it by bringing us to a real imperial palace for Christmas, in Japan. He says if we lived a hundred years ago, our family would have a palace like that too, so we don’t need to go see pretend castles like the ones in Disneyland.

Grandma shows me the map, how this line from New York to Tokyo is the longest one of them all. She says we’re going farther away than anyone else in our town has ever been. "A great honour and distinction," is what she calls it. Did I say that right? But I don’t really care about big words like that, ‘cos what’s more fun is, this is the first time we get to sleep on an airplane. We’re going to sleep, and then wake up somewhere else, isn’t that magic?

The plane has lots of things in pictures, but I don’t need pictures when I’m in second grade now and can read just about anything. We go up a beautiful staircase which goes round and round, to the second floor. In our seats, there’s cards saying Boeing 747-200B – wait – I think I read that somewhere, the Boeing 747 is the world’s biggest airplane! So Father can make magic after all, ‘cos there’s only one plane that’s the biggest in the world. And Father found that one plane and got us into it!

So many things are magic on this plane – they give us our dinner, with salad and dessert and everything just like a restaurant, except it’s all in little plates on a tray – and it’s so delicious. I wonder how they can cook all this food in the sky. And when I need to brush my teeth to go to sleep, Grandma brings out these toothbrushes and little tubes of toothpaste they’ve given us and shows me in the bathroom how you can pull out a little paper cup to rinse your mouth. To be polite, you have to cover the toilet seat with paper before you pee and wipe off the sink after you’ve washed your hands. It’s almost like a mini hotel, only it’s up here in the sky and you can look out the window and see clouds. They’re real clouds, but they’re around and under you, not up above.

They even know what time it is, ‘cos when it’s dark outside they turn off the lights and give you pillows and blankets, and there’s breakfast for you when you wake up. I’m so happy my family doesn’t have a palace in Detroit, ‘cos if we did, we won’t have to go other places to see palaces. We won’t need magic anymore. Lizzie can go be a princess if she wants (and she does), but I like magic better, any time.

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November 1986, Detroit, Michigan

“Anne?” Our au pair puts a hand on my shoulder. “Anne, it’s OK. It’s just a movie, it isn’t real. Here’s a Kleenex, OK? Come on, we have to go now, the car’s waiting for us downstairs.”

“Anne, can’t you stop crying already? You’re just like a baby. Please, for heaven’s sake, just stop. You’re so embarrassing.” It’s Liz, who’s almost eleven and thinks she’s so grown-up. That’s her favourite word now, “embarrassing”. Every time me and Mary do anything, she’ll say that all the time, this year.

“Anne is a ba-by!” Mary chimes in. “Hee-hee, I’m not a baby. Anne is a baby, ‘cos she cried. See? I didn’t cry, see?”

“There, there, child.” Mary’s nanny holds the Kleenex to my nose. “Just blow, that’s a good girl. They’re all OK, aren’t they? Fievel found his family in the end, and now he’s back with his mommy and daddy again. Now, we need to get your face cleaned up for dinner later, OK?” She wipes my face gently with one of the wet towels she’s brought for Mary, and slowly, I nod and my tears stop.

I’ve watched movies in the theatre before, but none of the other ones ever made me so sad like this. Fievel is seven, and I’m eight. He got lost in the sea when he moved to America with his mommy and daddy and sister, and they missed each other so much. I wish my family was simple like that. I wish I could call Father Daddy, just like all the other kids at school, and I wish he could be like all the other daddies who piggyback their little girls and swing them in the air and play with them. I wish I had a mommy and Grandma, not just Grandma like what I do now. A mommy who cooks dinner at home and shows me how to bake cookies, like the way Charlie Musgrove’s mom does. All I want to do when I grow up is to be a mommy in a home like Charlie’s, but I want to have a house full of kids, so my kids won’t be lonely like him. But when the adults ask you what you want to be when you grow up, you can’t tell them you just want to be a mom in a home. You have to make up stuff, like saying you want to be a teacher or a doctor or something like that. Those are the answers they like to hear.

Anyway, the song is so beautiful, I have to learn how to sing it. And so I write to Santa, and he brings me a Walkman for Christmas with the cassette tape. I can’t ask Santa for people, or for people to be different from what they are, but I can ask Santa or Father for things, and they’ll come to me. At Charlie’s after school, I keep playing and stopping the tape, writing down the words of the song one at a time.

And – even – though-

“Anne?” Charlie pokes me, and I push the earphones behind my ears so I can hear him. “Why are you giving yourself a spelling test?”

“This isn’t a spelling test,” I explain. “See, it’s a song. It’s from that movie called” – I flip the tape cover over – “An American Tail. It’s about this little mouse who gets lost on the ship when he travels to America, and at night he misses his big sister. It’s so beautiful I just want to learn and remember it.”

Charlie helps me get the rest of the words, lending me his boom box so we can listen to the song together. We figure out which parts Fievel and Tanya are singing and start trying out the tune ourselves. It’s just right – he’s a boy, and I’m a girl. Fievel’s seven, and Tanya’s eight. We’re both eight, but that’s OK ‘cos Charlie sometimes acts like he’s littler than eight so he can be Fievel no problem.

“My, my. Isn’t that sweet?” Mrs. Musgrove is standing by Charlie’s door, and she’s clapping. I didn’t know we were that good, but it makes me happy if she likes it.

If we could do this for the school play – then I would get a costume made just for me, just like Liz gets for her pageants, and I can show everyone how special this song is. And our teacher, Miss Dashwood, is so nice and sweet, I think she’ll listen if I talk to her about it. And of course, Grandma brings me and Charlie to the dressmaker, the same one who makes Liz’s pageant dresses, with the picture book to get our Fievel and Tanya costumes made.

“Anne, why do you have to choose a play about poor people?” says Liz. “Or actually, they’re poor mice. Poor as church mice. How embarrassing. It’s such a waste making this costume when you have to sew patches on it, don’t you think? Father’s paying to make this dress for you, and you’re wasting all that money to make a fake poor-people dress.”

I don’t know what to say to Liz, and I never thought about whether Fievel and Tanya are rich or poor. If I can feel happy or sad the way they do, doesn’t that mean we’re all the same? Besides, the school play is pretend anyway, so even if I pretend to be poor, it’s only make-believe. It won’t make us poor for real. So Liz is just being silly but she’s older so I can’t tell her she’s wrong.

In the end, all the parents were clapping really loud at the end of our song, so we must have been really good after all. "A standing ovation," Grandma calls it, and she told us we were simply lovely, so good we made her simply want to cry. And so now I know why songs can be magic. It’s because they make you feel, and they can make everyone around you feel the same things too.

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March 1989, William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, Georgia

Finally, Father is really bringing us to Disneyland this time! We have to go to lots of airports and keep changing planes, but Grandma tells me this is the very last one, and then we’ll get there. Most of the time, we get to sit in first class in the front of the plane, but this time, Grandma is behind us, pushing us to keep walking on.

“Girls, look, this isn’t worthy of the Elliot family, and I hope this is the first and last time we will be doing this, but it’s spring break and First Class was full. So, we will fly coach just this one time, all right?” she says.

“Coach?” Liz stops short when she reaches the wall that is, I think, the end of the First Class section. She sticks out her neck and sniffs. “P-U! It stinks! I don’t want to go there!”

Mary tugs at Grandma’s sleeve, making wrinkles in her neatly ironed blouse. “Gran-ma,” she wails. “There’s so many kids here, and someone’s gonna puke on me and make me sick. I wanna go home.”

So, I’m the only one who’s interested to see what’s behind that wall. “Excuse me, Liz”, I tell her and gently push past, getting into a space where there are rows and rows of red-and-blue seats. There’s lots of people, families with kids, loading up the seats and bins with Mickey Mouse ears, stuffed animals of every kind, and colourful character backpacks. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stuffed animals anywhere except at FAO Schwarz. People are all getting into their seats over on the other side of the plane, but we’ve blocked up everyone trying to get in on our side.

“Grandma, hurry up!” I call. “We gotta get in, so other people can come in too. Please tell me when to stop, OK?”

Liz and Mary can carry on all they want, but I love this, being able to pretend we’re just a regular family going to Disneyland and seeing all the other kids having fun and going there too. I don’t even mind that Father won’t let us get Minnie Mouse ears, undignified is what he calls them, because fifth graders ought to be too big for them anyway, and I’ve got my first pair of sneakers to make up for it. These are high-tops with bits of pink flower petals and diamonds all over them, beautiful floral patterns carved into the soles, with cute little bows at the back. They’re a style which Liz liked enough to want a pair for herself too, even though I was the one who picked them out first.

“Oh my god, Anne!” she’d squealed. “Those are so cool, d’you know they’re the ones Priscilla Presley wore?” That’s the first time Liz ever liked anything I picked out, so it made me feel amazing, like I could be one of the popular girls too.

“We’re at our row, girls”, calls out Grandma, who’s been dragging Liz and Mary right behind me. She opens up a piece of paper and reads. “The travel agent says, this is a DC-10, seating two-five-two, and they’ve reserved a block in the middle for the five of us. Girls, can you get seated quickly, please?”

“Dibs on the end!” says Liz, then reconsiders. “But there’s so many people moving around, no, I take that back, I’m not going to the end ‘cos I just wanna sit with us, not to be with all these other people. Anne, why don’t you go to the end?”

I dive quickly across to the other end of the row of seats, jamming my hot pink UCB backpack under the seat in front of me because I can’t reach the overhead bin. It’s Mary’s turn to carry on now, wailing about how she’s stuck in the middle and can’t get out. To block them all out of my head, I pick up the safety card and read the top. Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, it says. TriStar – that’s a beautiful name for a plane. It sounds like magic, just like the way flying is magic, spiriting you through the sky to someplace new.

By now, I’m used to the experience of going up, up in the air, getting through, and then above, the clouds. Even though we’re in the middle this time so I can only see a tiny piece of the blue sky out the window, it’s still like a fairy tale anyway. Because we’re on a TriStar, a magic plane taking us to the Magic Kingdom, the place where dreams come alive.

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Author’s Note: At this age, Anne only knows the pampered, sheltered, snobbish existence of the Elliots, so she isn’t exactly the most woke kid on earth even though she understands the value of being good and kind. Growing up with a vain father and sister, she isn’t fully devoid of girly-girl tendencies, but unlike her family members, she is curious about the world outside and has an active imagination.

Fashion Note: The sneakers that Anne wears on the Disneyland trip are the L.A. Gear Star Dust style, which were modelled by Priscilla Presley when they were released in 1989-1990. UCB stands for United Colors of Benetton, which started a rather controversial ad campaign in 1989 that tried to tout inclusivity through racially diverse models and tackling hot-button issues like AIDS, the environment etc. But to the preteen set, the fact that Benetton was stylish was more important than its attempt to appropriate social topics as a marketing gambit.

Aviation Notes:
New York to Tokyo (JFK-NRT) is definitely a factual 747 route that was operated by Pan Am since the 1970s with Boeing 747SP aircraft. I boxed myself into a bit of an anachronism here though, because Pan Am sold its Pacific routes to United in 1985, but I already made reference to the Pan Am in Just An Earth-Bound Misfit, I and I still believe that Pan Am is more iconic as the Pan Am 747 is what has stuck in my mind from those years.

Delta Airlines operated the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar on a range of medium- and long-haul routes; ATL-LAX is one of the actual routes that they operated. Given that I’ve set the Elliots in Detroit, it makes sense that they’d probably need to transit through a hub to go to LAX, no matter which carrier they chose to fly with. Also, both the DC-10 and TriStar had three engines and were quite similar in size, so people often mixed them up although they’re both different aircraft produced by different manufacturers.