Comments on: Crossing the Border https://jillmorrow.net/crossing-the-border/ THE NOVELS OF JILL MORROW Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:51:51 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.2 By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/crossing-the-border/#comment-194004 Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:51:51 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1799#comment-194004 In reply to Robert DiNapoli.

Robert … if the border agent thought your mom was a nun, I wonder who he thought you were …

Your mom really did miss out on a successful life of crime. (As if …)

]]> By: Jill Morrow https://jillmorrow.net/crossing-the-border/#comment-194003 Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:50:32 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1799#comment-194003 In reply to Kristina Riggle.

Kristina, I think Europe’s perspective on tourists has very much changed in the past 30 years! But you clearly get it — those newlywed days were numbered, but it’s always surprising to discover that they’ve passed. I assure you that you are still “cute.”

]]> By: Robert DiNapoli https://jillmorrow.net/crossing-the-border/#comment-194001 Wed, 05 Aug 2026 23:14:50 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1799#comment-194001 I crossed the Canadian border twice with my mother (with my worldly goods in a van), moving to Toronto in 1985 and leaving in 1990. Both times we got waved through without a glance at all my boxes in the back, despite my epic hair and beard at the time(s). The boxes held no contraband. Books, mostly, but it could have been anything. The second time the agent added, ‘Have a nice day, sister’. Despite her seven children, Mom always presented in that benign Maria von Trapp way. Her Franciscan pectoral cross (she was third order) probably helped too. But I reckon she missed out on a promising career as a smuggler. In some alterntive universe, perhaps.

]]> By: Kristina Riggle https://jillmorrow.net/crossing-the-border/#comment-194000 Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:35:59 +0000 https://jillmorrow.net/?p=1799#comment-194000 What if I reassure you that he might indeed have felt you were dangerous, but was well practiced in covertly hiding his suspicions? No? Not buying it, I expect…

As you know, I just took a big international trip that was an echo and tribute to a trip we took 30 years ago as newlyweds. We were absolutely “cute” back then! This time we seemed mostly invisible and boring…here comes another middle aged American couple to gawk at our ruins.

Though the border guard where we landed in Europe (Munich) was classically flinty and suspicious. I suspect he was probably just tired of tourists and working in a grey windowless corner of the airport and hemmed in by a plexiglass box.

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