Personal Essay
Never Ending Pathways
The end of my immigration curfew — MFL Contest: Tell us how it Ends
It was my first time out of the United States since my arrival four years earlier. I did not intend to start a new life in the country. It was my first trip with my new family. My wife (who was pregnant with our son), our baby daughter, and I. There was an omnipresent hum as we boarded the plane, as if an energy field existed around us.
The cabin of the American Airlines MD-88 was narrow. The ceiling was low, and I needed to be careful not to hit my head with the overhead compartment bin doors as I walked through the alley. We had two seats assigned for the four of us. The galley was a few rows behind us. The window view was partially blocked by the fuselage-mounted engines.
According to the Social Security Administration flyer in a bulletin board at their Los Angeles office, I was an Illegal Alien Not Allowed to Work. I had arrived in the U.S. four years before and overstayed my visa. Marrying my wife, a U.S. citizen, legalized my existence. During the in-between years, I was unable to leave the country without risking being unable to re-enter. I had invested too much to risk leaving without being able to return. After our marriage, I had a legitimate green card. I was finally able to leave the United States, and the cabin of the MD-88 was the first one among many that would allow me to go to Argentina, the place I once called home, the country where I was born.
In the house where I grew up, I had pinned a newspaper picture of an American Airlines wide-body jet to my bedroom wall; the words Luxury Liner were printed on its fuselage. Now, four years after leaving Buenos Aires alone, we were on our first leg of our first trip to Buenos Aires in a loud single-aisle jet with the engines by our side. Sitting in the back, communication was all but impossible.
As we walked towards our seats, I felt the floor give slightly. The structure felt alive.
My wife was sitting next to me. She didn’t like to fly since the time when she was on a flight in which a tire burst and there was a fire.
Distances can be measured in length, time, or both. Returning is impossible. Reunion is a myth. Reality dwells in imagination. Time reveals the cracks of knowledge. Distance remains mist.
I always feel a little apprehensive when leaving. The United States is not my country, and it could decide not to welcome me back. With time, I would learn that one can never return to the place we once left. All attempts are futile. Places seem immovable, but they change while stationary as if they are moving through time. And for the airplane, the earth is swallowed up beneath us. Space changes too fast for human senses, cultures race below us, we pass over languages and landscapes we will never get to know.
Back then, I believed return was possible. Now, when I return, I know I go back to a physical place. But that place is only a location; something in the spirit of the land has changed. The roots I left behind have been uprooted.
The motive for the trip was my sister’s wedding. I had never met her future husband. I was ten thousand miles away. In the coming years, I would get news from my family, mostly from my sister. My parents will eventually divorce. My father will remarry and move to Spain. My mother will return to her native Uruguay. I often wonder if I decided to be absent.
My children never complained about traveling until they became teenagers and the reality of economy-class seats began to hurt their knees and backs. My daughter was then only one and a half, and we had TSA-friendly milk bottles that we asked the flight attendant to warm for us. A fed baby is a happy child.
Infants in lap didn’t have seatbelts. I fastened mine and held my daughter in my arms while we prepared for take-off. I held her close. Firmly. One arm held her torso, my left hand behind her head. Sixteen years later, she traveled to Sweden with her best friend, where her mother was from. It was her High School graduation present.
The flight attendants walked the aisle performing their last safety check before departure.
My child was sleeping. My wife was holding my arm. I felt grand.
But also, insecure and small. Returning was as going to the unknown.
“Cabin door closed — cross-checked.”
Travel is the absurdity of attempting to return to a past that may have never existed.
When I first arrived at LAX in 2001, alone, except for my bicycle in a cardboard box, the immigration officer asked me the reason for my travel. “I am going to cycle Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Redwoods National Parks.”
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I never did. I always wanted. I didn’t know I would end up having a family.
“What do you do in Argentina?”
I was in my early twenties. “I’m a student.”
It was December 27th, 2001. It was late. I was still dizzy and tired from flying all day. I had seen the lights of Tijuana-San Diego-Los Angeles, never-ending from my window. My seatmate, a guy who had been surfing in Costa Rica or Guatemala, warned me that surfers in LA can be territorial.
I didn’t surf.
“How are you going to sign in to classes?” the immigration officer prodded.
My bicycle was enveloped in a cardboard box.
“Online.”
He stamped my passport and gave me a chance.
As the engine’s revolutions ramped up and the airplane began to move, I held my daughter closer against my chest.
Vibrations and shaking trembled our world. The MD-88 was now our home.
V1.
Rotate.
Engines growled, rumbling.
“We are airborne,” through the intercom, from the cockpit, someone said.
The desert faded below us.
We climbed through clouds.
I arrived at LAX on the evening of December 27th, 2001.
The morning on which I departed my home in Buenos Aires is now in the twilight of a dream. The world felt full of possibilities. Infinite pathways ahead.
©Pablo Pereyra 2025. Thank you for your time.
Not everyone’s immigration journey ends up like mine. No migrant leaves because the conditions in their homeland are rosy and fine. At least, we want to go beyond what our home offers us. Or what it wants to give us, which at times is not even something as simple as a job that supports us.
There are two endings in this story. The one in which I stopped being the person that I was in my country, and the one in which my immigration curfew finished.
