Seven days back stateside: Celebrating family, friendship, and love
From DC to NYC to Boston
Being home in Mexico after a very tightly packed week in the US after quite some time feels a lot like a fluffy pillow. Comfortable. I haven’t been home in a while, because as an adult third culture kid I have one rule now: Don’t travel unless absolutely necessary, and in this case, it was on account of my sister’s high school graduation.
Think of it this way, my partner Andreas has been out of Mexico three times now. Home twice and a vacation to Colombia. Me? Very happily holding down the fort, but this time I had to pack my bags and go. Lucky for me, there were a couple of stops that I could make while I was in the States: a long overdue high school reunion and a New England wedding more up North than I’ve ever been.
The former was to visit an old friend from high school and the latter to meet up with Drew, who lives with us in Mexico but was back Stateside for his friend’s wedding, to be his Plus One for said ceremony. And so, with Andreas’s blessing from France, I hopped on a bunch of planes to embark on my first little adventure in ages. (Of course, all the while sending him photos of all my meals, duh.)
📍 Sister’s Graduation - DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC
Yes, I felt old.
She was born when I was 16 and she’s 18 now, so you go ahead and do the math. I am what someone called a geriatric millennial, but at least we have our Reels as consolation. My sister made me privy to terms like “rage-baiting” and “the millennial pause”. You guys know the little walk that Iliza Schlesinger does in her stand-up comedy? I did that. My Gen Z just giggled and said:
”You’re such a millennial.” I mean, what would they think about my Substack, is that also very millennial? Hahaha, look at those geriatric millennials BLOGGING is probably what crosses their minds. Aging really is unforgiving and nothing alerts you to that more than teenagers rolling their eyes and giggling at you. Not just teenagers, but teenage girls.
The venue for the graduation was where I also graduated way back in 2009— DAR Constitution Hall. If you’ve never been, this Neoclassical structure is located at the heart of Washington, DC, and it’s every bit as beautiful as in the photos. Built in 1929 by the Daughters of the American Revolution (hence the DAR), it currently hosts high school graduations, concerts, and lectures. Jane Goodall signed books here!
Speaking of high schools, my own high school graduation was now sixteen years ago and more than sixteen years ago I met a boy named Alex who later became one of my best friends. We decided to see each other for the first time since the summer of 2010 since I would be passing through NYC on my way up to Worcester, Massachusetts anyway.
📍 Mini High School Reunion - Brighton Beach, Brooklyn NY
Then I felt young again.
My journey was HELLA hectic.
I basically went from Reagan National Airport in DC to Newark International Airport in NJ and then took the NJ Transit to Penn Station to meet my friend Alex to then make our way to Brighton Beach where some scenes of Anora (2024) were filmed. Due to our shared birthplace of Moscow, Russia, I thought it appropriately cheesy to munch on piroshki together and have a beer in Brighton Beach.
Alex, who is Ukrainian-Russian by the way and has undoubtedly (is!) suffered his share in this nasty war where his family on both sides have known the kind of stress that war can cause, indulged my desire for a trip to Brighton Beach though my flight from JFK to Logan International in Boston was only a couple of hours away. Sitting in the train with him reminded me of our adolescence spent in the DC Metro. It was sweet.
When we got off the train, we walked toward the beach as we passed all the shops with Russian signs and old ladies selling piroshkis, stuffed buns, outside. I admired the lettering, the signs, the sounds of people speaking Russian, and the old familiar faces of all the post-soviet people as Alex told me stories of childhoods spent in Brighton Beach visiting his grandpa. He hadn’t been back in a while. He got us two piroshkis.
In the mid 1970s, Brighton Beach became a popular place for Soviet immigrants who were mostly Jews from Russia and Ukraine (i.e. my friend and his kin). It was only after the seventies that Brighton Beach also became known as “Little Odessa”— after the Ukrainian city which had had a significant Jewish population in the first half of the 20th century— as well as “Little Russia”.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (and the year of my birth and Alex’s), hordes of Soviet citizens immigrated to the United States, and this wasn’t limited to just Russians but also immigrants from countries like Georgia and Azerbaijan. My mother, who is from Mongolia, was one of the many students who grew up speaking Russian and later went to Moscow before finally leaving for the West after my birth.
All food should be as unpretentious as piroshki
“Maybe we can make piroshki,” my mother once said to me with childish glee. I can’t remember whether we actually had some or not, but it’s always been the glee with which she uttered those words that has stuck with me all these years. It’s the glee that reminds me that my mother spoke Russian when she was a kid and that her upbringing in
We didn’t go to Tatiana’s though where scenes of Anora were shot because they wouldn’t let me charge my iPhone, so we went someplace else two doors down. I forget what beer I ordered, but Alex ordered an Aperol Spritz, and we talked about where life took us the past fifteen years since we last saw each other. He had his eye on the clock though to make sure I got to JFK on time which was useless because…
MY FLIGHT WAS DELAYED SEVEN HOURS FOR A 40 MINUTE TRIP.
Thanks JetBlue. Thanks Logan.
📍 An All-American Wedding - The Barn at Blackstone National, Worcester, Massachusetts / Van Gogh Exhibition at the MFA in Boston
After a grueling seven-hour delay at JFK International Airport, I finally did arrive at Logan in Boston. Drew, now unable to pick me up because he was at the wedding rehearsal dinner that I was supposed to attend with him, sent an Uber to pick me up. “Anything you need and that I can do for you once you arrive?” he asked. “Yes, please get me cigarettes and water,” I replied like that the geriatric millennial I felt I was now.
The wedding itself was splendid. I was thoroughly impressed that Drew’s friend, the groom, had planned the entire himself. There are still good men out there, y’all. The wedding playlist was very, ahem, absent of hip-hop, but I knew the words to all the Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy songs because I too went to school in Virginia with white kids. I just didn’t know the country jams at the beginning.
I would share more photos, but out of the respect for the bride and groom who asked their wedding to be unplugged, I won’t share the photos on my Substack. I did manage to take a couple of photos of me and Drew all dolled up and some shots of the ambience for myself, but that’s all, and even then, I feel a little guilty for the snaps I did get. (Sorry Craig!)
For those of you unaware, Worcester is not spelled like it looks. It’s a close cousin of the name Worcestershire and all its silent letters. Worcester sounds like “Wooster” and even then, I seemed to be pronouncing it wrong. It’s not close to Boston. It was an hour drive from Logan International to Worcester and an hour back to when Drew’s mother (very sweet lady!) drove us (well, mostly me) to the Museum of Fine Arts.
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was founded in 1870 and has since had three locations: first at the top floor of the Boston Athenaeum, then Copley Square, and now where it currently stands, Huntington Avenue. The MFA has been at its current location since 1909, so safe to say that this beautiful Beaux-arts style building that is home to French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, among many more.
Entrance to the Van Gogh exhibition was 14 USD per person, I think, for members. The Van Gogh exhibition itself was a collection of his best works, notably the Roulin family portraits, and included the many eloquent letters he wrote to his brother Theo. Seeing his letters in the flesh gave me the motivation to keep studying French if only to read his words in their original language. For now, English will do.
Whenever I learn about Van Gogh, I am always touched by the sensitive nature that is apparent in his letters and his paintings. He was a man who felt deeply. His words describing why he moved to the South resonated with my own reasons for moving to Mexico and how I feel about my little house in Queretaro. I feel about it much the same way that Van Gogh felt about the Yellow House:
”My house here is painted outside in the yellow of fresh butter, with garish green shutters, and it’s in the full sun on the square, where there’s a green garden of plane trees, oleanders, acacias. And inside, it’s all whitewashed, and the floors of the red bricks. And the intense blue sky above. Inside, I can live and breathe and think and paint. I’m in really much better health here than in Paris.”
Of his portraits of the Roulin family, my favorite was the portrait of Armand Roulin. When I saw it, I immediately recognized the sullen face of a moody teenager, much the same expression I see in my siblings’ faces. Eyes screaming with boredom. A frown that aches with angst. A face that is surely holding a sigh of dissatisfaction for the day’s tasks. I bought the post card along with a book of Van Gogh’s letters.
I guess I have my adolescent sister to thank for this trip back Stateside that I would have never made had it not been for her.