Daily Musings

The Day I Became Me

All my life I always thought that the way I grew up was the true essence of
the person I could be. I never questioned my elders. Bowed my head when spoken to. Kept my room eerily tidy for a small child. Never requested help
from my parents to do homework or school projects.

I was convinced I could handle my own life from early on. In order to have money for the things that I needed, I joined my cousins picking cans all around our housing project in Puerto Rico. The deposit for aluminium is 5 cents each.

The amount of things I could get for five cents were endless. So I made the extra effort to pick more than I could drag in a huge plastic bag and hauled them 6 stories up to exchange them.

While my cousins and sister would spend it all on candy, which the old man conveniently sold from his apartment. It didn't make no sense to me that after all that hard work they would squander the money so easily. I decided that I would save mine for more important things. Like paper. I always have this fascination with paper. The smell of
it has such appeal to me it is only rivaled by coffee. Jajajajajajaj!

I would also buy, pencils, markers and food. Real food. 2 pieces of fried chicken with french fries for a buck. You can have better than that. A can of soda was 50 cents. For
a dollar and fifty cents i just had lunch or dinner. It was on one of those rare days I became uncomfortable with the knowledge that I was not a normal child. And I was only eight.

It was hard for me to hide such deep thoughts from my grown ups since they alreday thought there was something "weird" about me. What with all my reading and experiments. I once filled my room with all types of plants and insects in order to study their growth. My Mom calle dit quits, when she stepped into my "laboratory" one day and spied an amazing amount of fly larvae growing in one of her cooking pots.

Life became dull after that. Soon, though, I spend a while at my grandparents home.
Moving in with older people; all in their mid 60's and 70's was very interesting. My grandmother teached me how to bake, wash, clean etc. My Grandfather who taught me how to read since I was 3, thought me about politics, the power of bieng bilingual and my future. He said I was his eyes since he was blind. My Great auntie Santiaga is very very special to me.

As far back as I can remember she has been mentally ill. Seriously ill. She is know for her academis excellence, though. There wasn't a wall in her room that was not graced with her powerful mathematical theories. I learned my time tables from her. As well as everything else her mind brought back from the time she was a teacher.

I took all of this with me when I left the Island. My heart felt heavy with the fear that I could forget any of it. But here I am typing it all. My memory can be faulty when it comes to what I had for lunch. Ironically, I can remember the scent my Grandma wears. The last thing I said to my Grandpa before he left on his eternal sleep. How many teeth my Auntie Santi had left...jajajaja...one!

I became me..when I moved in with the father of my girls and even though I had never stepped into the kitchen before on my own..I cooked. When my nieces needed help with fractions the pencil scribbled along before I knew. And finally, I became a writer of sorts.

That I owed to Grandpa...The Greatest Story Teller I've known. Even without sight he painted colorful scenes in my head no book could ever match. He urged me to put on paper what my mind could see. I became ME.