Entre Aquí y Allá / Between Here and There

When I was little, my father woke me up for school. He turned on the light in my room, since outside the sun was still huddled below the horizon. The coquís would sing and the nightly breeze floated in space. He kissed my forehead and carried me into the living room. Breakfast used to be water or orange juice and toast with too much butter. I showered with the door open, because I was afraid of being alone. To dress me, my father, as the writer he is, would make tell me a story. Although it was always the same, I liked it because I was the protagonist. He'd buttoned my white polo and put my socks on. Then, he’d loom a grey dress over me and the story began. I was a seed. Small, but powerful. Hidden below the earth, begging for rain. My father would put the dress on me and make rain with his mouth. A silent storm fell on me. My roots grew and my arms exploding out of the sleeves, my head poked out of the collar. My father smiled because at six in the morning, he always saw me wake up and bloom.

Now at 20, an alarm wakes me. Without a kiss, but with a loud screech. The song is from the trains and the cold from our distance from the sun. The toast still has too much butter, but the trees are leafless and English is how people relate. Instead of juice, it's coffee with milk. I don't have a uniform, but I do have a college student aesthetic to live up to. The deluge is of snow and cigarettes after classes. I haven’t been a seed in years, after I graduated high school my roots were chipped and scarred, but firm. I am not scared of being alone anymore, I shower with the door closed and enjoy my own company. Flowers are starting to grow, observing this new terrain, new space.

As a child, I understood that my existence is product of my parents love. At 17, I understood that I am not only an expression of love, but that my way of being was crafted by my environment. Every five months, I get on a plane from Chicago, where I live, and I return to the country where I was born, Puerto Rico. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 42,000 feet in the air, I wonder where home is? Is it the place from where I took off or the one I will land in?