Hammock - The House Where We Grew up

Hammock - Take a Drink from My Hands

#4

I promised myself to be self-sufficient by 23-years-old. I promised myself a home, a sense of purpose, well-being, and a life full of hard work yet complete with all the benefits that accompany sacrifice. Now, on the verge of 24, I have accomplished none of those goals I myself set. It's impossible to not feel like a failure, to believe that a path that once seemed clear and bright has become obscured by my own demons. And though I press on, machete in hand, I fear I will never see the light that so clearly lead the way before.

[write 5 sentences about stress and what makes you feel that way: June 10th, 2011]

"Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going on. Not against: with"

-Robert Frost

My last semester at Dominican, I decided to take a course on Religion. It's name or the name of my professor, a middle-aged woman who was a pastor for a local church, I can't recall...but the minute I stepped into the class, I knew that I belonged there at that exact moment in my life. I was juggling school and my own private life with that of a severely depressed sibling, a father in Iraq, and a mother and sister living alone in Florida who needed constant attention and love (as did I). It wasn't an easy time in my life, and it seems that many of those things left unfinished from then have followed me for the past two and a half years. I thought once I graduated that I was lifted of my duties as a strong sister and daughter, that now it was my turn to go into the world and make of it what I could. 

Now I look back and see how unfair it was of me to believe something so naive, so cruel. Who was I to decide to abandon the four people who lifted me up, often above their own heads so that I could breathe more clearly? It wasn't that I didn't love my mother or sister or brother or father any less in that moment, but I decided to love them at arm's reach. I would answer the phone, listen intently until I was bored or agitated, hang up, and go on with my day as originally planed. Out of sight, out of mind, hoping that if I didn't think to much of the issues that plagued each of them, that they would disappear on their own. Or, at the very least, I would show up occasionally, put in whatever worked was needed of me, and take off again truly believing that I was a dedicated member of the family.

This trip was meant to be just that, to show up, smile, clean and organized the house my parents intend to retire in and return to California with a clear conscious. It was also at the beginning of this trip that I wrote the journal entry above in response to what stress is and what makes me feel that way. It was nearsighted, misguided by instant gratification rather than reflection open to possibility. When I finished, I capped my pen and stepped out on the porch where my restless mother was smoking what must have been her 10th cigarette that day. A habit too, that I had turned a blind eye toward. Sinking into the empty seat next to her, I swatted a cloud of smoke she had exhaled from the left corner of her mouth signifying my annoyance. She ignored me.

"I'm tired." She said.

"It's after midnight, you've been up since 6 this morning. You must be exhausted." I responded, reaching my legs forward to the wood coffee table in front of us.

"No, Mariel. I'm tired." This time I looked at her, met her gaze. It was true that since I had seen her in February, she seemed more languid. Her skin hanging in tired pools below her eyes, her mouth in a constant frown when relaxed. 

"What do you want me to do, mom?" She shook her head slowly, shrugging her shoulders before reaching into her pack for another cigarette. I didn't say anything, fiddling instead with my fingernails as I often did when I was nervous. 

When I wanted to avoid something.

"What's your plan, Mariel? Where are you headed?" She placed the cigarette gently between her lips, cupping her hands around the lighter before inhaling sharply. I sat quietly watching as her face exploded momentarily with light of the flame, the quick crackle of tobacco burning inward on itself. 

"I don't know, Mami. Maybe school. I can't find work, I've tried. I've been trying." She sighed, sinking further into the worn cushions behind her. 

"Then try something else." The last line, signifying the end of the conversation. We sat silently together until she finished, kissed me on the cheek and headed inside. It wasn't a comment meant to hurt per say, but certainly one intended to sting. It was true that I had been looking, as were hundreds of thousands of other unemployed Californians thinking today was the day they'd catch their break and land the job the deserved, that they were entitled to.


California for me has become a constant that, up until we moved there in 2002, I hadn't met yet. A familiar place whose back roads and beautiful hills were etched into me like some undiscovered map that I knew I had seen before - so this was what home felt like. It was natural to fall in love, cherish that place and fight to protect it. But when do you let go? When do you recognize as an adult who has been living off the kindness and out of the homes of others for over two years that its time to move on and find the place that you're supposed to be and not necessarily where you want to be. It seems for me, those two things will never be accomplished in the same space...at least for now.


In the last few days spanning my trip, my aunt and I would talk for hours about everything. Having spent the most time with my grandparents, she was the that entity in the family bequeathed with the responsibility to keep photos, memories, important dates and gossip in chronological order. And as we get older, the more we discuss the hidden details of my grandparents and my mother's life. Things kept from us purposefully until those guardians of the secrets felt we could handle their weight, and not turn them against one another as lethal verbal ammunition. 


Reclining in her husband's favorite chair, the sound of aging wood creaking against her weight, my aunt closed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair while pulling tightly at the roots as if to allow the steam from yet another long day escape through a million tiny pores. We were at her apartment in La Puntilla, the late day sun spilling in over my bare legs and blue-white marble tiles, the sound of car horns and her canary's sing-song voice mixing together into some familiar language we chose in that moment to ignore.


"It was in 1978 when I first met him." She began, some far off image tugging at the smile she flashed suddenly. "I was visiting your mother in Argentina with abuela and abuelo so that we could see her dance, but to also revisit abuelo's barrio in Venezuela which he hadn't returned to since his initial flee. You knew why your abuelo had fled, yes?"


I nodded, blindly groping for my coffee on the table next to me, not letting my eyes leave my aunt for fear she might find me disinterested and end her story.


"We never found any cousins of ours, or anyone for that matter....Anyway, it was the summer months for them, winter for us, and after your mother's performance, we decided to go dancing. I can't recall if I met him there or before. But he invited me to dance joropo, which your aubelo had taught me and that I hadn't admitted to him I knew well." 


She clapped her hands together, bringing them to her mouth as she laughed loudly. 


"The look on his face. He couldn't believe it. He was so handsome, Mariel. Tall with long dark hair and light gray eyes. He taught anthropology at the local university. That was it, we danced all night together. Making plans again the next night to do the same. It was an innocent and pure kind of love, one only found in those moments, but it was real. So very real."


I looked down to her worn and dirtied house dress, draped loosely over a river of spider veins and whose tears danced along top my aunt's bouncing knees. Her eyes focused on some inanimate object ahead, hands still poised at her mouth as in some silent prayer to God to return her to that very moment so she could be there with him one more time.


"He asked me to stay with him there...."


"Why didn't you?" I interjected, leaning forward upset. This was it, true love. The kind, as Cyrano said, that left ghost images of your lovers face everywhere as if you had just looked into the sun.


"Mami, I had your grandparents to take care of. I couldn't leave them. But we wrote one another often, promising of the day we could see each other again. And we did."


"And?" 


"And I gave him this ring as a promise that I would wait for him. The second visit was more a chance happening. After years of writing letters, we eventually fell out of touch. I met my second husband and your Godfather, and for nearly 15 years he only came to me in dreams or the occasional passing thought."


"Then?"


"Then, when I left Luis, I planned a trip back to Argentina to visit some old friends of mine. The second night I was there, I met a mutual friends, a petite beautiful young woman who struck me as familiar. It turned out to be his sister who contacted him through a letter - remember there were no cellphones then, or email - and that he returned immediately, promising his return to Buenos Aires to see me. He was just as handsome as I remembered."


We sat quietly for a moment, staring out at a flock of Puerto Rican parrots that nestled into the bare branches of a dying tree outside the open balcony doors. The sun was dipping and swaying slowly, settling beyond the horizon into its final resting place as in the distance the overcom boxes on the nearby Coast Guard base hissed their nightly salute. 


"They're late as usual." My aunt said, absentmindedly. 


"He was just as handsome?" I said into my rose decorated mug, taking a long sip from my now cold coffee. My aunt smiled again, turning away slightly as if it were a private matter.


"He was. But the trip was only a visit, and he knew that. So before I left, I gave him this." She removed the ring and handed it to me. It was a heavy, oval shaped thing with a dark green stone laid in an intricate gold setting. A visible crack directly down its center and which I followed with the nail of my right index finger. "I made him promise that he would wear it always and return it when we saw one another again."


"Did you?" I asked, watching her eyes track the ring as I placed it on each finger to test its fit.


"No." She reached over, taking it back gently and returning it to her pinky. "By then, we must have been in our 40s. He had retired from teaching and was in the process of fixing his family's beach home so that he may return there permanently. He had been an avid smoker, as were most South Americans in those days, and didn't take care to cover his mouth while using a lead-based paint during the renovations. He immediately became weak and was hospitalized, where he continued to write to me and promised that when he was better, he would visit me in Puerto Rico. It was to me that his last letter was addressed."


"How did you find out?" My throat felt dry, her's detached.


"His sister called me, told me she'd sent some letters she found in his hospital room."


"And the ring?"


"I asked her if I could have it back, that it was mine originally. He had worn it all that time that she had forgotten it wasn't his."


The recorded bugle had ceased its call, the parrots had flown from the tree. All was quiet.


"They say when a stone cracks like this, it means someone's life has forever been damaged." Her eyes threatened to spill the tears that lingered on the edge, the pain of 20 years behind them. There was nothing else to be said, the story had ended.


I come from a generation that forgets these stories, these moments in which those who came before us endured the reality that it isn't about who you are or where you come from, but rather the pain your life has dealt you and how you've chosen to carry it. To overcome it. To make it your own so you may live next to it in respect and awe. I come from a generation who dreams big and refuses to pay their dues to get there. We want everything on a silver platter, festooned with whatever our imagination can conjure, not matter the expense. 


I'm 23-years-old on the verge of being 24. I am not financially independent nor will I most likely be in the next year. But this: this world, the friends that come and go in it, the education that may very well surmount to nothing, a family with an ill marriage and two ill siblings, a house that will never again be a home, that is what I have. That it what I've been dealt, and dammit if I won't die trying to make something of it. 


Because it's all I have, and all I will ever aim to be.