“It means we’re entering China Town!”, I ventured. “No, it’s an ad for a paediatrician!”, retorted Jules. “It can only be a warning from aliens!”, added Gabriel, confidently. While navigating the streets of Chicago, we had noticed several big and cryptic “Ped Xing” stencils painted on the road, prompting a flurry of interpretations.

This is the second and final instalment of our US wanderings, read the first part here.

None of our theories was particularly convincing, so we swept into the first available parking space to investigate the matter. Jules searched for the ominous meaning on her phone, as Gabriel and I cranked our necks to peek at the result. “It’s an abbreviation for pedestrian crossing”, exclaimed Jules, still scrolling across pages and pages of tourists asking the same thing.

No aliens then, so we continued driving north along the Lake Michigan shore, first across Illinois and then into Wisconsin, before settling into a highway motel. After Jules and Gabriel were fast asleep, I went out on the porch to enjoy the warm night. As I watched the lights of 18-wheelers shoot past, I realised the US felt both familiar and remote, sometimes odd, sometimes even.

When I was about one year older than Gabriel, I moved to California with my family, where we lived for a couple of years. Returning home was quite the shock. It was the 80s, Portugal had got out of a dictatorship a mere decade ago and wasn’t yet part of the European Union. My parents surely noticed more profound differences, but for my sister and I it was the little things that bothered us. Why wasn’t there any cable TV? Where was McDonald’s and the roller-skating ring? Kids adapt quickly though, and we soon relegated California to our distant memories.

As globalisation huddled the Western world closer together, the gap between Portugal and the US narrowed. Every time I travelled across the Atlantic, things appeared more recognisable. But, much as a Portuguese speaking Spanish often stumbles in false friends – similar words, different meanings – my sense of closeness was exaggerated. But it was only a few years ago, in Houston, that I realised it. When handing me a set of keys, the rental-car lady – which for some reason had assumed I was Italian – told me “This is not Rome, people have guns here, so don’t drive around honking!”. Lisbon is not Rome, and I wasn’t into the habit of zipping around town tooting my horn, but the admonishment stuck.

The feeling of unfamiliar familiarity grew over subsequent visits. Presently, my Wisconsin porch seemed to be lost in a Midwestern Bermuda Triangle. One edge held my early memories of the US, still seen through the eyes of a kid. Another one crowded my recollections of living in Portugal. The third edge let in new experiences from this trip across the US, which floated aimlessly inside the triangle.

The next day, jolted by the last remnants of jet-leg, we got out of bed early and headed to the beach. The morning was foggy, and we couldn’t see much more than a few steps around us. Gabriel was throwing sticks of driftwood, which disappeared into the mist before hitting the water. The setting was fitting for a Midwest Bermuda Triangle, so I laid it out for Jules.

I peppered the description of my conundrum with plenty of examples of the familiar unfamiliar: drive-in coffee, drive-in banks, drive-in everything; ice machines and ice-cold air conditioning everywhere; 20% tips, 24/7 shops; plastic forks, no knifes, no tablecloths; a lot of parking lots, not a lot of sidewalks; gym clothes outside of the gym; turning right on red stoplights, getting honked for not turning right on stoplights; impeccably cut lawns, US flags on every lawn; small talk; rhetorical “how are you” greetings.

“For me these are merely interesting everyday oddities, small trinkets you collect while travelling”, she replied. “I think they look warped to you because you’re looking at them simultaneously from the perspective of an infant and the viewpoint of an adult. The same thing happens to me every time I go to Ponte de Sor, where I grew up. It’s disorienting not knowing if things look different because they have changed, or because you have changed.”

Jules was probably right. Returning to a place where we spent our childhood is both travelling and time-travelling, blurring the line between current and old references. However, unlike the meaning of “Ped Xing”, which was hazy in foresight but clear in hindsight, these Bermuda Triangles remain forever surrounded by mist.

“I wonder how Gabriel will remember these travels?”, I asked, rhetorically.

Verne*

You can find high resolution versions of these photographs (and many others which did not fit this text) here, under a Creative Commons license (meaning you can use them freely but are required to credit the author).