I came to take back what they took from us
Some years before my birth both of my parents emigrated to the United States in search of a more secure life as they had heard existed there. They met at a party in Philly, two lost people looking to settle in a new, exciting, yet unforgiving and brutal land. They mapped it all out in just a few months of being together and found in each other both a piece from back home and a piece of the unknown.
Some years later they had me.. I was born in to the same world they were simultaneously creating and trying to survive in. I remember my first childhood memory of being left in my stroller alone for just a few minutes from inside the house.. facing the wide open front door, the light blasted in without any person's silhouette to comfort me. Hence my first childhood memory was made, eyes wide open looking outside and lonely. It defined one of the first things that life in the states took from me and my family.
In their respective homelands my parents grew up running through streets and fields with large groups of kin their age. My mother and her friends would anger the bulls and then run away as they were chased and laughing the whole way. My father would stay in the forest with his friends and tell stories the whole weekend while picking on the only guy who was still single.
In the states the visits to friends slowly waned, the warmth of groups slowly became the cold of solitude. A Christmas Eve dinner in a full house soon became a kitchen revolving door snack without the least electricity of legs sitting near each other. No more kicking under the tables. No more lame prayers. The family no longer ate together. We all became some part in a machinery for work or education. Family time was in the way of that.
Who is knocking on the door? Don't open the door! Don't even go near it. No one even called us to tell us they were coming. "Why not? Remember back home? Our doors were always wide open. Any visitor just had to walk in" Now we have an iron fence and security cameras. An alarm dings 'armed' at night when the last person goes to sleep after scrolling through the internet for too many hours.
From the stroller, looking out to the door for the rest of my life, I watched my family slowly become engulfed in the separateness. The cheek kisses.
My grandmother's eyes watered as I packed my bags to leave the states "You will be missed in this household. You are so important to me." I love you dearly. I need to go. I need to go take back what this place took from us. I cannot wait anymore. I don't know if I can keep going if I don't go now. Mother, father, I love you. Soon enough I will capture it, in my chest, I'll bring it back for you... you'll see.
Some months later I find myself working the land. The forest is my daily commute, the river my bathtub, the sun my alarm, the moon my calendar, the warm smiles of my people, the most beautiful faces I have met, development in raw flesh, political discourse without saliva, the dorsal spine of the world is the mountain range, a thatched palm basket carrying hundred pounds of seeds to make a living, I work like a brute but with pride.. The verses of my one favorite song ingrained in my mind 'Latinoamerica', the anthem that keeps me going everyday. The warmth is here and I have it.
"Mom,dad, you'll retire in five years.. Let's get a piece of earth worth the effort. Let's do it. Let's take it all back"
"I'm proud of you"
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