Peasant Woman

So here we are, madly packing, getting ready for vacation. Which is quite the production now that we're traveling with a crawling and wanting-to-walk Mali Zub. It's amazing how much stuff we have for the little bugger. Let's just say that Kimo and I are sharing one suitcase while Mali Zub (and all his gear) gets the other. Yikes.

My mother, The Original Peasant Woman, who's watching Zubs while we pack, is slightly horrified. Very Un-Peasant-Like behavior, how much stuff we're schlepping along. Especially since we're not even traveling with a serious Peasant Provisions bag, which usually includes a chicken, a loaf of bread, salami and whatever other stinky foodstuffs you can cram into your bag. The smeller, the better, I've found, since it usually helps keep your neighboring seat mates from inching into your space.

After a relaxing (and unplugged) week in Kauai, Kimo, Mali Zub and I were at the Lihue airport Sunday night when we learned our flight back was canceled due to technical difficulties.

Well, as you might guess, that didn't exactly please a lot of people. All the passengers, most of whom were cranky from waiting, tired from the late hour (11:30 p.m.) and sand-covered (because they'd been kicked out of their hotel long ago), began to short-circuit. Meanwhile, one lone airline representative battled her way through the increasingly irate crowd to announce that shuttles would soon be arriving to take us to a hotel, and, by the way, here's the number to call so that you can rebook your flight and hopefully get out tomorrow.

Mayhem. People began rushing the representative while she shouted for us to settle down, Please let the families with children through first! I picked up Mali Zubs and got to my feet while people pushed from behind, jockeying for space.

"Hurry!" a young woman to my left yelled at her husband. "Get up there, get to the front of the damn line!"

Similar rally cries surrounded us while Kimo, Mali Zub and I struggled to pack up all the baby toys that had been keeping Zubs at bay for the past hour. A young woman rushed past us with a baby stroller, her two-year-old daughter startled into a high-pitched sob from all the action.

"Families with children first!" the rep yelled, over and over. Somehow, it didn't really seem to make any difference: we were surrounded by singles and couples demanding, Goddammit, to be the first ones served.

I was so shocked by the anger and vicissitude around me that I just stood and watched while Kimo waited our families-with-children-turn. People who minutes before had been quietly reading or napping or staring off into space were now yelling, red-faced, at anyone they could find.

"She said families with children first," boomed a voice behind me.

"This is my child," a woman said.

"What! He must be at least 24!"

And on and on it went. One boisterous young woman and her husband (who were duking it out with the airlines via matching iPod phones) continued complaining at the top of their voices until the ticketing agent couldn't take it anymore and finally gave in. Never mind that the elderly passengers, who were next in line for the shuttle, continued to wait patiently while the youngest children screamed and cried out of exhaustion and fear.

And all the while, I couldn't help but think how horrible it was to see so many adults acting this way. Never mind that we were in Kauai--gorgeous, relaxing Kauai of all places--where food and lodging were just a shuttle ride away. The way people were acting, you'd have thought we were stuck in the desert or some Survivor-type island where there wasn't enough food or water to go around. Instead, we'd been given an extra day of vacation, put up in a gorgeous $380-a-night hotel, and given a $40/day food reimbursement.

In the middle of all this craziness, two separate families asked if we needed any help, since we were traveling with a baby. The kindness of those two gestures have stayed with me these past few days, past another red-eye and into the jet-lagged haze of adjusting to post-vacation life. Still, it's frightening to realize how quickly our society could break down if something were really wrong. All the social norms as we know it, out the window.

I was out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant when a familiar-looking couple walked in the door. "That looks like my accountant," I said, delving into a load of bread.

"You're kidding," my friend B. said. "Those people? I hear they're the best sex therapists in Boulder."

I swiveled around to get another look. "Well, that's definitely my accountant and his wife," I said. "But sex therapists. Are you sure?"

She nodded.

"Shit," I said. "Nobody tells me anything."

When I got home, I relayed this information to Kimo, who, like B., already knew about the apparently-not-so-secret double lives of our accountant and his wife. I guess I was the only one who was taking things at face value, putting stock into those tiny little type-written titles that appear on business cards.

But it got me thinking: how many of us lead secret or not-so-secret double lives? And is it just an American thing, or is it a world-wide phenomenon?

You can definitely tell Mali Zub's got some Balkan DNA by the way he eats bread. Loves it, can't get enough! Which is how you can tell he's got Serbian blood coursing though his veins, for the Serbs eat bread like it's going out of style: bread with breakfast, bread with lunch, bread with bread. Whatever the occasion, it's not a meal if it's not served with bread.

Bread is to the Serbs like rice to the ____ (fill in the blank).

Japanese. Which just happens to make up the other half of Mali Zub's ethnic heritage, as evidenced by his copious eating of rice. Zubs loooooves rice (although maybe possibly he might just love bread a little bit better).

Just as long as he's got a starch in front of him, I guess. Which makes me wonder: is there an ethnic group out there that doesn't have some form of starch as a dietary mainstay? My Mexican friend eats tortillas like they're going out of style, and the stereotype of the Irish potato... well, you know that one. But what about others?