Texas Trip (Journal Entry 2018)

I’m running now. I’ve been running for years in my own mind, but I’ve never actually gotten anywhere. At 19 it was UNC; I was going to transfer and start a new life to escape Carly and UMASS, and my washed up, depressed self. I needed new friends, I thought. I needed motivation, optimism, to get away from black winters and a grey springtime. 

It’s crossed my mind that I may be trying to run from something I can’t escape, that the grey clouds and dark skies sit deep within me, and seeing them is merely a reminder of the daily things I cannot stand, a reflection of the dark i’m coping with. At least feeling the sun on my face would show me beauty, i thought, and witnessing the simple happiness inherit in nature can override the inherent unhappiness that I carry. Yes, I’ve thought of this quite a bit, I fear it actually. Stupid psychology majors.

You can’t run from yourself, that’s for sure.

When driving from Dallas to Fort Worth I compared the cities using my gut, which is something I’ve just started to do in recent years. Thinking about things logically has gotten me to where I am, has made me successful (by society's definition), but now that I’ve reached that goal, I’ve begun to focus on my personal happiness, something you need emotions for. On exams, for instance, I started just reading the questions and going with the first answer I thought of. Our first choices, our instinctual decisions, are usually right.

In the uber, I thought of my situation as an exam question to see what came up first, and the answer shocked even me. “If you could run anywhere, be anywhere, where would you be?” My immediate thought— it was more of a picture actually, like a snapshot of the most ideal place— I was chasing Kasi Stout down the street, she was on her bike, barefoot as usual. East Mountain Ave was busy, Mike and Albert chasing each other, me running down the sidewalk— which appeared wider than the street itself. The sun was high above us, and the world around our dirty faces was green with grass running wild.

It’s funny how obvious this is and how blinded I've been with this linear life— always working to move forward, always progressing and building a future. The first destination that came to mind wasn’t a place at all, it was a time. It was my childhood, it was innocence and being carefree, it was dirty and sweaty on a summer day, baseball practice in the backyard, and karate lessons on weekend nights. It was Albert running around looking for hard cover books to shelter us from the tornado— every, single, day. What a beautiful place that was. 

I’m sitting on the floor of the Austin airport now. I’ve done this before, quite a lot actually; in Boston, Dublin, Switzerland, France, DR, Puerto Rico, Canada, Copenhangen, San Francisco, New York, etc. In my short 26 years, I have been to a lot of places. I plan to see many many more, and even return to some that I’ve already been to. 

But the one place I can’t go back is in time. The life I've been seeking, the place I am homesick for, is gone. It doesn't even exist.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

“Let’s go Lisa!!” moms voice shrieks behind me. Dad stands behind the plate, his fingers wrapping tensely around the metal fence in anticipation. Not the safest practice, but it gives him comfort. “I’ll buy you a sandwich if you hit a home run,” Albert bribes. I laugh a little behind my helmet at the thought of him paying his debt with mom’s money for a lunch I’d need anyway. How many pulled pork sandwiches could I have in one day? The tiny concession stand in Colombus, Ohio, just happened to be the best I’ve ever tasted. The light, thinly shredded strips of meat were trimmed of fat and bathed in a sweet and tart barbecue sauce, staining my lips in a savory comfort. I would hit the ball anywhere for another one.

“Throw your hands at the ball,” Albert encouraged as I stepped towards the plate. For years I watched him hit, his hands exploding in a swift motion from his back shoulder to the ball, guided with his hips and ending with his back toes dug deep into our lawn. “You have to squish the bug.” He’d explained, channeling the information from my dad to me. “Look, I’ll show you.” He’d demonstrate for hours, as I fed him baseballs and ran deep into the neighbors yard to retrieve them. “Can I hit now? Pleasssse?” I’d beg, wanting to show him that I understood. “Well, you have to get me out first,” he’d respond. “There’s three outs in every inning.” 

I raked the dust beneath my feet to mark my place in the batter’s box, then tapped my bat to the outside corner of the plate. Every player had their ritual, and this was mine, stollen long ago from my brother. The sun struck down in its mid day anger, scattering little beads of sweat on my face. This was Nationals, we were down to single elimination, and the Virginia Stars were returning champs. No pressure. 

I twisted my hands around the bat handle in a tightening grip as I waited for the first pitch. “Be patient,” my dad both advised and embodied. My breath slowed and I felt it fill the corners of my back. My mom’s words reached me in an elevated whisper, as if a thought had accidentally escaped her, “You got this.” My body followed a dance I’d studied for so long, not needing guidance or thought. The ball met my bat at it’s thick center, and in a simple sweet kiss, it said good bye. I rounded the bases at my leisure as a spectator threw the ball in from the other side of center field. My team awaited me at home plate, but I looked up, instead, at my family, smiling and cheering in the stands, thinking to myself, so when’s lunch?

Ana Gabriel (written for my mother)

I hear your voice through any song by Ana Gabriel.

I sit awkwardly at a table for one. It’s my first time in Texas and the heat has beaten me with exhaustion and hunger. I wait patiently for a bus to Austin, but can’t bare to sit outside in Sundance square. “Is this really where I want to live?” I wonder silently, staring out to the barren streets. As the air conditioner wipes the sweat off my face and neck, Ana Gabriel’s voice spills through the speakers, carrying me in a tidal wave back to our Saturday mornings.

“Quien como tuuuuu, que dia a día puedes tenerle.”

On weekends, mom’s voice travels through the house as an unexpected alarm. The rest of us, drained from trying to get her up during the work week, unsuccessfully take shield under layers of weakly stuffed pillows. She floats through the living room, her center stage, to visit each of her audience members for their own personal serenade. “Llevantate,” she squeezes in as new lyrics to the song. “Que hay oficios.” She drifts down the hall on her high healed flip-flops, stamping the air with hints of Mistolin and Pledge— more friends for the concert.

I tumble out of bed if I’m not on the floor already from some turbulent dream or sheer clumsiness. I look out onto East Mountain Ave where bikes are waiting to be driven, and bats lay lonely on the grass. Oficios, then outside. I am suddenly energized, as if the song shook me awake. In Gardner, dad signed us up for basketball or soccer on these weekend mornings, or lazily searched the grocery aisles until the cleaning was coincidentally over. “Dos horas pa la compra?” mom exclaimed, as we cleared the trunk of plastic bags. Albert walked barefoot toward the house, veins popping out of his neck as he balanced a string of bags on each arm. He’d take the risk of a hernia over the need for a second trip. “Mira, si tu ve la fila que habia..” my dad would respond, and no one could confirm that it wasn’t true.

At the small Mexican Cantina, my order of tacos rests in front of me, clashing down over Ana Gabriel’s voice. I smile at the image of mom, using the broom as her microphone, and then laugh, oddly to myself, at the fact that I’m hearing only the singer’s voice for the very first time. 

Cherry Chapstick

I smell you in a stick of cherry chapstick. 

“Does anyone have chapstick?” I ask as we all cram into the car. I’ve lost mine, probably for the fifth time this week, and my lips burn raw against the blistering cold. Dad has his thick blue hat on, which lays like a box on top of his head with two round ear muffs draping down. I doubt he can even hear me. Mom shuffles towards the car, three bags in one hand, cream of wheat in the other. Is this all for one day of work?? She struggles up the snow covered driveway as dad slowly inches closer and closer down the road. He thinks that waiting for her in the street is more efficient, but it takes an hour for mom, who is already late, to unhook each heel from the ice. As she sits in the car, we drown in a sea of perfume, so potent I’m tempted to crack a window. 

“I really need some chapstick,” I whine, because I’m their kid, and that’s my job. Mom searches through her coat, then her purse, with its endless pockets that are stuffed to the brim. Some days she finds it stuffed between her wallet, some days in a pile of Maria cookie crumbs at the bottom of her lunch bag. “Toma,” she says, pushing her hand back without turning. I grab it and coat my lips over and over again, as if each time the chapstick passes over me it will sink deeper into my skin for extra moisture. “Diablo, te lo va comer,” my dad comments. “I’ll show you how to use it,” he states, then takes out his black, unscented chapstick, one hand on the steering wheel. He touches it once to his top lip and once to his bottom lip. “See, this chapstick will last me a whole year,” he adds. I laugh as he barely touches it. “Wait, you had chapstick this whole time?” I ask rhetorically. “Yea, I can’t lend it to you, you’ll lose it before we leave the driveway.” How rude, I think, rolling my eyes, though it’s probably true. 

We ride to Haverhill High long before homeroom starts, the sky is dark and the city is bare of life. Like rides to Melinda’s, so early I never remembered getting there, or trips to the YMCA before Williamsport opened its eyes, I sit staring out the window half asleep. As the day starts, my dad threatening to leave my mom behind, or Albert with one shoe on and no backpack, I am off to a new start, my lips smothering me in a scent of cherry chapstick. 

Unfit Feet (writing exercise 2013)

My feet are two bulky hyperextensions of my legs that aymmetrically carry the weight of my body. My left sits comfortably at an 8.5, while my right extends forward, righteously claiming its place at a size 9. I waver between these sizes, shifting my weight like house walls resting cautiously on a tilted foundation. My feet have their own identities, while as a pair, they reject any set standard of society.

For most of my life, I have satisfied my right, always taking the larger shoe. This decision has left me half barefoot running to first base, or crushing litter in playgrounds with the naked, unprotected flesh of my left foot. I ran, never that fast, leaving behind the evidence that half of me had no desire to move forward, but chose to linger in that limbo that precedes full grown adulthood. Although more embarrassing, it’s much better than pleasing my left. Leaving one foot dancing in the open space of a pair of heels, womanhood’s many curses, has almost led to a broken ankle. Instead, I bear the burden of my fully body’s weight pushing relentlessly on the toes of my right foot. The pressure tightening around the front of my shoe has left my whole foot numb after a night of dancing, and left me shocked that not one toe was broken.

In attempts to avoid the bursting blisters and scars, I have often contemplated shoplifting; switching around the shoes in the box so that the mismatched pair would personally suit my body’s disparity. It’s a perfect solution, besides the jail time of course. The thought of carrying myself in absolute comfort is as imaginable as flip flops being accepted at one of Boston’s hottest night clubs. Until that movement sets in, I’ll continue to move awkwardly through life, satisfying only one extremity at a time. 

Havana Nights

The August heat in Boston was a weighted blanket that everyone tried to breath under. Havana, with its lack of air conditioning, was no different. Dancers led the heat in waves of frantic momentum, pushing it onto everyone around them. Rapid turns and body rolls gave birth to an unexpected mist of sweat. Though it sounds repugnant, the scene of bare limbs sharing steam gave air to an enticing latin sex appeal. It was Salsa Saturdays and the ballroom was at capacity, or so I’d hoped. I’d chosen my outfit thinking, “which has the least amount of clothing,”  a thought opposing my usual style. “Boring” is what my friends called it. “If I had your body,” my cousin Karina always said, “I’’d wear as little as I could.” I always laughed at the compliment, thinking, but don’t you already? 

The dress I wore was one my friend had given me after gaining the “dental school fifteen.” It was a tube top style maroon dress with a full exposed back, all connected with thin, black netting. A piece I would come to wear more than once, but one I’d never buy on my own. It scrunched around my hips and hugged by butt tight enough to stay in place when my legs became slick with sweat, or when i was twirled in endless circles, through risky dips, or when men tried that old school move of dancing with their leg between mine, to hike up my thigh. It was stretchy and form fitting, but best of all, I could breathe. 

Two shots of whiskey, my crew (the girls, friends, and fam— we were rolling deep), and Marc Anthony singing me sweet melodies del amor and i was burning holes on the dance floor. I floated from partner to partner, laughing at my own clumsiness and lack of rhythm. “Just follow the man,” my mom reminded me growing up, a lesson every Dominican girl would learn. She’d taught my brother and me bachata and merengue steps on evenings in our living room; Maria’s own school of dance. My hips, however, were not a ball in socket joint, they were fixed to my legs and no ethnic or genetic power would save me. “Just listen to the beat,”  she would say. What beat? I’d think with frustration.I used a metronome during piano lessons to keep me at pace. I listened to the backstreet boys. How could I hear a single beat through clashing bongos and tamboras? “Una tabla,” my mom would call me, and at one point she gave up.

At Havana, everything changed. I surrendered to the beat, and I followed. I didn’t care for the steps, moves, or routines, I simply let my body flow as a reflection of the man who led me. Most times, we’d move fluidly as one. Often I’d turn in the wrong direction, or step on a toe or two. I found it more fun that way, more simple, and free. 

I danced that night with young new beginners, with men from Guatemala to Ecuador, with a widower well into his eighties, with my cousins, friends, and with so many random guys that their faces all blurred together. A ton of quick, meaningless ballads. Then he asked me to dance. I had seen him on the dance floor, who hadn’t. But in front of me he was taller than I expected, broad up top, with soft dark eyes and my a contagious smile.  “Would you like to dance?” he asked. I nodded yes and quickly placed my hand in his.

I can’t tell you what song was playing, or how many songs we danced to, just the feeling of  my arms stretched up, gripping the rigged corners of his back. Of how he dipped me so close to the ground that I feared for my life. His arms, strong under the small of my back, never budged, and I always landed safely, inches above the floor. I laughed from the adrenaline rush, laughed at his need to fan off so often, at dancing on opposite beats, at his surprised expression when he told me that his shirt was soaked, and I proposed he take it off. I was forward, as I’d always been, and embodied what he would later share as his favorite quote, “Fortune favors the bold.” 

The club was ours, everyone else had faded into the walls. I clung to him like we’d come to Havana together, as if there were no one else to dance with, no one left in the world at all. Finished dancing, we sat on open stools, dehydrated and with shaky legs. The energy that hummed between us masked any signs of exhaustion. We talked and laughed until our lips connected and danced as freely as our bodies had a couple hours before.

My brother approached us. Albert was there, wow I’d forgotten. He said, “Hey, we’re all leaving, are you going to stay?”

“Yea, I’m going to stay,” I answered mindlessly, not realizing it was close to 2am. 

Seeing my brother sucked me back into a reality that I’d escaped from. It was almost 2 am! I got up just minutes after they’d left, and ordered myself an Uber home. We exchanged numbers, and I added yet another “Mike” into the contacts on my phone. With one last kiss I left Havana, re-emerging into the chaos of a Boston summer night. My knees had almost given out while waiting for my ride, my heels cut deep into my feet from the constant weight of my body, but I was light and still floating after starting a dance that would last for years

Grand, Frozen Canyon (from my travel journal)

 The sun slowly draws out the colors of the Grand Canyon. Reds, oranges, and purple shades blend and reflect back combinations of untold stories. The mile long vertical drop holds animals undiscovered, vegetation left unnamed, and people whose memories are left clinging to missing person’s signs. The view is vast, the air is still, and all is so perfectly beautiful. I breathe it in and let it fill me, hoping to carry pieces of it forever. Tracking up in April’s midday sun is a blessing. The air is cool, the sun beats on my face, and the world is my playground. Kim and Joe bounce from rock to rock, dodging mounds of donkey droppings. I feel light and giddy, like when my dad used to push me on the tire swinging our backyard. The world is vast and open around me, and I am free.

As we near our first of many mini peaks, the wind begins to sway us. Clouds roll in and rapidly the canyon disappears, hiding underneath a thick blanket of white fog. We pick up the pace, but nature does too. A cool mist begins to spray my face. My hair begins to curl. Rain falls heavily, pulling me down as I fight the incline. On our descent we skipped down the path, jumping from one step to the next. Now, I hug the mountain side, feeling every corner of my foot press sturdily into mud. Any skid could land me in the pit of the canyon, just one misplaced step and I might never make it home. It’s exciting! There’s a rush over me that fuels my need to survive. My senses are heightened and despite my 40lb bag, I am agile.

Hail. Hail starts to prick our skin with it’s sharp edges pressing through our jackets. The temperature is dropping drastically as we move upward, and my hands and toes are numb. I tire from the weight mother nature has thrown on me, and I’m panting. I know I'm out of breath because I can see it in a small cloud forming in front of me with every exhale. It is cold and it is snowing.

I wear a coat of white at the top of the South Kaibob trail, and it blends perfectly with my complexion. We’re ecstatic. We made it! We’re safe on solid ground! Kim and I are shivering, convulsing almost. I can hear my teeth chattering and feel my core vibrating uncontrollably. As we hop on the bus Kim reflects a shade of blue, and I a yellowish green. We strip off our wet clothes, transitioning to new dry clothes from inside our packs My head hurts, my eyes, I feel dizzy. I start eating nervously; a protein bar, cliff bar, chocolate, a whole bag of jerky. I need the energy, without it I might never warm up. Joe is cold, but not like us. He wraps himself around us, transferring his body heat to me and Kim. No one says anything. I hear Kim’s teeth colliding and hope they don’t break. I lose the erratic rhythm of my breath. There are other people on the bus headed to the Visitor’s Center, but I can’t see them and wouldn’t turn to if I could.

Joe beings to sing Hallelujah in this raspy, blues-like voice. “Once there was a God above, and all I ever learned from love…” I don’t think he fully knows the words, but the sound is soothing and there is beauty again in a moment hopelessness. It caries me away from my soft, wet seat, from the gray, meek bus, from my frail and freezing body, all the way home. To my parent’s bed. To my mother, who radiates heat when I lay next to her. This tiny woman floating in my father’s tank top and summer shorts, curled up and sinking into the pit of their queen size bed. She rolls up so tight, like Albert when he used to hide in the dryer. She’s the size of a child but this heat seeps out of her and forms a forcefield around me. It’s a shield I hide under when the winter chills pierce my bones. It wraps around me and could block out any force of nature, any gunman, any bad dream or thought. I can feel her soft, clammy hands pulling me closer. I remember her chest lifting and dropping against my back, and I know we are still connected. My shoulders drop, my jaw stops moving, and finally, I can relax. I’m not going to die, not today. I let go of my anxieties and physical anguish because I know that one day, maybe not soon, but one day I will be there again with my mother, warm and protected on my safe little corner of the bed.