HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

I just came home from an exhausting weekend with the family and I mean exhausting because having too much fun takes its toll. We (Dear Husband, sister, mom, uncle, and pets) drove up to Tampa to hang out with the family we have there. The same family who lovingly open their home to me when I was spoiled brat 8 years ago used to asking for everything and doing nothing on my own.

We spent two amazing days laughing our asses off playing board games, dancing, drinking, eating (of course) and remembering the old days, from when we were little to the horror stories of our first jobs in the U.S. The cultural shock and horrid jobs behind us gives us the opportunity to laugh at what before made us want to cry. There is something simply delicious about looking back and laughing hysterically at things, experiences, jobs, pains, falls, etc that drove us crazy and depressed us. The personal triumph of moving past it couldn’t taste any sweeter.

After playing games and utterly crushing our only male cousin playing we started getting ready for the party. I had forgotten how the simple fun of sharing a bathroom with so many other women feels. What a simple pleasure to sit down with little eye shadow pots, brushes, steaming curling irons, tweezers, pencils and chattering voices, felt like. I had forgotten the fun of simply being a girl with other girls who you love while men stand outside complaining about how long we take and make fun of us.

We made it to the party late of course and danced and laughed, ate and danced, laughed some more. We laugh a lot, I noticed. I don’t know why it struck me so strongly that exact moment but we do a lot of laughing and the thought of it made me happy. Happy that in spite of all the hard things we have gone though, heart ache, losing family, losing oneself in this vast and foreign land we still find pleasure and laugh, out loud, until our bellies ache and we are gasping for air.

Twelve o’clock finally came and the deafening sounds of music and other voices drowned our own, we hugged each other, taking turns, wishing each other a happy new year to come, happiness, health, love, laughter, security…There is something about that precise moment, that instant, that last a second, that short moment when the new year begins and the old year ends that is almost indescribable. There is something about the energy around, flowing like bubbly champagne; something about the screams, laughter, the happy almost euphoric feeling, there’s something about that exhilarating emotion that makes the most cynic one of us feel overwhelmed with happiness and the beauty of hope.

None of us know what the New Year will bring, but in that very moment we are all, as one, expecting, hoping, wanting and wishing each other the best for the year in front of us. All that positive energy, all the good juju cannot be all in vain.

As I sat there surrounded by the people I love and the people I share blood with, people that had seen me grow and people that love in spite of my many, many, many flaws I felt so incredibly lucky, lucky that the people I care about are mostly in good health, well, working, living, breathing, enjoying life. Lucky that I have a husband that loves me and mine, lucky that my family is just the shit and I wouldn’t change even one of the crazy characters in it.

I ate my twelve grapes, wishing wishes, for Dear Husband, for my brother, my mom, my sister, the rest of my family and myself. More than anything I wished for more years where we are just like this, spending it with family, eating until we burst, dancing, wishing each other another happy new year, another year where in that moment we are so incredibly happy and we are so overwhelmed we want to cry.

I wish you all my same brand of happiness, the same brand of luck. This is a new year, a blank slate that we all get one time each year, so start this new one with renewed hope, with new plans, with a positive mind, with a happy feeling. You never know what good is around the corner, when love may come your way, what blessing life might throw you. This is the year to be happy, so be it.

FIRST LESSONS

That first year of my new life, as corny as it sounds, was a journey to self-discovery. I found out more about myself in those strenuous 12 months than I had in my whole previous life. I found out I could cook and quite well! I learned it all from watching my mom all my life, because it was a household chore she never gave up even when we had a maid.

I became the designated chef for the family and felt less of a burden with something to do while everybody else was at work and school. I learned that “er” and “est” (as in better and best) can only be used with two syllable words and that applying them to any word longer than that makes you sound like the stupidest person on earth.

I discovered how great my cousins were and how much fun it was to talk to them all night long. And that I could actually laugh and enjoy life with them without feeling I was betraying my past by enjoying my present. I learned to be afraid of the Florida rain after one my cousin’s school mates died after being hit by lightning while walking to school in the rain. I learned (even though I tried not to) all the jingles from the commercials (“You bet your sweet asspercream” was my favorite).

I learned that Miami was owned by its Cuban community and nepotism ran rampant. I learned while driving north when we moved away from it, that driving a few hours away from Miami, feels like traveling to another country and convenience stores called “Donde Pancho” and repair garages with signs that read “reparaciones baratas” completely disappear north of Fort Lauderdale. I learned to read in English and that I was being too ambitious when I chose “Timeline” to be my first book because not even in Spanish I can understand quantum physics. I learned that there’s a chance to spend money each time you so much take a steps out of the house and that “2-4-1” is a gimmick that capitalism has perfected.

I learned how to ride a bicycle by myself. Hopped on a brad new one that my mom got me for that first Christmas here and bent the front tire with all the tree crashing I did. But proudly learned how to do it. I learned that my dad was the sterling example of “out of sight out of mind” and that our only source of income dried up, alimony checks stopped and learned not to be embarrassed about living of my aunt and uncle’s charity (neither one of which was related by blood to my mom).

I learned to my eternal embarrassment that I was a complete and utter snob. When my mom found herself without money she told me it was bad enough to be living rent free but we were not to become a burden to anybody. Having to work turned into a reality that I know I should’ve considered before. I know now that I should’ve started working as soon as I got over my month-long depression. But I didn’t. My life thus far had not prepared me for this. I had not been equipped to think that way; I was hurled into a world where money was the means for our survival instead of something I had no interest in earning and all the interest in spending. I was spoiled rotten and life had finally come to slap me around and teach me a lesson and I was not ready.

When my mom said we were going to start working I wanted to say “ew” or be exasperated. But my mom’s despair was too keen for me to complain about it. I stuck my chin out and fancied myself a heroin to the rescue and tackled the new challenge. Riiiiiiight.

IN EXILE

I didn’t utter a word during the four hours of travel. I waved goodbye to my home from the plane, the city shrinking before my eyes, thinking stubbornly that I was going to be back, that I would walk those streets again a month from now.

We finally landed in Miami Airport (which in and on itself deserves a chapter in my story) not very welcoming with its thousand people walking around, bumping each other and the custom agents treating people as if they were criminals (a little late for that don’t ya think?). I felt myself be hugged and kissed by my aunt and uncle whom I hadn’t seen in four years since they moved to the USA running away from the Colombia guerrillas and the many deaths they had brought to their family. My cousins smiled at me and I tried to smile back. We got to the car after getting lost in the gigantic parking lot, the size of it overwhelming my already overloaded emotions and giving me a peek of USA’s excesses.

Nausea was rolling in and out of me like waves, my face losing and gaining color with it. My uncle only driving at 45 miles per hour but I could see only blurs of light. I looked around the window, trying to find something familiar even though I hadn’t been there before, searching for the familiar shadow of the looming mountains, not knowing, not expecting Miami to be as flat as a pancake, I could find nothing. All I could see was the bottomless distance, nothing to get in the way of my searching eyes and the light of the houses miles and miles away.

 

My body had a tingling sensation; I could feel my skin prickling with the rush of blood and my heart pumping so hard I could hear the roar in my ears. I was getting dizzy and found myself gulping for air, realizing I had been holding my breath. My misery knew no depths; I could hear my uncle and my aunt talking animatedly with my mom and my cousin laughing while the other sketched in a pad. I got distracted by her pictures and the characters that came to life before my eyes. The slam on the brakes brought me back to reality and all of the sudden the knowledge of being here was too much to bear.

"I need to go to the bathroom" I croaked. The van was silent. Everybody listening to the first words I had spoken since jumping in the stupid plane that brought me here. God I could’ve argued harder, I could’ve fought dirtier, I could’ve told my dad he was a bad father, which always worked before! I could've ran away, I could've stayed at my friend’s house. Anything, anything was better than this foreign smell, and the noises and the freaky flatness. Everything was better than this horrible humidity that was making my hair do things I didn’t know it was capable of doing. "We are close to home now" My uncle said with his raspy smoker voice even though he doesn’t smoke. "I reaaaaally need to go" I said. 'Is not home, is not home!!!!!' I screeched in my head while my face remained impassive. I was having trouble breathing and feeling anxious, my mom’s and my aunt’s laughter felt like nails on a chalkboard. The silence of my sketching cousin felt like a wall I could lean on. My stomach rolled and salty saliva pooled in my mouth. I knew swallowing would mean throwing up in the car, so I sat there with my mouth full and my head pounding so hard I could feel it in my sinuses. A tear clung to my eyelash and in the blissful darkness of the car I rubbed my eyes. My uncle finally stopped at a gas station taking his sweet time to park. I had the door open before he had fully stopped.
 I jumped out and ran into someone. The dirty guy looked at my boobs and said something dirty and walked away. My uncle jumped out of the car to - I assume defend my honor- and I swallowed.


My stomach rejected everything, the salty saliva, the dirty man and his roving eyes, the salty smell of Miami and its sticky humid air. I projectile vomited on the sidewalk and felt my ears ringing. I kneeled on the floor without feeling the gravel denting my hands. I thought and felt nothing while retch after retch wracked my stomach. Empty of food and feeling I sat back on the floor, the cool feeling of the metal door of the car a balm against my hot cheek. I didn’t notice until later my cousin holding my hair. "Airplane food" Someone said.

I blinked the tears away, refusing, as if my life depended on it, to let them fall. I felt miserable but better. I avoided the pity looks in my family’s faces and took the bottle water someone offered. I avoided their glares and sat there as if picnicking next to my throw-up. I stared at the lit sign of Chevron until it blurred away.
Welcome to America.