Family nostalgia project ‘10 continues and thankfully ends.

Tap shoes and the training potty at my abuelita’s house.

My entire family went on vacation when I was almost two and my mom didn’t want to deal with my hair since it was so hot out so she chopped it off and this is why I am ambiguously gendered in this photo with my grandpa.

This is newborn me. I was three weeks late and a monstrous baby at birth. I just typed “at bitch”. very telling.

I have no words for my father’s fashion choices.

I am going to flip furniture over Teresa Giudice/RHONJ-style, just wait.

My mom reading in the 70s. She commented: “You see, it wasn’t just glitter and cocaine. Not that I ever did cocaine. You know.” Note: she then married a man with the last name Escobar. I rest my case.

I’m surprised the Sartorialist didn’t come calling.

I don’t know either. Also, PUBLIX brand foil. Nice.

See my dad’s balding patch? Well, I learned how to crochet around age 5 and I made him a little pink yarmulke-looking thing so “no one would”. I’m pretty sure he cried.

Ghost City

I’m beginning to think that blogging, and writing to some extent, involves muscles that get underused when you take any kind of break from it. Living causes layers of fat to grow over and you become comfortable in the other things you’re doing but when the itch returns, it takes a little bit longer to get going than you’d expect and like. This combined with the heat, even from eleven stories up, makes my mind still. I read books while standing directly in front of the AC. My feet move in the positions I know from ballet: first through fifth, tendu devant. I wear sundresses without undergarments or I wear nothing at all. I wilt by midmorning.

Something falls in the bathroom on Sunday afternoon and we both run to see. I am on your heels to see my shaving gel rolling in the bathtub. We stare out the bathroom window as the wind whips the rain against our faces. It’s shockingly cold. I step on the edge of the tub to pull the window closed and we go back to reading in bed. There’s a noise in the living room but I know every single window is closed in there. I can only imagine my face.

“It’s a ghost,” you say. You grin.

“Shut up.” It’s not funny nor is it ever funny.

The first house I ever lived in, where my parents brought me to from the hospital, was mostly brown. It was a ranch style house and it sat on the corner of a quiet street. There was a long, wide driveway paved with black asphalt and a two car garage which we always used instead of the front door. It had four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a big kitchen, and a vast backyard with orange and lime trees. My mom planted roses that bloomed pink and cream, and we barbecued on weekends. It was a perfect house for a family of three and we were very happy there for a while.

I first slept in a Moses basket by my parents’ bed and then in a crib in my nursery. When it came time for my first big girl bed, the nursery became a playroom and the spare bedroom became a brand new room for me. I slept in the canopy bed with Little Mermaid sheets but I still spent afternoons playing in the nursery, where my toys slept. I solved puzzles, had tea parties with Mr. Potato Head, and listened to Sesame Street books on a tape recorder on my own a lot but when you’re little, you don’t notice the solitude as much; when you’re an only child, you notice even less.

My parents played with me as well but it is more important to this story when they didn’t. On her own, a little girl of five doesn’t find it odd when the closet doors in her nursery open and close by themselves or that toys would fall right off shelves without being pushed or being on the edge. It’s not until this is mentioned to someone who knows better that this is seen as strange at all.

“There’s a dark thing in the corner when I go to sleep, Mommy.”

“Dark thing?” She looked in the rearview mirror at me in my carseat. “I’m sure it’s just a shadow, sweetheart.”

I knew shadows from dancing with them on the sidewalk; this was no shadow.

The doors continued to open and close on their own and I tried to ignore them. I kept my eyes on Barbie’s Corvette as I felt them open. They would close a few minutes later as Barbie drove down the carpeted road. If I ever tried to look up quickly, they would slam suddenly. I learned this when I sat directly in front of them one day and looked up. They closed quickly and on my fingers. I screamed in pain and my mom came running. She couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her through my tears. I slept in between my parents that night.

I dragged my mom back to the nursery the next day. She indulged my needy behavior and helped me assemble the train set my aunt had sent me. I grabbed her by the leg when she tried to leave. She looked at me curiously while she played with me.

“You’re so quiet today,” she said, unused to an almost silent five-year-old.

“We have to listen,” I said. My eyes were only half-raised.

She looked at me strangely but for some reason didn’t ask. She smiled that mom smile that’s supposed to radiate steadiness; her eyes crinkled a bit. We linked the train cars as I heard the hinges creak as they usually did. I grabbed her hand.

“Don’t look all the way up,” I whispered, as if varnished wood and hinges could hear me.

They opened on cue and I squeezed my mom’s hand. I heard her inhale sharply. I’m not sure if she followed my directions or she just couldn’t move. The doors closed calmly a few moments later. She was crying.

“How did you,” she sobbed. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t, Mommy. It does it every day.” I let go of her hand and realized I was shaking on my own.

“I need to call your father.” Her breath was jagged.

She stood and picked me up as she walked out of the room. At five, you don’t get carried as often so I was secretly pleased about this. She went into her bedroom and shut the door. Picking up the cordless phone, she took me into the bathroom with her. She dialed my dad’s office as she looked through a drawer. I could hear the dialtone as she took a deep breath from her inhaler. He picked up and she told him what happened while trying to breathe. She paced back and forth in front of me as she spoke.

“No, you don’t understand, no one was touching them. I have no fuc-no clue.” She looked at me apologetically for the slip.

She gasped for air with her inhaler as my dad’s voice calmly tried to rationalize what had happened to her. He somehow convinced her that everything was fine and they soon hung up. She put the phone back on the charger and walked me into the backyard. She sat on one of the swings of my jungle gym. I sat on the swing next to hers but didn’t get very high at swinging by myself. I knew better than to ask her to push me right then. She stared at the house while the bar above us creaked with the swinging. Mosquitoes bit our ankles but we stayed outside until my dad got home. That night, we all slept in the same bed again.

My parents moved all of my toys into my bedroom the next morning. I was not to go into the nursery anymore for any reason. The door remained permanently closed, opening only for the cleaning lady who vacuumed it weekly while I was at school. My parents regularly popped their heads when I played by myself or did the homework that came with first grade a year later. Things improved somewhat and none of us mentioned what had happened. We avoided the topic as we did the room, ignoring the times when we did hear the click of the closing doors.

On a Wednesday, my mom picked me up from school. It was one of the days I didn’t have ballet class and so we went directly home. The garage door opener didn’t work no matter how many times my mom pushed the button. She frowned and we walked up the stone path past the pink and cream roses to the front door. My mom searched for the house key on her key ring as I played with the straps of my backpack. She turned the key and unlocked it, the door falling slightly open. I stared at our neighbor walking his dog while she picked up her briefcase and turned. Her breath caught and I turned towards the door as she screamed.

One perfectly straight row of Mexican tiles had uncemented itself from the floor. Each tile, installed before I was born six years before, stood on its side and led directly towards the end of the house where my bedroom and nursery were. My stomach turned as I stared.

My mom was still screaming a full minute later. She picked me up and ran to the car. She left the front door wide open. We reversed out of the driveway and somehow made it to my grandma’s house. My mom was wild-eyed by the time my grandma opened her front door. I was scooped away to the kitchen by my grandpa while my grandma tried to get my mom to say anything more than the word tile. She took charge and called my dad and my uncle, both of whom arrived within the hour. My uncle, the physician, sedated my hysterical mother while my dad held her hand.

“I am never going back to that house,” she moaned to my dad drowsily as the sedative took effect.

And she never did, and I never did. My dad and grandpa were commercial contractors and they, along with several architects, could find nothing wrong with the foundation of the house to cause the tile to react in such a way. A crew of eight men had to jackhammer the tile out in order to put new wood floors in; however, the varnish never quite set.

My dad is not one to believe in anything besides what he can see and touch in front of him. He was baffled. I imagine he hired paranormal investigators mostly for my mom but a bit for his own curiosity. His tax writeoffs for 1992 include “ghostbusters” as he called them. I never saw the people who entered our house with gadgets and touched our not yet dusty belongings to get a feel for the place. They stayed overnight with my dad and concluded that we had a poltergeist. He laughed as he wrote them a check but stiffened at their final piece of advice.

“Do not bring your little girl back into this house.” He silently watched them drive off.

We all stayed with my grandparents for six months. My parents put our house on the market and began searching for a new one. It sold quickly to a divorced man who did not believe in anything supernatural. My dad supervised movers as they packed every clock radio, book, sandal, picture frame, doll, fork in the house. A priest and a rabbi blessed our new house while we waited in the driveway. We only made our way inside after they exited safely. Nothing strange ever happened in that house except for the dissolution of a marriage and a family.

I moved from a dorm into my boyfriend’s apartment into my own apartment when I was 20. That first house sticks in the back of my mind whenever I move or even when I walk into someone else’s home for the first time and as the sun set on my first night in that one bedroom corner apartment, I knew I could not sleep yet. I drove to the Catholic church on University Avenue and tried every locked door of the perimeter. I banged on the rectory door as it began to rain. A priest with a loosened collar opened the door and let me in as he looked at me oddly.

“I just moved into an apartment today and I can’t sleep until it’s blessed or given the okay or whatever.” I felt my bangs dripping.

“Well, I can’t bless it for you at this hour but I can give you holy water.”

“Tomato, tomahto.” My inner Catholic schoolgirl grinned.

He led me through a back hallway and we found ourselves in a room behind the altar. He correctly assumed I didn’t bring a bottle and he filled up a holy water bottle and a smaller vial for me. I thanked him with a damp handshake and braved the rain home. I soon stood in my doorway and squeezed the plastic bottle of holy water in the general direction of the room. I knew I should say something in accompaniment.

“Be okay, apartment.” I thought about what people usually said in movies. “The power of Christ compels you!”

I squirted the rest of the bottle all over the apartment. The carpet was damp. I slipped the smaller vial of holy water into my purse. It stayed there for the next three years just to be safe. That night, the lapsed Catholic slept with the light on. Glow in the dark silly bandz on each wrist do the job now as the sounds in the night are nothing more than an old apartment and my boyfriend’s nighttalking.

Yes. Of course.

my mom and dad (with my aunt!) before i was born.

La Playa

I was born and raised on a peninsula and my family used to live on what used to be one of the most beautiful islands in the world. My dad used to spend summers working as a fisherman and I was thrown into the ocean before I could even walk. Needless to say, I come from a long line of people who feel at home in the ocean.

I’ve always driven my mom crazy with my love of the ocean. She would scream when I’d drag sand into the house after shaking it out of my swimsuit; there would be a trail of sand from the garage to my room and I would look at her innocently.

“I have no clue where that came from, Mom.” I’d continue coloring as she tried her best not to wrap her hands around my neck.

Another phase involving the beach included my wanting to remove my clothing as soon as we hit the sand. My parents would be unloading the car, attempting to balance volleyballs and picnic baskets, and I would see my opportunity and escape. I’d run onto the sand kicking off my Minnie Mouse sandals and I’d start pulling off my toddler-sized bikini. I’d run to the edge of the water and roll around in the sand before going into the surf and splashing around, free as can be.

My mom would catch a glimpse of this instantly, she was a bloodhound for potentially embarrassing public moments. She’d leave my dad and run down to the water and scoop me over her shoulder. I would cry and scream that it was unfair to have to put on a swimsuit to go to the beach, it didn’t feel natural. She would fume as she pulled my bottoms back onto my small frame.

“It won’t feel natural when someone kidnaps you and molests you either, Anaïs,” she muttered. “Keep your damn clothes on.”

I kept them on but pouted the rest of the day. Nothing cheered me up until my dad said I could sit on his shoulders in the water. My mom gave me warning eyes from the shore to stay clothed. I still hate wearing a swimsuit at the beach and to this day, I go to nude beaches as often as I can; when my mom found out about this, she looked at me and rolled her eyes. She may have muttered something about molestation once again.

The beach incident that really got my mom’s goat was when I went through my mermaid fetish. I wore out my Little Mermaid video because I watched it every single day. I cursed my parents’ genes for not making me a redhead and I wondered why my bikini top didn’t look as full as Ariel’s. I would act out the entire plot of the movie when I was in the bathtub including the part where she gives up her voice for legs making the task of bathing me utter hell for my mother. Pretty soon I realized that if I really wanted to make this mermaid thing work, I would have to bring it home: the ocean.

The morning of our next beach day, I went into the linen closet and climbed the shelves to grab pillowcases from the top shelf. I grabbed the first thing I could get my hands on and ran off to stick the two pillowcases in my Little Mermaid beach bag of course. My mom was calling from the car and so I ran out, hopped into my car seat, and beamed the entire 15 minute car ride to the beach.

It was a beautiful day when we got there and I waited for the perfect moment to reveal my surprise; that day, I too would have fins to splash around with. My parents set everything up and were soon sitting quietly under their beach umbrella. I played with my sandcastle set and watched the wet sand run over my legs. When the time was right, I went back over to my tiny beach bag to get my fins. I was intercepted by my mother who slathered more sunscreen on my medium-well done shoulders. I fidgeted impatiently as she took her time. When she was finally done and had sat back down with her book, I grabbed one of the pillowcases and ran to the edge of the water.

I stepped in gingerly, one leg and then the other, and found that the pillowcase went all the way up to my neck. This was one of my mom’s pillowcases and the ochre fabric swallowed me up. I began folding it down to my waist and bunched it into my swimsuit bottoms. I was a mermaid and it was glorious. I hopped around and it was real; I had fins. I called to my mom and dad who looked up at my voice. I began a rousing rendition of Part of Your World for them and I saw my mom’s jaw drop as I hopped around and then began rolling around in the sand, flipping my fins. My mom got up and marched towards me purposefully with my dad following close behind.

“Anaïs Marie Escobar, those are 1500-thread count pillowcases! What do you think you are doing, little girl?” she roared as she came closer.

“I just wanted to be a mermaid! Look, my legs are gone!” I waved my fins around for her.

“Your legs are going to be gone if you don’t take that off right this minute!” Her jaw was clenched.

“Calm down, Ileana, it’s funny. The girl wanted to be a mermaid.” My dad tried his best not to laugh.

“They’re Egyptian cotton!”

“Listen. She wanted to be a mermaid. Think about it for a second.” She did and they both started laughing.

“It’s not funny, I am a mermaid.” I pouted at them.

“Yes, you are, sweetheart. You can keep your fins,” my mother said, still laughing as she and my dad made their way back to their umbrella.

I stayed at the edge of the water for the rest of the afternoon, happy in my makeshift fins. It was a great day, even though my mermaid aspirations got laughed at. Ariel was wrong, even on land they don’t understand and they reprimand their daughters. These days, I more than fill my bikini top but I miss thinking that being a mermaid was a viable option. I still hold my legs together sometimes when I swim and pretend I have fins. It’s still a tiny bit magical.

I also keep my eyes open for molesters while I tan nude. Thanks, Mom.

This is the first time in years I am excited for summer. I could give a shit about what I look like in a swimsuit because every bad thought I have is sweating out of each pore and all I can see is that I’m lucky. I’m lucky to be healthy, to be able to do the things I love, to have a family that’s wonderful, to have friends who I count as family, and a love that will not let me run when things get tough. I will be sweltering the first half of summer taking classes in Florida, the second half in NYC, and all the while, I will be glad for the sweat that runs down my neck because I no longer need that anxiety to keep me warm; I have so much, I can barely sit still.

The Papaya

My mom changed the furniture in our house probably every two or so years when I was growing up, especially in our kitchen. We tended to have themes that coincided with our Christmas trees. The first kitchen I remember was really modern by which I mean modern for the 80’s. Basically, it looked like Patrick Bateman could have lived there. I have these blurry memories of my dad cooking me eggs and then playing a keytar but I’m pretty sure I’m blending my childhood memories with an early music video I saw.

After American Psycho Lite, there was Country, French Country, Provincial Country, literally a Rooster theme, Art Deco, and so on and so forth. I liked any Country theme because we would have a table with a lazy Susan on it and I would spin my dog, Jacques, and pretend he was a fashion model. Basically, I’m trying to tell you my mom is insane. When I was 12 or so, she wanted to get in touch with her Cuban roots and so our kitchen became more tropical. I was sitting reading The Count of Monte Cristo at the kitchen table one day when she came in with what looked to be a painting wrapped in brown paper.

“Anaïs, help me unwrap and hang this,” she said excitedly.

I knew this meant I was going to hold tiny hanging doohickeys for twenty minutes. She began to unwrap it and finally freed the painting. I gasped.

“I know,” she grinned. “Isn’t it awesome? This is just the most Cuban fruit ever, even your grandmother likes it.”

I stared at the giant oil painting of a sliced papaya and even at 12 could only think one thing: VAGINA. I don’t know how she didn’t see it but I kept my eyes down while holding her hanging supplies and didn’t say a word. Soon it was up and I sat back down to focus on my book. I got a crick in my neck from refusing to look at the new painting. My mom beamed.

Not 30 minutes later, my dad walked in the door. I heard the garage door close behind him and he walked into the kitchen, going straight for the refrigerator. He took a bottle of water out and opened it. My mom was at the table eagerly waiting for him to turn around. He took a sip as he turned and saw the painting and choked. And stared. He looked from it to my mom and from it to me. I nodded and my face told him, “I KNOW”. He gave my mom a thumbs up while drinking his water and backing out of the room.

My dad and I ate dinner staring at our plates for the next three months until my mom replaced the papaya with a series of really exclusive 1940’s photos of Havana. I never sliced my papaya in half again.

My parents met at my aunt’s wedding, that is, my dad’s little sister. Somehow because of family friends in common, my mom ended up being a bridesmaid because in the very late 1970s, there were still not so many Cuban families in South Florida and they all seemed to know each other, having fled in the 1960s on airplanes as opposed to the rafts now seen on tv, just before the Mariel boatlifts that brought a mass exodus of Cubans to the United States. My mom came to the United States from Cuba when she was little, four or five, with my grandparents and they settled in the middle of the country, Indiana, where they experienced their first winter in a non-tropical climate. My grandpa’s first job in this country was chopping logs in the snow. They grew used to the weather and made a home, falling in love with this new country they found themselves in. My dad was also born in Cuba but left as a child, growing up in Spain and for a while in Mexico. Somehow both of their families found themselves in Florida almost twenty years later, assimilated into middle class America and sharing similar histories. The world is small.

The wedding was at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. My dad, having been out of town for a while, was not a groomsman but he sat near the front of the hall during the ceremony. He told me that he noticed my mom when she stood at the altar during the ceremony but thought she was too young, 21 or so at the time (he was 30 or so). His eye kept drifting to her throughout the night as she danced with other men and laughed with her friends. The younger members of the reception drifted out towards the pool, including the bride and groom, and they drank more champagne on a balmy May night.

My mom told me she caught my dad looking at her and winked just before she jumped into the pool still in her bridesmaid dress. Some of the wedding party followed while the rest of them laughed and watched from the edge of the pool. My dad reached a hand out to help my mom out of the pool and lifted her out. He gave her his tuxedo jacket and they talked quietly as they went back inside. My grandma caught sight of my mom’s soaking wet dress and smeared makeup and fumed. My parents talked quietly at the edge of the dance floor, laughing at the puddle she was making with her wet dress. With her veil tipsily askew on her red-haired curls, my aunt tossed the bouquet and it landed in my mom’s hands without effort. They laughed about it awkwardly and too loudly, the way you do when you first meet someone. She left with flowers beginning to wilt, he left with her phone number.

They dated and got married a year and a half later. She now remembers that she was nursing a broken heart from her first love around that time and he recalls being charmed but unsure about commitment. They almost divorced a few years later, had their one child, me, and finally did divorce twenty years after meeting. They are still good friends and are remarried or involved with other people now. Both my mom and dad have told me my entire life, especially since they got divorced, to never settle for anyone less than who you are madly, passionately in love with, to live my life and go to college and know who I am and do the things I want to do and be independent but to never settle for anything other than that person who would kiss your spleen if he had the chance. They never loved each other like that.

But damn did they meet cute.

Scenes with Your Mother

I have an ex-girlfriend and we don’t speak. She was sort of an anomaly in my dating history more so because we had very little in common than because she was a girl. Also I just really love penises a ton so you know. Regardless, we dated for a few months and she had friends who intimidated me, some really tough ladies who gave me the evil eye at dinner pretty often. They seemed to move as one sleek animal in boat shoes and plaid shorts and I chuckled at how my girlfriend’s friends dressed exactly like an ex-boyfriend’s pals. They called me “the straight girl” and never trusted my ballet flats and circle skirts; they were fiercely protective. I saw one of those girls at the grocery store a few months after I broke up with my girlfriend and she literally grimaced at me. I gulped as I chose pears and apricots in the produce section.

My mom had similar feelings towards my ex-girlfriend. I tell my mom everything and so she soon found out about this.

“It’s because you’re 19 and flighty,” she told me on the phone in her know-it-all voice. “You like pink too much to be a lesbian.”

“I never said I was a lesbian, Mom.”

“Exactly, because you like pink.” She was convinced.

She came to visit me in my college town and insisted on meeting la novia (girlfriend in Spanish), words that she said as if she were trying to swallow nails. We met for lunch at a small Italian restaurant. My mom and I got there first and sipped water as we waited for my girlfriend who was running late due to a sorority community service event.

“Where is she?” My mother, who despises tardiness, pursed her lips.

“She’s been at community service all morning, chill out,” I said.

“OH MY GOD IS SHE ON PAROLE OR SOMETHING.”

“Jesus, no, stop being so loud,” I whispered urgently. “It’s for her sorority.”

My mom didn’t look convinced. My girlfriend soon arrived and was awkwardly stiff. She had put on makeup to impress my mom and she looked very waxy. We ordered and chatted quietly. Turning to an old standard, my mom told embarrassing stories about me (“Did you know Anaïs was on Sabado Gigante when she was 7?”) and relaxed at my girlfriend’s trilling laughter. Everything went splendidly and we all even split tiramisu. My mom paid the check and we all stood to leave. I was gathering my purse when I noticed my mom’s petite hand slide over my girlfriend’s delicate shoulders up to the back of her neck as she leaned close to her.

“I am going to tell you the same thing I would tell any boy my daughter is dating: if you hurt her, I will kill you.”

My mom patted her on the back purposefully and smiled her very white, toothy grin. She held her arm out to me and hugged me very pointedly in front of my girlfriend. We left the restaurant and walked my girlfriend to her car; she and I hugged awkwardly in front of my mom whom I caught snarling at my girlfriend over my shoulder and then smiling as soon as she saw me looking at her. I was mortified. We walked to my car and got in. My mom adjusted the air conditioning and commented for the thousandth time on how messy my car was. I ignored her and focused on driving. She looked at me when I got to a red light.

“I don’t like that girl at all, she’s not right for you,” she said.

“I couldn’t tell at all,” I replied dryly, running my fingers over the steering wheel. “You don’t have a say about it though.”

“Oh, believe me, I know.” She stared at me. “I’ll gladly wait to say I told you so.”

I hated her for an instant but it passed. We spent the rest of the weekend together shopping and organizing my kitchen peacefully. When my then ex-girlfriend broke my heart two months later, I called my mom in tears because I told her everything. She listened and soothed and insulted my girlfriend appropriately (“she really should rethink the length of her bangs”) while I sobbed in my bed. I hated that she had known that it would end and that she said it out loud. I hated that I had known it, too. I waited through hiccuping tears for her to say it but she never did. She wanted to say it but she wanted to be on my side more than that. She just knew in a way I never did then but am starting to as I get older. She stayed with me on the phone until I got sleepy from crying and soon said goodnight.

“You’ll be alright, Petunia,” she said as she was about to hang up. “Plus, I mean, penis.”

©Anaïs Escobar

Holiday Road

When I was about 7, my grandma decided that she really wanted to go see this Virgin Mary apparition in Conyers, Georgia that everyone at her weekly mass was talking about. She’s not even that Catholic but I guess her nosyness got the better of her. As a result, my entire family decided to make this trip together in one car. I wasn’t even sure where we were going but I got to leave school early on a Friday so I was pleased. I smugly waved goodbye to my classmates and took my mom’s hand as we made our way home. My parents had rented a van, one of those humongous vans that child molesters fill with candy and then steal children in. We went to pick up my grandparents and also my aunt. The six of us set off for Georgia and the longest car ride imaginable.

My family’s vacations are epic. Family friends talk about them years later because something ridiculous always happens. We are eccentric and crazy, like the Cuban Royal Tenenbaums. Every time we finish an extended trip in the car together, we swear that we will never do it again, yet some time later we are all back in the car. I don’t remember the first half of the car ride to Conyers. My mother made me take a dose of Dimetapp as she did on every family vacation and as a result, I slept for about five hours. When I awoke, my family was exactly as I had left them before leaving for dream land. My dad was driving, my grandpa was his useless co-pilot, my grandma and mom were talking in fluttery voices, and my aunt was groaning next to me and wishing herself dead. Perfect.

I grabbed On The Banks of Plum Creek from my backpack to distract myself from the flat Florida landscape we were passing. My aunt Mary Ann, 20 at the time, and still as difficult as a teenager also tried to ignore the rest of our family, flipping through a magazine. However, my mother, the saint that she is, cannot stand for any of us to be doing things on our own on any family trip. Even though we were all sitting two feet from each other and sharing the same air. So she of the brilliant ideas whipped out a tape from her bag and handed it to my dad.

“Put this in, honey,” she said as she turned to grin at the rest of us.

“What is it?” asked my aunt, her face turning dark as I turned my head from my book to see what was going on.

“You’ll see,” my mother said with the most noxious smile on her face.

My dad put the tape in and it clicked for a second before it began to play. We all took a deep breath. I jumped as I heard the first sounds coming from the tape.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLAHOMA WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPIN’ DOWN THE PLAIN!” The tape roared at us, an entire cast of eager singers raping our ears.

My dad and grandpa groaned and my aunt’s jaw tightened. My grandma and mother were so pleased and sang along and I stuck my nose back in my book.

“No. I can’t do this entire tape with the plains and the surrey thing and the cowman and the farmer, no. No.” My aunt was dead serious and not backing down.

“It’s so much fun for the car!” My mother’s eyes were glazed over. “We can all sing!”

“Turn it off,” my aunt said. I had never been so close to potential homicide in my life.

My mother laughed and continued singing with my grandma. I hoped they would give me another dose of Dimetapp soon so I could sleep away Curly and Laurie. My aunt slunk down in her seat and scowled. We drove for another five hours of tension until we finally reached our hotel in Georgia.

It was a modest Sheraton. We parked while my mom went to go check in and grab the keys to our two rooms. She came back to the car with a nervous smile on her face.

“They seem to have made a mistake and only booked us for one room. There are none free since the whole town seems to be packed to see the Virgin Mary,” she said.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” My aunt was regretting coming along for the 87th time that day.

“Mary Ann! Don’t use that word in front of,” my mother said, cocking her head towards me. “It’s okay, they’re going to give us cots.”

And so there were cots. It was decided that my grandparents would sleep in one bed, my aunt and I would share another, and my parents would sleep in separate cots; I should have known they would one day get divorced. We all began to get ready for bed, putting on pajamas and taking turns brushing our teeth at the bathroom sink. My grandpa stood in front of his bag with his arms crossed.

“Where are my pajamas?” My grandpa said this with a frown, turning to look at my grandma accusingly.

“Ay, you never find anything,” she said, walking over and rifling through his bag. “I put them right on top so you could find them.”

“Well, they’re not there!” He lifted his hands in the air as he said this.

“They have to be right here, I packed them after I took them out of the dryer,” she said as she lifted shirts and pants and socks out of the bag. A look passed over her face. “Oh. Unless they were in the pile of things I didn’t pack.”

My grandpa’s eyes widened and he stomped to his side of the bed and laid down, crossing his arms in front of him. He refused to change his clothes and he fumed for twenty minutes before falling asleep. He did sleep with his arms crossed however.

We learned a lot about each other that night. My mother makes Mr. Ed noises in her sleep, clacking her mouth. My grandma and dad both snore in a way that resembles fog horns. I myself roll around in my sleep to an extent that I woke up the following morning with my small foot in my aunt’s mouth; I still sleep in this manner, leading my boyfriend to wonder why the sheets are off my half of the bed in the morning and why I’m twisted into the strangest of positions. We crankily dressed for the day, making sure to stay warm in sweaters and pants. My dad put on what resembled tennis shorts with a green Lacoste polo. My mother was horrified.

“You can’t wear that outside,” she said, hands fluttering at her throat.

“Why not?” My dad asked this as he groomed his mustache in the mirror.

“Because you look stupid. Also, because it’s freezing outside.” She meant business.

“It’s not freezing outside,” he replied, walking to the door of the hotel room. He opened it and stepped outside. He changed into pants and a jacket approximately one minute and forty-seven seconds later.

We ate breakfast downstairs at the Continental Breakfast Buffet (not my capitalization) and I wondered even at age 7 which continent this breakfast hailed from. It was a twenty minute car ride and no Oklahoma! played. We waited in a long line of cars outside the location where there the Virgin Mary herself was about to appear. I was unsure as to how this was supposed to happen but I wasn’t very excited. I had lost all positive feelings towards the Virgin Mary when some other little girl was cast to play her in our kindergarten Nativity pageant instead of me; the wounds were still fresh.

We parked in a big field and walked to another big field where people were setting up lawn chairs and coolers and umbrellas. It seemed like everyone had rosaries in their hands and I asked my mom for mine which she took out of my backpack and handed to me. The pink beads were cool in my hand and I felt better holding them, part of the club if you will. We didn’t bring chairs but we sat on a blanket my grandma carried in her arms. My grandpa and dad were instantly bored and began discussing sports while my mother and grandma permanently discussed whether I was warm enough. My aunt put on her Walkman headphones and pulled up her EG scrunchy socks. The time dragged slowly until people began lifting themselves out of their lawn chairs.

“She’s close, I can see her!” Some woman yelled this repeatedly. I could see her bobbing head as I stood up with the rest of my family.

We all stared at the sky for the next thirty minutes. Yes, directly into the almost noon sun. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked at the clouds with everyone else. I didn’t see anything. I worried that perhaps it was just me as more and more people around us shouted that they could see her but no one in my family seemed to see anything either. My grandma had her camera out but wasn’t snapping photos. I turned to my grandpa and he leaned down towards me.

“Can you see anything?” I whispered to him, pulling on his earlobe like I always did when I asked him a question.

“Just a lot of stupid people, french fry,” he replied gruffly as he kissed the top of my head.

We all grew bored except for my grandma who really hoped to pap Jesus’s untouched mom. She took a few photos of the sky and mumbled something about there being something in the developed photos. Climbing over and around people crying and falling to their knees, we marched back to the van, unbelieving as ever with rosaries going back into bags until the next time we tried to be “spiritual”. We drove out of that town quickly and found a small Southern restaurant in one of the countless towns before we hit the Georgia/Florida state line. It was warmer and we took off our sweaters as we dug into our buttermilk biscuits and grits and future heart attacks, saying grace only with our serene faces and lard filled mouths.

“That was the stupidest thing ever,” my aunt said as she salted her eggs.

My grandma looked as if she were about to defend the experience but even she couldn’t take it seriously. We nodded as we chewed. This is who we were. We had more reverence for breakfast than for religious experiences, and we could just as easily strangle each other as we could hug each other. My dad’s chest hair swelled from the open top button of his polo shirt. I wondered who would be the first person to fart in the car on the way home.

my grandparents, aunt, and my dad, many moons before my birth, looking like the worst band of all time. also, my dad looks like a gay tennis player. this could explain why my parents are divorced.

i swear to god, this is the baby version of a Cathy comicstrip:
“wah, no one likes me/pms.”
“oh look, chocolate.”
“NOM NOMKJSBDISUB:ISBNOM.”
“ACK!”

my family is putting together some sort of ridiculous family photo slideshow for my grandma on christmas morning because she loves that sort of stuff and i’m currently scanning photos of family stuff and my childhood.

pause

Yesterday Gabe told me about how he had smoked a cigarette for the first time in a long while. I thought about how the smell would be on his hands and in the fibers of his clothes. I’m not a regular smoker but I wanted a cigarette badly at that moment. I used to hate cigarettes very much, the way everyone does as a child. I remember seeing commercials where Smokey the Bear would squash a cigarette with his bar paw on the ground of the forest and look at me disapprovingly.

“Only you can prevent forest fires, Anaïs,” his large opaque eyes seemed to say.

A presentation to my very young kindergarten class about the dangers of smoking (ie. death) also cemented this fear in me. A few days later at a family party, I saw my dad light a cigarette in the backyard. I ran as fast as my little legs could move and smacked it out of his hand. He looked stung until he saw the tears in my eyes and bent down to my level. I coiled my arms around his neck and sobbed.

“I don’t want you to die, Daddy,” I whispered in his ear. I felt him sigh against me.

He didn’t smoke another cigarette my entire childhood, from that day forward. If he smoked when away from me, I don’t know but I don’t think so. He never smelled like a cigarette again and I never saw a pack of cigarettes anywhere around him. Plus, he’s just that kind of man, to stop smoking for that reason.

I went to dinner at my dad’s house last night. My stepmom cooked amazing paella and a spinach torte, and we all shared a big bottle of merlot as we ate and talked. After dinner, my dad and I went for a walk. We like to walk together now that we’re older, now that we’ve rebuilt the semblance of a relationship. A few blocks from his house, he pulled out a pack of Marlboros and lit one, the glow of the lighter the only light besides the dainty streetlamps. I thought about this for a minute and he looked at me.

“I started again a few months ago,” he said. “I’m an old man, I’m retired. I want to do the things I like.”

“Okay. May I have one?” I looked at him and he looked quiet for a minute.

“No.” He took a long drag of his cigarette. “You’re a baby and you have your whole life ahead of you. Young people don’t need to smoke, they haven’t even gotten tired of living yet. Plus, I’d rather see you old than die.”

“But I feel the same about you.”

“I’m already old. I took care of myself this long for you and now I’m here. I can do some bad things now and then. You’re 22. Take care of yourself, if not for yourself then for someone else.”

We kept walking for a while. We talked about my desire to buy a plane ticket to somewhere I’ve never been and just go for a few days or weeks. He smiled because he was the same way at my age. He asked about Gabe and I asked whether his old man life was driving my stepmom crazy yet. We got back to the house and hugged. He stood and watched me drive away, one hand in a wave as he always did. I drove with my windows down.

I came home and undressed. I turned my laptop on and sat at my desk waiting for it to be ready to write. My brain was not yet ready to write. I found my pack of Nat Shermans in my desk drawer and lit one, a long yellow cigarette, while lifting the window open. I smoked quietly. I always smoke one cigarette and then I stop, for weeks at a time. Last night was the night for one. I thought about what my dad said, about young people not being tired of living yet. It’s true. I am ripe with the joy of living every day.

But maybe times are different now. We’re tired by different things, by the overwhelming need to be connected at all times, to everyone. We’re overstimulated and lacking sleep. Even in sleep, we can’t shut our minds off, always going, always working. The living doesn’t stop, even for you to catch your breath. I smoke a cigarette like I imagine the rebel Buddhist might. I light it, sit indian style on the floor, and inhale the toxins of that one cigarette, hoping that whatever death is in that tiny stick kills some of my overactive mind, my worry for a few minutes. I meditate on the stillness of that moment and I exhale. I take a reprieve from living because I want to feel that exuberance. The pause is necessary to living. I need to stop and remember why I’m living, put myself as close as I can to the quiet danger of that cigarette to know that life isn’t going to ever stop but that I, too, can keep up, run ahead of the pack even.

I put out that cigarette in an empty glass and continue the singular, terrifying, exhilarating, exhausting process that is living.

my great-great grandmother helena and my great-aunt rebecca. my grandma told me that helena had hair that went down to her knees and that she lived in this huge hacienda on the sugar plantation her husband owned in cuba. that’s how cuban we are. we make ricky ricardo look like a honky.

she also told me that rebecca developed nervous habits after she inadvertently pulled on the casket at a funeral when she was four, trying to see what was inside, and the body fell on her. yikes.

and then in the afternoon we do mojitos because hey, we’re cuban. more facts about this most tasty cocktail from this blog:

The Mojito (pronounced: moe-hee-toe) is a classic Cuban cocktail most closely tied to Cuba’s famous La Bodeguita del Medio bar.

This drink is extremely refreshing and is a great cocktail to order on a hot summer day or when hitting the dance floor. The basic drink is remotely similar to limeade, but that’s where the comparisons stop.

The first noticeable addition is mint. This provides a refreshing spark to the drink. The use of mint provides a cooling sensation on the tongue and lips when drinking, this is part of what makes it an exceptionally refreshing drink. Secondly, the rum gives the drink a little kick and balances out the drink. The limes provide the thirst quenching sourness that so many people crave in the heat.

If possible, use key limes (Mexican limes) for this drink as they provide a crisp flavour. Also a good white rum, like Havana Club will give the drink a more authentic flavour, but any white rum will do. Using simple syrup is will help make your mojito’s better, since granular sugar doesn’t dissolve to well in cold liquids. Gritty mojito’s aren’t very appetizing.

Here is a step by step direction on how to make it

Step 1: Place the mint leaves into a tall cocktail glass.

Step 2: Squeeze about 2 ounces of juice from a cut lime into the glass.

Step 3: Add the powdered sugar.

Step 4: Then, gently mash the ingredients together with the back of a spoon.

Step 5: Add crushed ice and 2 ounces white rum then stir.

Step 6: Top off with 2 ounces club soda and voila! you have an authentic Cuban mojito.

When preparing your Mojito, gently muddle the mint leaves with the simple syrup and lime juice. Some recipes call for bitters, but a genuine Cuban mojito does not contain bitters.

and now you know. you’re welcome.

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