The subject today is… weight.

No, no, no, not my weight (though that does have relevance to any discussion of Cuba, a matter to which I will return in a future communiqué).

No, what I want to write about today is weight limits, specifically, suitcase weight limits and the angst they cause in my otherwise happy home.

The weight limit—TOTAL—per person (not per suitcase) on the flight to La Habana is 40 pounds. Yes, 40 pounds. The empty Samsonite, just six months old but battered beyond belief, weighs just over 10 pounds. Even my atrophied math skills are sharp enough to calculate that the remaining allowable weight is not much and certainly not enough.

As Francisco and I review the list of requested and expected presents, and begin making a second list of all the people who haven’t asked for a thing but for whom we should take at least a token present, we begin the first of many conversations about weight and what our suitcases should hold. Here is a partial list of the requested gifts:

-bras

-short-shorts

-t-shirts

-long socks AND short socks

-shoes: with big heels, medium heels, and no heels

-a pocketbook

-earrings

-an Ipod

-a backpack

-a camouflage wallet

-camouflage shoes (preferably with a heel)

-Butterfly Barbie

-bra (for a child who is 7 years old, by the way, and has no chest to speak of yet)

-fungal cream for toenails

-a tile cutter with a diamond tip

-vanilla

-cinnamon

-self-help books in Spanish

-Valencia rice

-a winter sweater (yes, a winter sweater for Cuba, where it is currently 96 degrees)

-cigars from other countries

-Nicorette

Could we also possibly carry medicine for my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law?

You see how this whole affair is starting to sound like the beginning of a bad joke in the South about cousins twice removed?

But back to the matter of the suitcase and allowable weight.

For all of my anticipation and optimism about our new ability to travel together outside of the United States, there is a particular and important detail I haven’t shared with you yet: Francisco actually finds travel—or at least the preparations for it—incredibly stressful under any circumstances. On our frequent flights from San Juan to New York and back, we are regularly running to the airport late and harried, and have paid (on more than one occasion) to be switched to the next flight. No matter how many days in advance he begins to plan, the day of the flight Francisco is deeply anxious. He always finds some major home repair project that he must begin two hours before the flight leaves, he thinks of no fewer than ten more items that must be packed (even though we now own two sets of everything, one for San Juan, one for New York), and then complains about feeling stressed and looks at me and asks—earnestly, as surprised the 100th time as he was the first time he said it—“Why do we have so much stuff? We pack too much.”

We!?!

Francisco also prepares a meal for the plane, sometimes starting the meal as we should be stepping into a taxi. Now I know that I shouldn’t complain about that—in fact, I’m generally quite grateful for this particular thoughtfulness, one of so many, especially since you can’t even get a decent meal on a long-haul flight these days—but we’re not talking about sandwiches and chips here. We’re talking about pastas with sauces, filet mignon with a balsamic reduction… in short, food that inevitably ends up spilling—all over me—before we ever make it to the airport. Balancing the dog, my purse, his carry-on and the meal, the latter becomes a wearable souvenir as I heave into the back seat of a taxi with a driver who insists on taking a “special route” to the airport.

Francisco is a contingency plan packer, which means he has everything “just in case.” I, on the other hand, am a spare packer, more prone to pack excessive weight in books that I want to read than in clothing or toiletries. I regularly forget to pack pajamas, I purposely pack one pair of shoes, and my packing philosophy is that I’d rather be without than be weighed down. In Cuba, in particular, because my suitcases are always full of everything for other people, I usually carry one change of clothes and Handi-Wipes (the most important item to pack, trust me… which leads me to another story, also to be told on another occasion). So you’ll understand if I found it utterly maddening when I was lying in bed last night and Francisco called from the shower, “Do we have these”—dangling a dripping washcloth around the shower curtain—“to take to Cuba?” I wanted to say, but I did not, that of all the items that should add up to the precious 30 pounds, washcloths shouldn’t be on that list.

I don’t want to make too much out of this, but the object and the idea of the suitcase—what it holds, what it can’t, and what it represents—really is important. When Francisco boarded a boat in the port of Mariel and landed in Key West, he had no suitcase. He probably didn’t have one when he left Key West and moved to Boston, the improbable and totally incompatible city where he lived for 16 years. There wasn’t room on the lanchas and yolas for suitcases. There was barely room for people, and in fact, some people fell overboard along the way. He carried nothing with him. And so I begin to understand why carrying a suitcase is incredibly anxiety-provoking for him, and why filling it with all one could possibly ever need and more than one could possibly ever hold is even more challenging. Thirty pounds is not a lot of baggage.  

August 12, 2007