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Manicurist:
Instant Friend
by
In my twenties I was a blonde chick in a chartreuse miniskirt who traveled with a vengeance. Like an addict overdosed on National Geographics, I finagled trips to Santiago, Paris, East Berlin. I needed to see Hong Kong Harbor before the taipans with their red sails disappeared, Borobudur before it was eroded by pollution, Margaret Mead's Bali before tourists overran it. I was making up for coming from a family whose idea of "travel" was a car trip from Seattle, Washington, to Seaside, Oregon, while I craved the Champs Élysées.
I
was so amped to know the world that sometimes I charged out on a cheapie student
ticket too fast, too alone, with no ripcord to pull in case of a crash landing.
On my first trip to Europe I was returning by way of South America where
I'd been invited to stay at a friend's hacienda. On our coffee breaks at
The Houston Post where I was a reporter and Marcela an illustrator, she'd
described her family's place outside of Bogota so often that their life on the
hacienda had taken on epic proportions: I envisioned riding horseback out on the
wind-swept pampas and eating empanadas at a table that stretched forever with
family. While I'd been traveling in Paris, Copenhagen, Madrid, and Caracas, I'd been looking forward to staying with Marcela in Colombia. That was going to be the highlight of the trip. Also, for a few days, while embraced in the bosom of her boisterous relatives, I'd be rescued from the prickly loneliness that often accompanied me, a single person traveling alone.
When
I checked into the hotel in Bogota, I was handed a note. There had been an
uprising on the hacienda, something about a foreman being decapitated, and
conditions were unsafe. The family had crowded into their residence
in town. There was no room for a guest. Marcela would call the next day
and we'd go for a drive. Glumly, I looked around my dingy green hotel room with its faded "old uncle" furnishings. I bolted out onto the streets of Bogota.
Darkness
had already started to descend but I noticed a light on in a beauty shop. I
climbed the stairs and found a run-down place with a couple of old-fashioned hair
dryers. I nodded to the janitor who was sweeping, and proceeded to the
back where a lone manicurist was still working.
"Tante
tarde," she mumbled, as she glanced up at the clock.
Too late.
"No
mucho trabajo," I replied, showing her my stubby baby-nails.
Not so much work. Expertly, she glided a finishing stroke of polish on her customer's long nails, and shrugged to me. "Sientese." Soon I was settling into the chair across from her and, knee-to-knee, she was holding my hands in hers. An intimate cocoon enveloped us as I relaxed into the ritual of the hot-water soak, the hand massage, the safe sanctuary where intimacies are exchanged, confidences shared. Thirty minutes later, my nails were clean and glossy, and I was grateful. Not because I needed a manicure but for the warm contact with a motherly woman that staved off the panic which so often accompanied my youthful adventures. More important than the grooming had been the caring and repairing, the mani-cure. That is why this ritual, stripped of its surface glitz had the power to pull a lonely traveler into a salon at eight o'clock. That manicurist was as much of a laying-on-the-hands healer as her ancient counterparts in Tibet, India, or China. Now I travel more slowly to simpler destinations. More at home with myself, I no longer need the electronic razzmatazz of the Ginza to turn me on. I'm thrilled to uncover small surprises in intimate places, preferably with my husband and our good friends nearby. I no longer travel to escape myself, but perhaps if I'm lucky, a trip affords an opportunity to get in touch in other ways. Now I prefer walking, feeling the earth below my feet, and going slowly enough to witness small domestic scenes I would have missed when I was younger. Still, I often duck in for a manicure on the way home.
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