Variegated

Variegated

-adjective - 1 varied in appearance or color; marked with patches or spots of different colors. 2varied; diversified; diverse.

As I fly into Bangor Maine, through the 'rough air' and fog, the green pine trees come into focus. The landscape is variegated, marked with pockets of yellow and red, hailing the 'fall'. I am flying from one extreme to another, my day varied and diverse.

The airport is reminiscent of Canberra airport in the seventies, but smaller and we wait almost as long for our luggage as we spend in the air. My fabulous Canadian 'mate' Richard and his son Ethan meet me at the airport. They say, I wasn't hard to spot. And I say, 'you guys weren't either!' Together we are a motley crüe,  varied in both colour and appearance, easily spotted as we travel north.

While I notice the complete extremes of my day- breakfast in Manhattan New York, dinner in a diner in a two bob border town, Calais, the vast gap between the two worlds is lost on me at first. Until we enter the diner in Calais. Half a dozen or so customers are seated in the diner, and they immediately gaze our way. Each head follow us in a long slow movement. Their bottom lips drop a little. 'They don't even know I'm Australian', I say to Richard, and he says 'yeah -ar, but they ain't seen 'twigs' like that before'', referring to my hair. We are seated at a large booth with a red gingham table-cloth. There's a line-up of mustards, ketchups, and condiments, and a paper placemat with the '50' US states in a word find. (Hawaii apparently doesn't exist here). We order from the high-fat menu, and Richard asks the waitress if she's ever seen anyone from Australia before, and she says 'no'. 'Well you have now!' She seems pleased and we get 4 copies of the wordfind placements to take home. I order the half-size meal (chicken Parmesan which comes with onion rings, salad and pasta) and eat less than half. I guess I should have ordered the 'quarter-sized meal'.

Sitting at the diner, even though two of us are white, we are obviously not locals. We stand out. Vina, Richards wife was born in the Phillipines, so Ethan is not only dark-skinned, but Asian, and me with my 'twigs', well...So from cosmopolitan NY, where anything goes, to a backstreet diner in Calais. that's a variegated 24 hours.

We hop back into the big black Dodge pick-up truck, and drive through the fog, on the wrong side of the road, eating Hershey bars and competing for conversation time. It's been 25 years but so far, it seems like nothing has changed.