Girl Anachronicles

There are things that I associated with having a mother that have nothing to do with my own. I’ve been blessed with an extended family. I was skeptical, if not downright adamant, about accepting them. This process is whole chapter of my story, but the happy conclusion of it – the final acceptance, the warm embrace we all linked in – has endured as a truth since then (in one way or another).

… so it is in moments like these – hardships, uncertainties, exhaustion, loneliness – that I miss the little things my stepmother did for me to make me feel at home. The homemade coffe frappées, the apple-cinnamon smell pervading the house, her voice knitting a web of stories around you, creating a universe out of the ordinary things that happened to her during daily life. It isn’t even about the material comforts, it’s more about what feels like HOME. That was the last Home I knew, before launching into yet another chapter of my life (in which I’ve built a home of my very own). It was the last safe space that didn’t depend on me holding my own. It was the last safe space I could come home to and rest my head and my worries without feeling selfish for letting go.

This does not mean I’m not happy in my adult home. But sometimes you need a mother … sometimes you need a stepmother. Sometimes you need a smile, the smell of incense, and the certainty that it would be ok, regardless of what you did. I miss my Dad, and I definitely miss his wife, even if she wouldn’t guess as much.

I miss Home.

Last post on this blog: May 12th

I think it was about time I put down my virtual red pen, shoved aside the text books for a moment, and sat down to write something of my own.

Summer drained me. A mere few weeks after my last entry, I plunged myself into the world of “being an art teacher”. This world demands your full load of patience, and then some. I think all teacher worlds demand this, mind you, and teachers that love what they do earned my undying admiration.

I was art teacher for a month in a summer camp. The main objective of the camp was for kids to practice their English in a fun way, they said. The art activities didn’t have to be particularly complex or farfetched, they said. What they didn’t say was:

- Kids expect innovation/newness at every single fucking turn. You can’t have them coloring paper with crayons two days in a row, they’ll go crazy!

Watercolors again!?!?!? MAN!!!!

- Art supplies are freakin’ expensive. And this particular school was very skeptical about giving me free rein of their art supplies (which are used specifically for summer camp, since they don’t have art class in the school year curriculum … those paints and glitter and glue bottles have been sitting there for years!)

- Kids can’t really be kids … they can’t run, they can’t jump, they can’t skip. Otherwise, they might fall, and godforbiftheyfallthey’ll SUE US! Jeezus! This was the attitude at te beginning of the day, at the end of it, and oh lordy lord! LUNCH TIME. Lunch.Time.Was.HELL!!!

Can't run, can't walk, can't scream, can't talk...

- I’d be having lunch with the same group assigned to me the hour before lunch. Which meant two full hours with the same group. Which turned out to be the biggest group (20). Of 7 -9 year old BOYS. Who ate in a flash. And couldn’t go anywhere else after they ate their lunch. Guess what they did in those remaining 45 minutes. … I’ll let your imagination do the rest.

Fit this inside a small classroom. Yeah. That.

… so, by the end of June, I was happy to the point of tears that the whole ordeal was over. I remembered summer camp work quite differently. I guess different camps work different ways. Sometimes bigger IS better.

The one thing that kept me going and going and going through all those days of feeling subhuman was the notion that I was flying off to see Dad on that very last day of camp. Ohhhh, it was worth it! Thank you, Eze!

I visited Dad during a Father’s Day weekend: it was a flurry of activity, trying to make all the hours last. I’ll always say I wish I had him nearby, but after seeing him and Martha and Felipe carry on with their lives over there, I realized they’ve pretty much found their groove … even if it’s a poor groove. They’re comfy. And their house smells like wood, and apple-cinnamon, and Christmas, and home I wish it was nearer …

The rest of summer went by way too fast, I think. Most days were spent looking out the window, wondering why my work schedule was so funky that they always put me in during evenings or closing shifts. At least work is still going strong, and I still like it. I think, however, that I could have made better use of my time during summer, I dunno. It was over in a flash.

And now, August-December semester is here (my favorite: it’s plagued with a smattering of holidays, the occasional strike, and unexpected tropical storms and hurricanes). I’m only  taking one class, and thankfully! I thought it would be easier, but gosh, this professor is driving nails down my temper’s blackboard! I have my first test tomorrow, and for the first time in a long while, my nerves are on edge.

During this semester I’ve also gotten timidly involved in the revamping/overhaul/let’s-get-this-shit-running of FrecuenciasAlternas.com … as an editor (hence, the virtual red pen). I’ve kept sewing what I sew, and then some more: I took Grandma’s sewing machine, wiped the dust and cockroach eggs off, and put it to good use. My wardrobe is growing again, thanks to this wonderful machine and the magnanimous generosity of a few friends (Maricarmen, Lynnie, thank you!).

This summer's masterpiece: McCartney & Yellow Submarine

… and now holidays are getting nearer, starting off with my favorite: Halloween … which my colleagues say won’t be my favorite no mo’ because it gets all fucked up in a jiffy at the store. I don’t doubt it: Hot Topic is one of the very few costume outlets in this island. If you can’t find your sexy fireman outfit with us, where can you? No, we don’t have sexy firemen outfits … dude, get a freaking red g-string and a heavy duty hose at Sears, jeezus!

So, catch me ’round the bend. I’m pretty sure I’ll be covered head to toe in repurposings and hemming-ins ^_^

... arroz y habichuelas ...

Food is always an issue in my household: Eze likes his rice & beans, pork chops and viandas; I don’t. I’m usually met with incredulous faces (complete with gaping mouths and wide eyes) when I admit that I don’t like rice & beans at all. If you’re boricua, you have to like rice & beans, sancocho, pasteles… in a case like mine, the kindest of remarks is that I’m “fussy with food”. I’ve even been told that I wrongfully believe that I’m not boricua (“te crees europea, es?”). I’ve tried by all means to understand why it is that there’s food that everyone seems to love that I don’t like at all: this is important to me becase most of that food is the food my husband loves, the food that is served at his parents’ house table. The easiest conclusion achieved is that I was brought up on an “American menu” (a.k.a. hamburgers, hot dogs, mac & cheese), but that is only partly right. I think I finally understood why it is much more complex than that…

Comfort food

(n) Defined as food that gives emotional comfort to the one eating it, these tend to be favorite foods of childhood, or linked to a person, place or time with which the food has a positive association.

For most people around me, such things as rice & beans, pork chops, bacalao, etc are associated with positive and happy times around the table with the family: the warm and loving mom that cooked this for you is the one handing you the plate with a smile. There’s no trauma to eating a plateful of rice & beans, right?

Well, in my case, I wasn’t so lucky to be born liking rice & beans, and the earliest memory I have of that dish is my Mom snarling at me to eat it all. Beans taste to me like force-feeding. It’s not comforting at all. I’m pretty sure these incidents were not daily occurrences: my mom also cooked mashed potatoes with hot dogs, cordon bleu, etc… these were the foods I associated with good times: sharing a chicken cordon bleu piece with my father … yeah, eating most of it because I didn’t like my own dish …

Comfort food for me? Sweet dinner rolls with butter, with a side of slices of salchichón. Instant mashed potatoes with chopped salchichas mixed in. Serrano ham with fried cheese balls. Arabian desserts. My grandmother’s turkey and relleno (potatoes, eggs, onions, almonds, raisins). Mom’s ground beef with rice. Colombian or Venezuelan arepas. Braunschweiger. It wasn’t so much what food I had most often, it was the food that I came to associate with happiness

Some things, I’ve learned to love as an adult: peppers, roquefort cheese, onions, cauliflowers, some viandas. Others, like rice & beans or string beans (or lima beans, or any kind of beans,except refried – because they’ve been killed and mashed) I associate immediately with frustration and almost being sick at the table …

So, dear loved ones: stop insisting on the rice & beans. It.Makes.Me.Sick. (and eating it certainly feels like a chore)

Thank you.

I just got home from a failed attempt at penetrating the biggest mall in this island (Plaza las Américas, of course, the center of everyyyything). I wanted to get a rare orchid for my mother: it was an dark purple plant with leaves that slightly shimmered as if gold dust had been sprinkled on them, a beauty! But it was an EPIC FAIL, mainly because I couldn’t even get a parking spot.

At 11:30, Plaza las Américas was already bursting with traffic that complied with X-mas-grade expectations. People were “hunting” after more intelligent shoppers that were already done and leaving Hell. It felt like trying to get your own buffalo among a tribe of seasoned huntsmen: intimidating, tiresome, frustrating. I gave up after half an hour, called Mom to let her know she would get her gift a bit later than most, got the distinct flavor of disappointment in the tone of her response… which got me thinking …

If I’ve forsaken St. Valentine’s because – REALLY! – why would I want to celebrate my own relationships at tandem with the rest of the world? … then, why do I subject myself to the imposition of a fucking Hallmark holiday to celebrate my love for my own mother the same freaking day everyone else does? Why do we – the same ones that have successfully unshackled ourselves from the obligatory X-mas, St. Valentine’s, and other miscellaneous fabricated festivities – insist on behaving like brainless sheep only for our own mothers’ sakes? Is our love for our mothers so generic that we agree on celebrating it like most other people do?

And in the case of people like me, people whose mothers insist on celebrating all things Hallmark-Lifetime-Precious Moments: why do we cave in anyways? Why do we agree on giving the goddamned holiday the importance it doesn’t deserve?

It’s a holiday – like most others – in which, at  the best of cases, it creates a conundrum in couples and other composite families as to where to spend the day, and for how much amount of time. In the worst of cases, it creates chaos, destruction and death (yes, a bit exaggerated, but not all that off). I’m starting to think holidays are not the best idea when it comes to spending time with your family. It’s usually a bit of a stressful time, and it’s best to stay away from them all and keep sanity levels all around.

Maybe next year, I’ll let them know well before time that I won’t keep bowing to Evil Hallmark and its cheesy ways.

Totally appropriate Mother's Day card from SomeEcards.com

I’m writing out of what could probably be a very out-of-place anger. I know everyone has the undeniable right to pursue his or her own happiness. So undeniable and common-sense is this right, that it was included in the U.S. Passport (it’s a small quote from some forefather dude who spoke nicely enough to be quoted in a passport design). The pursuit of happiness is, in short, one of the few things that every sentient being should be allowed.

My father shipped away some years ago (I think 5, to be as accurate as possible) to the mainland U.S. to search for his own happiness. His contracting business here was not working as well as it used to: maybe a symptom of what would later become a nation-wide meltdown of the economy. I was surprised, though, that he bought into the widespread myth that “things in the U.S. are better than in Puerto Rico”. The last few years have proved that the puertorican’s inability to adapt to a recession has been the lifeboat of some U.S. franchises and  companies (Dennys, Sears – to name a few). While the American’s purchasing habits have been deeply altered by the steep fall of the market, puertoricans remain blissfully oblivious and spend entire days at the mall buying things they don’t need to make them feel better about the problems they think they don’t have. Things are fucked up all around, but Puerto Rico is trapped in a bubble of delusion that has kept the boat afloat.

So, why am I angry?, you might ask. I truly believed my dad could make it fine out there. First there was Texas, then Fort Myers, and now Orlando. The stories in all these places have been the same: he scrounges for jobs, some directly related to what he used to do as a contractor, others way below what a man with 2 Master Degrees should be doing for a living. All of this, just so he can barely scrape by… all of this just so he can pay the debts that have been piling up for months and years, all of this to follow a dream that, from where I’m standing, has been long defunct. Changing places to “have a better life” almost never works like that: the things that truly make you unhappy will follow you wherever you go.

Dad went away looking for I don’t know what, running from something that was never very clear to me. I wanted to empathize and be supportive, and I think I HAVE, most of the while. Today I received a few forwarded pictures, though, and I realized something that is clearer and stronger than any pursuit for material wellness or “peaceful community living” could ever be: Dad moved away and he took away with him the opportunity to grow old among the ones that love him. He left with his wife, who no doubt adores him (which is the only solace I get out of this situation: her unconditional love and support of him is what has kept him alive, and for that I am grateful)… but the rest of us are here. Sons, daughters, grandkids, all of us missing them terribly, and needing from them the one thing they could always muster in droves: emotional support, presence, peace, a temple, a place to come home to.

I miss that, I miss what was home: a place that no longer exists, that was left behind in “10 Years Ago”.  I miss my Dad, I miss his wife… a phone call can keep me posted on what’s going on, but it can NEVER relay a hug. I’m missing my dad growing old … I think this hurts as much as never seeing your own child grow up. And Dad, even though he knows what’s going on with us, is missing us growing into full-on adults, the true product of the seeds he planted for years.

I think that somewhere along the way he lost sight of the real wealth that counts in life: it’s not so much about having the perfect house, a job that earns well,  an organized and peaceful neighborhood. The real wealth is being able to spend your life surrounded by the people you love and who love you. The real wealth is not missing the things that will give you a richer and happier death, when you start remembering what your life was like.

Maybe this is a temper tantrum of mine… maybe I have no right to ask.

… or maybe it IS an inalienable right: the right to enjoy your parents will you can.