Читать книгу The Seven Year-Old Pilot - Capt. Steven Archille - Страница 18

The road was much twistier than I’d remembered. As the truck slowly made its way up the hill towards Mama and Papa Franchil’s house, my head was darting around, trying to take in all the sights and smells that had once been so familiar to me. The same characters were still there. The ladies along the roadside selling fried goat meat, chicken, and fried plantains; the ladies selling fruits and vegetables; the ladies carrying buckets of water on their heads; the men driving tap-taps, trucks, and buses… all of it was still there. As we ascended higher and higher up the road passing the Baptist Mission hospital where I had been born, I breathed in the fresh mountain air and took in the beautiful views across the valley. It was as if everything had been put on pause since I’d left and had started up again as soon as I arrived.

We reached the end of the paved road, and as the trucked lurched onto the rocky path ahead, I started to experience the familiar sensation of our truck bouncing along the rocky road. This had my little siblings and me laughing and shouting out “Whoaaaa” and “Oooooh” with each big bump as our roller coaster-like ride progressed. As my dad drove along some of the narrower stretches, we occasionally got precariously close to the edge of the road with nothing but deep valley far below us. We had only been in Haiti a couple of days, and Mom and Dad wanted to make sure one of the first visits I made was to see the two people who had raised me for the first seven years of my life. As we drew nearer to their house, everything was familiar except that it all seemed to be smaller than I’d remembered. I chuckled at the thought that things had seemed bigger while I was growing up there only because I had been so small. All the paths I used to walk, my school, the cornfield I used to raid, the houses, and churches I used to run by on my neighborhood patrols were all still there.

Mama and Papa Franchil were just as I had remembered them. My grandmother had come to visit us on Staten Island back in 1983 about three years after I’d left Haiti, but this was my first time seeing them both together since 1980. Smiles and tears filled their faces as we all embraced. They were so happy to see the whole family and me, and after hugs and kisses were exchanged, we sat down to eat. The conversation was lively, and neighbors kept showing up as news of our arrival spread around the neighborhood. My grandmother, in her soft way, was stroking my head, patting my hand, and looking at me with joy, as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Steee-ven” she kept repeating, as she smiled at me in the endearing way only a grandmother could. It was as if their long-lost grandson had been found.

As we talked, my grandmother reminded me of a time during her visit to New York when she had asked me at age ten what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I had told her confidently that I wanted to be an airline pilot. As it would turn out, she would sadly be the only one of my grandparents who would live to see me achieve my dream.