gratitude

January 8, 2010 at 4:45 pm (Uncategorized)
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I sold most my books.  I’ve been collecting them for years.  When I was little I only had one book.  It was purple and pink with glitter and fairies.  Someone gave it to me from Spain.  Actually there were others but encyclopedias don’t seem to fit the same category.  Papi bought us The World Book Encyclopedia Collection from a door to door salesman.

I kept some books that I read over and over like bell hooks’ All About Love and The House on Mango Street.  There went my dream of having a whole room as a library.  Maybe it can happen again.  For now I just want to focus on writing my own books.

I’ve been living the nomadic life for the past few months.  Even in my own home.  I am on the couch and I feel nice and cozy.  My husband is up north.  I will go back and forth, inshaAllah.  Driving through hills and an abundance of trees.  At least the long drive is pretty.  Maybe I can stop at one of those drive-thru coffee places like I’ve wanted to.  My friends are staying in my room.  They are a couple that can’t fit on the couch.  I kinda like it.  I wake up and am able to see the fajr sky turn into sunrise.  There is sunlight through my windows making the plants greener.  I don’t know where our next place will be.  Somewhere in Oakland, perhaps, where my husband and stepdaughter could be near the woods.  Maybe a house with a little creek.

I had writers block for some time.  Every day I prayed on it.  I asked for the words to come to me.  The images, the stories.  I cried and prayed and waited.  Then one afternoon during prayer it all came to me.  I was so grateful, all I did was write.  Before my prayers, before it came back I was worried that I wouldn’t write anymore.  That my existence would be in making dinner and sweeping.  That I would be like my abuela who stopped dancing and my mami who stopped painting.  They didn’t have husbands like mine.  He supports me in ways I couldn’t have even asked for.  After the words came back I realized the words never left me.  They were just tucked away in reserve ready to come out when I stopped worrying about it all.

Life is constant transformation.  I’ve been working on it.  When I give thanks I am even grateful for the hardship, the lessons, every mistake I have made.  For many years I thought it would be best if I would be by myself.  This way no one would really know me, I would never get hurt, I would do things my way-the only way.  But that is not what I really wanted.  I wanted something different from what my parents had.  I wanted stability and love and reassurance and to be with someone that I could truly be myself with.  At the beginning of last year I thought about what I wanted to work on.

1-to let go of my guard.

2-to see people more

3-to say yes more (to good things).

My friend wrote them on a post-it note and put it on my fridge.  It is still there and I am amazed at how it all came together.  I did the work and even though there is still more work to do I got the greatest results.  My spirituality and knowledge has grown and gotten stronger, I have supportive friends and family, I married Adam and gained a beautiful stepdaughter.  Then on Monday I found out that I am mentioned in Tiki Tiki as a Latina you should meet in 2010!  I was so excited and grateful.  Love all around.

I knew I wanted to be a nomad for some time.  I didn’t know it would exactly be like this.  it is perfect, just the way it should be.  I feel full and most importantly grateful.

the end.

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Loving in contentment

January 5, 2010 at 4:41 am (Uncategorized)

I spent the day holding a baby.  Three months old he slightly squirmed in my arms.  His mama said he doesn’t smile at people like he does with me.  I told her it’s the curls.  They spiral and twist, my hair is big.  Big enough for him to pull on tight.

I sang him lullabies and recited surahs.  I danced with him and blew on his face when he got hot.  I spent nine hours caring and loving.  I like this work.

I have a stepdaughter now.  She just turned ten.  She plays legos and talks in different accents.  While I cook dinner I pretend we’re in a Broadway musical.  She sits at her art table and laughs, “oh Mimi”.  I wonder when I birth more children, inshaAllah, what they will call me.  Mama, Mami or Mimi.  This is unlike the childhood of my home.  I’ve noticed that the stings stay with me longer and I have to remember the good moments, too.

I am remembering now.  I remember my mami teaching me how to dance and her songs while she sewed.  I remember the Julio Iglesias records, the Sunday morning boleros and me trying to dance like Janet Jackson after watching Video Music Box.  I remember the 80s, Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick and looking out the apartment window.  I won’t tell you about the silence because I’ve written too much about that.

My stepdaughter is now one of my teachers.  I am learning to guide her in ways that I cherish from my mami and to be more mindful of where she is at right now.  I feel like I am taking a crash course.  Thankfully,  I love her.  I love how she stays hugging me for a long time.  In the middle of the living room I tell her about Stevie Wonder as she hears my heart beat.

This is loving in contentment.  Sometimes it feels like bliss.

the end.

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14 of December, 2009

December 14, 2009 at 9:03 pm (Uncategorized)
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I’ve been meaning to write about my uncle.  The one that died.  The one who was serving three life sentences.  The one I visited in Butner, North Carolina last year.  I’ve been meaning to write about him but I’ve been waiting for him to come into my dreams.  I’ve been waiting for him to tell me stories.  He hadn’t until early this morning.  After Fajr, after my husband went to work I went back to sleep and dreamt the most vivid dreams.  Of my aunts and cousins, of me trying to find clothes to wear so I wouldn’t be naked in the street, of Pakistani women wondering if we were trying to apply to be substitute teachers.  We said, no.  We didn’t say no, we’re here so we can get permission to see my cousin in jail.  We said, no, and they smiled.

My Madrina was happy in this dream.  She looked young and wore a wig like she did in the 70s.  She was going to work for my cousin, not her daughter, my other aunt’s daughter.  She was going to take people’s blood pressure with the same stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer that my mami used during my childhood.  It was blue, she was full of smiles.  It is close to a year since my cousin has died, my Madrina’s son.  Time flies.

In this dream I took my Tía Marilu to an altar, one for San Lazaro.  She slipped a note and she cried.  There was green all around, candles and food.  I stood outside the curtain of the altar and wondered if the note was really to God and not San Lazaro.  My Tía Marilu doesn’t have an altar and went to one in a building near the state office where we were trying to get permission to see my cousin in jail.  In real life my cousin isn’t in jail.  He hasn’t been for a long time.  Now he’s married to a woman named, Angela.  What’s her name again, I asked him.  She’s my angel, he said, she saved me.  Angela, I remember it now.

Somewhere in my dream between my Madrina being happy and the Pakistani women wondering if we want to be substitute teachers my mami told me that my uncle died.  And I broke down and cried.  I cried wearing a trench coat that wasn’t mine because I couldn’t find the clothes I walked into my dream wearing.  I cried and woke up realizing that I haven’t written about him yet.  Haven’t written about the moment we passed by Butner, North Carolina while on tour in October.  My heart felt a pang, my eyes wanted to water but couldn’t.  There was gay boy club music playing, my travel companions talking and me in the passenger seat looking out the window remembering visiting my uncle, remembering his laugh, his rough voice, remembering that even though I understand death it still hurts to feel someone pass on.

* * *

I am sitting in a café in a town that has 311 people.  I am up north with my husband.  He is at work and I am finally working, writing, over a café au lait and a canteen of water.  It is quiet here.  I no longer sleep with ear plugs, no longer need to wear an eye mask.  I sleep.  I had been trying to write everyday.  Two paragraphs and I would get bored.  I found my writing to be so awful that I couldn’t even save it.  I tried to find inspiration in the trees, the robins outside, the sounds of the roosters.  But I couldn’t.  I needed people around me.  I used to want a quite place to write, so I could write for hours but it has become difficult and then I am hard on myself for wasting this time.  But I am not wasting just learning about myself more, learning about this world and how everything works.

My husband took me to this café last night.  A date over tea and hot cocoa.  There was music playing and chatter, I needed that.  I needed the chatter to fill me.  We went home and he played me songs on his guitar.  Such a sweet man.  Music filled me as much as the chatter.  I want to learn how to play an instrument or I need to paint.  Like I used to.  Paint murals on big walls.  Long strokes, bright colors, stories off paper, off blogs, out of my mind.  Sometimes I need more to write.  Not just a quite place, not just the chatter, colors flowing in notes and brushstrokes.

This mornings I woke up to vivid dreams and words.  These words no longer want to be in my head but want to be written.  On paper, on this Mac.  All of these words and I still haven’t really written about my uncle.

I must do this in private.  I want to write more than life under three life sentences.  But that is what I remember the most: his years in prison, his years in solitary confinement, his calls every month when he could.  He made me smile each time and made me cry even more.  I want to write about his heart.  His beautiful heart. I want to write about that.

the end.

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Coming Home

December 3, 2009 at 12:06 am (Uncategorized)
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I no longer get emotional leaving Cuba.  I read the signs, look up at the sky.  I talk like a Spaniard to make my cousins laugh.  I sit in the passenger seat counting the hours to board on the plane.  I don’t cry.  I don’t ache.  I realize more and more that Cuba has never been my home.

I slept on a bed with holes and bumps.  It was soft like a pillow.  Overused over the years.  I thought it was new at first.  I didn’t see the dent on the left, the dent on the right, the bump in the middle to signify that my tia and tio never cuddled.  I didn’t see it because they flipped over the bed.  It was still as uncomfortable as before.  The fan was too far away and I got bit by mosquitos.  No one else got bit.  I told them I was just donating my blood so they won’t have to.  My tia in Miami told me the mosquitos were anti-american.

I do love Cuba.  Don’t get me wrong.  It is there that I find stories.  Ones of my mother.  Ones of my father.  I ask over and over to know how they lived, what they liked as children.  I wanted to know every detail even the color of my mami’s dress.  Only there can I understand them.  I woke up in the middle of night and was thankful that they left Cuba.  I never gave thanks for that.  I spent so many years hating that I was the only one not born there.  Over the last few years I have come to terms that I am American.  I felt so blessed.  I grew up in Brooklyn surrounded by people of every culture.  I hopped around each neighborhood and each borough.  I didn’t stay in one place.  I wouldn’t of learned a sprinkle of words in Hebrew, Greek, Farsi, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and whole sentences in Italian in Cuba.  Every night after that I contemplated whether I would have survived growing up in Cuba.  We all have a core.  One that doesn’t change.  Would I have tried to leave by any means possible?  Would I have been able to transform and change and grow in the same way there?  I wondered.  Every night.  I wondered what about me would have been different.

I have been told that I am simple.  Sencilla.  My family and my friends in Cuba expected someone different.  I explain how I live.  How I have lived.  I tell them that most of my clothes were hand me downs.  I tell them that the only thing I have of material worth is my computer.  I don’t have a TV.  But I tell them I have my lujos.  I like expensive organic products.  I only eat certain foods.  When I get a chance I go for a massage.  I don’t tell them how much I pay for a haircut.  I don’t tell them about that month in Brooklyn that I survived on yogurt and granola.  I don’t go out to eat like I used to.  Not like in NY.  I eat at home unless when I am having sushi.  My cousin asked what I miss from home.  I told him the foods I eat and the cleanliness.  I brought Comet in ziploc bags and I don’t think they used it.  I was constantly dumping out the buckets filled with water to clean the dishes.  It was dirty but they still wanted to use it.  I dumped them out over and over again and explained you can’t leave the sponge in the water or else bacteria will accumulate.  Sometimes I wondered about my simplicity.

When I got to Miami International Airport I was greeted with a “Welcome Home”.  That is when I teared up.  The United States of America.  This is home.

When only a few words come out of my mouth I am told that my Spanish is perfect.  But there are times that my mouth does not want to move the same way as a Cuban.  My mind forgets words.  I make up words and say disparates.  When we want to pay something with moneda nacional I am told that I can’t speak.  I whisper and pretend to lose my voice.  Only a few words I am allowed to say.  I covered my arms so my tattoos won’t show.  But more and more Cubans are getting tattoos.  I am no longer the odd ball.

In this trip I learned more about my lineage.  I learned that on the Estévez side we are Moroccan.  I thought so.  When I looked at a book on Morocco and saw a picture of Berber women I thought, “those look like my tias”.  I learned on my papi’s mami’s side we are Dominican.  Her grandparents on her mother’s side came from there.  All I knew before is that her abuelo was a slave but I couldn’t ask anymore questions.  My abuela is 107.  She is thin but she eats a lot.  Her mind somewhere else.  She gave me lots of kisses and tried to eat my finger.  She no longer has teeth so I was not worried.

I stayed almost everyday with my Tía Rosa.  She said the same things over and over again.  She walks with a slide but she doesn’t want to use her cane.  There were moments we made her laugh.  There were moments she cried.  She told me once that she wished we would wouldn’t come because afterwards it is so lonely.  I knew what she meant and I didn’t remind her that every time we call she asks when we are going.

I wrote a lot in Cuba.  I didn’t use a computer.  My stepsister’s laptop kept on freaking out.  I can’t write like that.  Like old times I wrote in a book with a pen.  My penmanship no longer worthy of any celebration.  At first my hand hurt. I am not used to writing like that.

I came back home to the news of Obama wanting to send more troops, to Tiger Woods getting caught doing something that I am still not understanding and to Facebook status updates.  I came home to my love.  Sigh.  I came home.

I am cultivating a plan.  No more writing on inspiration.  No more dilly dallying.  There is lots of work to do.  2009 was hard and beautiful and full of growth.  This time last year I was a hot mess.  I am thankful.  Even for the hot messing moments.  I am thankful.

the end.

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en miami

November 12, 2009 at 10:56 pm (Uncategorized)

I’ve been losing my patience.  I’ve substituted water for café negro.  I’ve had my first piece of organic fruit since I’ve been in Miami.  My first fruit since Sunday.  There wasn’t even kale in the store.  I am sure in other places in Miami I could find kale but I am in Little Havana.  I don’t even know how to say kale in Spanish.  I walk down the stairs and cigar smoke and Florida water lingers.  It is like childhood.  All I need is to chase lizards and catch fireflies.

Lizards were my friends once.  Outside of my Abuelo Alfonso’s shack.  I played in front with my cousin Victor Hugo.  We knew we were good at catching lizards when their tails didn’t come off.  My fingers were small then.  Now I look at my hands and I see my mami’s.  Just a little bit smaller.  Her hands have made thousands of empanadas.  Mine have only made like ten.

Abuelo Alfonso only wanted my mami to clean his shack.  In the summertime.  Sweat and dirt dripped down her face.  It was always dark in there.  He was saving his money for the day Castro would fall and he could go back to Cuba.  He did give me $20 bills.  My other cousins got fives or tens.  A secret between my Abuelo and I.

He once gave me a bag of dolls.  They were not packaged nor pretty, not even dressed.  Their hair was all tangled and had dirt stains on their faces.  I loved those dolls for the seven minutes I had them.  We drove off from Abuelo’s house.  Mami and Madrina up front.  Victor Hugo and I in the back.  Our hands burnt from hot seat belts.  They drove in zig zags and circles, blocks away from Abuelo’s house.  Mami got out from the car with her Virginia Slims hanging from her lips.  She took the bag from beside me and walked away.  Mami!  I don’t even think I got a ssh.  She went to a garbage can, opened it and dumped my dolls.  My beautiful dirty dolls.  A mixture of black, brown and white dolls.  Blondes and redheads and brunettes like me.  I wondered if their eyes still winked in the darkness of the garbage can.  No more dolls for me.

I love the heat and how the humidity makes my hair all wild.  I love speaking Spanish every second, arepas sold in stores.  I love that there are twelve different brands of Malta.  Not just Malta Goya or Malta India.  I know we don’t need twelve different brands.  Capitalism comes out of me once in a while.  I am going to Cuba in a few days, inshaAllah.  I am annoyed by this trip.  My family without realizing are putting the fear into me only because they talk loud.  So, they shout Dengue! Pink Eye! Swine Flu!  Of course in Spanish but I can’t remember the words for those either.

The lack of water and raw foods has made my writing all bitter.  I don’t think I could ever survive in Miami.  California has been good to me with its farmer’s markets and hills full of trees.  I walked the other day and talked to everyone who would talk to me.  Here I am with a Cuban rooster.

calle 8

I didn’t talk to the Cuban rooster but to the man who took the picture of me with the Cuban rooster.  He kidded around and said that it would cost $20.  I told him, Que Dios te bendiga.  Then he asked if I was Christian.  No, soy musulmana.  Then he told me his grandparents were Muslims from Lebanon and became Christians in Honduras.  He told me his two last names one in Spanish and one in Arabic then we parted ways.

Everyone is getting older.  Including me with my grays.  My Tito came over and I showed him pictures of my wedding.  Who would have thought that my niece would come here and say that she was married, to a Muslim, named Adam, and she doesn’t eat Cuban bread because it’s made with lard and can’t eat pork and has to go up and down five times a day, who would have thought.  Thank God you don’t have arthritis, he tells me.  My mami says she could never make salat.  I told her she could do it sitting down in a chair and she said, oh ok.  In Spanish this was all in Spanish but I have the bad habit of translating everything in my head.  She agrees that even though she is not Muslim she has raised me to be Muslim so praying in between the couch and dining table is not a big deal.  People seem to assume my family would have a difficult time with me being Muslim.  Some assume that they are such religious Catholics that they would be mad.  They don’t understand that my family has had El Coran years before me.  They got really into finding out about Islam when they watched a Brazilian novela called El Clon about Muslims and cloning.  I don’t think it was about the cloning of Muslims but there were Muslims and there was cloning.  The novela ended and so was their interest but not their acceptance.

I feel better now.  I think it was the Cuban rooster.  Oh, alright it was the water.  I really don’t have to substitute it for café.  And I think it was the writing.  No longer words in back seats of cars in my head.

the end.

 

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New Orleans

October 22, 2009 at 7:51 pm (Uncategorized)
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It’s been like this for days.  The words dancing in my head.  I’ve spent most of my time in a van.  On a tour.  Driving in Houston and College Station and San Antonio and Austin.  Driving across the border to Louisiana.  Louisiana looking like Cuba.  This is my prep time for my trip next month.  Humidity, acres of green, no toilet paper in public bathroom and the spirits.  There’s one in this house.  We are here for a total of two days.  Floor boards creak while I pray.  She stands behind me.  Beside me.  I can’t see her but I feel her.  I pray.

I forgot about this.  The spirits of New Orleans.  I was overcome with sadness as we got closer, as we saw bodies of water.  In my heart they felt turbulent.  Overcast sky.  Katrina wasn’t that long ago.  I saw the waves go up and down.  Wet skin, the wails.  This is my prep for Cuba.  I thought I was meant to go to India to purge.  Plans changed.  I am not the best of planners.  I am ready…  I think…

It is the South and the clouds seem bigger.  The land flatter, the people looking more familiar.  The South is like home.  Not like Brooklyn, not like Oakland, like the place my family still lives.  The place I will go to soon.  To write.  Not on a blog, probably on paper.  Stories that I have never heard.  Stories that need to be told.  My abuela is 107 years old but she doesn’t remember me.  Will she remember anything?  Like the way I like to touch her arm and smile into her warm eyes.  Will she remember that I am the grandchild that lives far away and comes for days at a time, years in between rainfalls and sunshine?

I want to write more but I am not here alone.  There’s eight of us.  Beautiful and fabulous and loving.  We’re going to the French Quarter now.  I hear about the spirits there.  I am sure they will find me.  I am not worried.  I am protected.

the end.

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the last days

September 18, 2009 at 11:57 pm (Uncategorized)
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I am going to miss this.  Ramadan.  I was shy in the beginning.  Not wanting to tell people it was my first.  But when I looked out into the horizon and caught a glimpse of the crescent moon I couldn’t help but want to savor that moment.  I still see it.  The fog rolling in, the oranges and peaches of the sky.  I can still feel how my heart expanded that first night, the first early rise for suhoor.  I made eggs and veggie sausages and toasted some spelt muffins for my friend and I.  I felt like a mother.  Like my mother when she used to wake up before dawn to make breakfast for my father.  I woke up as well.  This is what daughters of bakers do.

I’ve been wanting to write words on long walks through Berkeley.  Words on my body.  Wrapped around so I won’t forget them.  There are different fonts I like but on my body I want it typed like a typewriter.  Each click, a new memory.  I am not going to India.  Not yet.  I am going to Cuba instead, inshaAllah.  There I can sit with my Tía Rosa.  I can make her coffee, tell her don’t worry I will get the water from the well.  I will have ear plugs this time so I won’t wake up when the giant pigs across the street are being weighed.  They sound like aliens.  I will miss the clacking of the horse hoofs in the middle of the night but I will be able to dream.  Maybe I will be able to dream stories.  Stories like my mami used to tell me on Saturday nights.  She no longer repeats those stories over and over again.  She has been in the United States for almost 40 years now.  More years than living in Cuba.

I am saving my words for Cuba.  They are tucked away in my heart.  In between coffee making and salat I will write, inshaAllah.  This trip seems better than India.  I will speak like a Cuban again.

I tell my family my Ramadan stories.  I feel like a child again.  It is a full circle for me.  Everything my mami taught me I am relearning.  Sometimes I am shy to say that I cry when I realize how much I love God.  Like a child.  I am in my purest state.  The other night I had anxiety regarding things of this life.  I was pmsing.  Sometimes it feels like the end of the world.  Before I went to bed I said la ilaha illa Allah over and over again.  I said it until I cried.  I said it until my heart was pounding so hard I felt it coming out of my chest.  I said it until I realized that all I need is God.

I want the words typewritten on my body so I can remember this month.  Remember what I have learned, the breakthroughs I’ve had, the beautiful people I have communed with.  I want to remember this because it is my first.  I took my shahada a few days after Ramadan ended last year.  Two days after my birthday.  My 33rd year.  Some people call it the Jesus year.  A spiritual year.  It was an amazingly spiritual year for me, mashaAllah.  Maybe I won’t miss it.  The words are tucked away in my heart.  They will spill unto the page and the memories will surface.  I can take everything that I have learned and implement them, inshaAllah.  I finally understand what going with the flow means.  It is me, just like this.

the end.

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Tía Rosa

September 2, 2009 at 8:22 pm (Uncategorized)
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She has a painting of Fidel in her living room.  He was young in his trademark green.  Tía Rosa loves Fidel so much that she doesn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t like him.  He has given maternity leave to women for a whole year, she told me once.  I smiled.  I couldn’t tell her that he is not perfect.  She wouldn’t understand the concept of loving someone in all their complexities. To her there is nothing complex about Fidel.

She is the one that stayed.  The one with a chest full of revolutionary medals.  I am not sure if she ever picked up a rifle.  She must of.   At least once.  Tía Rosa received medals for her outstanding work in education.  Education is revolution.

In all my trips to Cuba I have learned, don’t hate the people, just hate the government.  That is what my family tells me about the US.

Tía Rosa’s husband died this past May.  They bickered constantly.  I used to wonder if they still loved each other.  Then every now and then I saw the look they gave each other.  She misses his voice, the way he walked with his cane.  She misses his scent in bed.  I wonder where his things are.  Is his comb still left by the bathroom or did she give it away?  In Cuba nothing gets thrown out.  Not even pain.

My cousin wrote to me today asking me to call her more often because she always feels better when she hears from one of us in the states.  He wrote me that she spends her days so sad and alone.  No husband to take care of, her children now in their fifties and not all the grandkids remember to visit.  Except him, of course, he visits her and is greeted with her wails and tears.  His words pulled at my heart.  It’s sad when the matriarch feels all alone.  It is not suppose to be that way.

Awhile back she told us that she wanted us to start the paperwork so she could come for a visit.  People over 60 years old can leave the island for a period of time.  I never thought Tía Rosa would want this but she wanted her sisters.  She’s the one that stayed.  Mami and Tía Cheffy left.  Tío Nene did, too, but he died a long time ago.  A shot in the head.

I did the first step.  A phone call to the embassy.  She was given a date to be interviewed.  December 23, 2010.  I called in 2008.

Tía Rosa is 78 and her biggest worry right now is that she will die before she will get to visit.  I try to call the embassy every so often but each call costs $11.  Each time they tell me they can’t move up her date.  I called Tía Cheffy in Miami she said she has heard that there are ways to do it.  How much?, I asked.  She said she would find out tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter where you are money moves everything.

I am thinking I should go to Cuba soon and spend some time with her.  I am not sure.  I have to wait and see.  I think about how I want to go to take care of her but all she will want to do is take care of me.  She will sit right next to me and make me eats mounds of food.  She will wash my clothes and get water from the well.  I will say, please, please, let me do something and she will give me the task of making coffee.  Maybe she’ll let me get water from the well.  Maybe but just once.  She will see how long it will take me and not understand that I need to practice in order to get better.  She will get live chickens to feed me and toilet paper.  They only use toilet paper when I am there.  The rest of the time it is ripped up newspaper.  I tried it once.  I prefer toilet paper.

I will call again tomorrow, inshaAllah, maybe they can move up her date.  Then I will call her, inshaAllah and tell her good news or no news.  She will cry and tell me about her loneliness.  I will cry, too.  I won’t say anything about me wanting to go there.  I still have to wait and see but I think it might be a good idea.  I can write in between making coffee and hearing her stories.  I can hitchhike my way to a town an hour away for jummah with the new Cuban Muslims.  I can find a river to swim in.  Maybe the one my mami used to swim in as a child.  We will see, inshaAllah.

the end.

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August 13, 2009 at 1:28 am (Uncategorized)
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I met King James today.  He was sitting on the bus stop bench on 40th ST.  He told me he doesn’t like bad people.  I told him, yeah, stay away from bad people.  His hair was white, white, white against his hazelnut brown skin.  I looked at him, some teeth missing, a few wrinkles here and there and I thought, he was good looking once.  I wondered if it was the alcohol on his breath that renamed him King James.

He flies, he told me.  Like the pigeons he feeds.  They know him.  They love him.  All animals do.  And then he told me about his dog that didn’t listen to him and got scratched up by a racoon.  In Berkeley.  Yes, even in Oakland I see racoons run to hide in the sewage.

I ached to write today.  Maybe because the baby didn’t want to take a nap.  He’s sixteen months now and I am teaching him to say please.  More please.  Down please.  Sometimes I hear a thank you.  But next week is my last week with him.  This line of work can be difficult to the heart.  I walk around pushing a stroller and people congratulate me on having beautiful children.  Sometimes it feels like I am acting.  They think I am the mother.

Maybe that is the book that I should be writing: Motherhood without being a mother.  I am like a single mom eight hours a day, I sometimes say.  Last year I had three children.  Hope (3) Ruby (2.5) and Zeke (1.5). We took the BART to Fairyland and walking with two kids in a stroller and the other one on my side or my back can be quite difficult.  We missed the bus and I got all frustrated.  We walked towards the lake and then realized that we missed the bus so we can just take a break and eat our snacks on a bench.  In peace.  I told the kids that and they liked that much better than me being frustrated.  The kids ate and watched the geese go by.  And this older lady came by.  Saw us and the beauty that all these kids had.  And then she turned to me, Different fathers right?  And I laughed and said, yes.  The woman must of thought I was a slut that got impregnated each year by a Chinese man, a White man, and a mixed Black/White man.  I love the Bay Area.

In two weeks I will know what will happen for the rest of my life.  Ok, I am exaggerating.  I will know what will happen for the next several months, insha Allah.  Or at least I will have an idea.  All, I want to do is write.  I want my mornings back so I can write all hours of the night.  I want to sit around and talk about God and words and art and life and the world and everything around like the birds and the stars and the flowers that grow out of concrete.  I want to dip my toes in the ocean and feel the breeze kiss my neck.  I want to say Alhumdullilah, Alhumdullilah, Alhumdullilah ten million times because I am grateful for my existence, even if it was a lil rocky at first.

Breath.  I want all of this.  I’ve been praying for a long time.  And doing something about it, too.   Breath.

The birds are chirping outside.  Maybe they are telling my to clean or just to take it easy.  I am like King James minus the alcohol, the birds know me.

the end.

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She’s a saint

August 1, 2009 at 7:39 pm (Uncategorized)
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My mami’s a saint.  Not the kind that needs to be canonized nor is she of porcelain with robes and crowns.  My mami is a walking saint.  

It’s my last day in Florida.  I am actually starting to like this state again.  It’s the clouds.  They are big puffs in shapes of pillows and goats and angels.  It is not just the clouds, really, there is more.  It is the palm trees, the green on various leaves, it is the humidity hugging me so tight, it is the Cubans, the Puerto Ricans, the salsa on the radio,  it is my family.  

I am at the hospital taking care of my papi.  He is across from me asleep.  A tube here, a tube there, tubes everywhere.  Morphine, oxygen, liquids.  He goes through his moments of being in pain.  A press of a button releases morphine.  A press of another button calls the nurse.  This is the nicest hospital I have been in but I feel like I will turn into a fast food junky if I stay any longer.  I had McDonald’s last night because I was sick of the Subway sandwiches and I have gotten hooked on the Starbuck’s Iced Chai Latte with Soy.  Please forgive me I have been away from California too long.  Ok, it’s only been a week but please do forgive me.

I leave tomorrow and my papi will remain in the hospital until he is fully recovered.  I leave and it makes me sad that I can’t afford to stay longer.  My mami who has not been with my papi for the past 23 years will take care of him.  Mami never liked church and doesn’t really believe in organized religion although she says, soy católica a mi manera.  Mami has always told me that her religion is helping others.  That is what she does.  She goes from house to house helping those who are sick.  A month at her friend’s because she had a foot operation.  Over a year while my cousin was sick with lung cancer.  She stayed with her sister after my cousin passed away.  The other sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, Mami went over there.  My little cousin had to have a tumor removed by her heart.  Where was my mami?  In my cousin’s kitchen making sure the beans were cooked just right.  She goes back and forth and is hardly in her section 8 studio apartment in Little Havana.  My mami is a saint.

When I was little it annoyed me that she took care of so many other people.  I love my mami, really I do but there were ways she didn’t know how to be my mami.  Not the one I needed.  I think I’ve moved on from that.  I think.  Hija eres madre será.  You are a daughter and will be a mother.  That is what she always told me when I misbehaved.  I remember that because perhaps in some way I may fail my child as well.  May I catch myself before it happens or while it is happening.  May she or he not write a blog about how I wasn’t the best mother.  Ameen. 

 I never knew my parents’ relationship to be happy so it has surprised me when she has woken me up in the morning to call the hospital to see how my papi is doing.   I forget, once they were married, once they loved each other, once they had my brother and me.

I pray that my mami never gets sick because who would take care of her the way she takes care of other people.  I would, of course, she is my mami, but we don’t have the same calling.  I stayed at my papi’s place the night of his surgery.  I was alone in the apartment while my oldest brother’s house was filled with people.  I woke up missing my mami so much.  I couldn’t wait to get to her.  I hugged her and didn’t care if her cigarrette smoke was getting in my hair.  I wanted my mami the way a kid wants their mami.  In that moment she was the best mami anyone could ever have.  I understand her now.  I appreciate all the little things she did for other people and all the teachings she gave me.

My eyes are tired.  It is a long drive from Spring Hill to Tampa to go to the hospital.  I am not used to these florescent lights.  I kind of want to stay here.  Maybe it’s the clouds or the fast food is making me delusional.  Maybe it’s just that I am all grown up and things are finally good with my family, minus the sicknesses of course, but emotionally we are stronger now.  How can we not be when we have the blessings and the love of a walking saint?

the end.

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