Christina ~ May 5

 

I was leaving Ghana, coming home to New York after 22 months away, 22 months of only letters back and forth to New York, no phone calls, for phones were few and far between in late 1970s Ghana and a phone call never happened. So it was through letters that my friends told me they would meet me at the airport, pretty much the same group of people who’d taken me to the airport almost two years before. So after 22 months of being on my own, with just the occasional letter from my thesis advisor, my NYU anthropology friends, and the four close friends I had shared a large West End Avenue apartment with, back in the days when four graduate students could rent a classic six or seven for less than $200 a month, $200 a month total, to be divided four ways.

 

So there’d been no phone calls, not even at the end, just the letters and I wasn’t sure where I would be sleeping when I got back, whether my old roommates still had a room for me in the apartment, where, before I left I’d stored my things, my bed, my desk, my books and my pictures and papers, all put in boxes and brought down to one of the building’s basement storage cages. And I had been afraid to ask and I didn’t ask and only after we all got in a checker cab to go to the city, only then did I ask where were we going, And one of my friends, Amy I think, said, “Back to the apartment.” And when we got there, they opened the door, and Amy took my hand and walked me down the long hallway to one of the bedrooms, and she opened the bedroom door, and said, “Look inside!” And magically, there was my room. They had brought all my things up from the basement, unpacked my books, found what they knew were my favorite prints and photos and tacked them on the wall over my desk, put my Iraqi bedspread on my bed, and set my prized Luxo lamp on the desk. I burst into tears. They laughed, so delighted with what they had done.