If you only knew mother (extra credit)

Falling asleep has never given me such a hard time. My toes are freezing and someones tongue could stick to my nose as if it were an ice block. I can feel my feet toes getting all messed up inside my rainbow toe sock and my fluffy blanket is starting to itch. If someone would ask me right now to describe a perfect invention that would revolutionize the world it would definitely be a nose warmer and a place were you could ask for some harmful uv rays a la carte to warm us up at nights like this.

I decide I'm going to skip tonight's whining and I head past the corridor, tip toeing so I don't wake up mom, down the double stairs.When I get to the first level of the house I open the door as fast as I can so it doesn't make that scary movie door opening screech. Making a mental note to use my recently acquired driving skills and buy some door oil, I enter the kitchen. The clock on the microwave reads 11:05 p.m. The island in the middle I'm leaning on is cold and I can see myself on the reflection on the windows heading the back yard, pondering what snack fits the night. I edge closer towards the nearest window and look at the night sky, sometimes I can imagine myself as a renowned chef. Looking for inspiration in nature and random daily life moments. I decide the night looks as a hot cup of cocoa and marshmallows.

I heat up two cups of marshmallow filled cocoa , turn off the lights and head back up the stairs. Slowly walking into my mom's room, I really don't have any inhibitions entering here since I know my mom's going to be alone ever since my dad moved out almost two years ago. I find her rolled up into her fancy comforter and one of the huge ponchos I gave her last christmas. She's staring at the TV watching some reality show on E. When she sees me standing there in my two sizes too big pj's, toe socks and hat holding the two hot cocoa cups she smiles our secret smile.

I get into her bed and although there's easily enough room for four people I slide as close to her as possible and entwine my legs with hers. Five minutes later she decides we just have to make it a movie night and that it's my turn to get out and put the movie on. I groan all the way to the dvd even though I know its useless since its always my turn. When it's time to choose the movie I already know the genre suited for lonely cold weathered girl's night. Yeah we are hopeless romantics I admit it, we are addicted.

I feel a cold rush of air hitting me from behind, instantly melting away my comfy remaining bed warmth.I turn to look, mom's opening the little windows at the left of the wall filling the white curtains  with air and making the effect of ghosts flying into the room. I whine " Mom!! stop that ! It's freezing in here" to what she replies" My room, my rules besides you can have as many blankets as you want! I'm sweating already with you straddling me and stealing my heat you big baby". Knowing I would not win this battle I felt my pout melt into a teasing smile knowing she was right. Thinking to myself "Why are moms always right!"

When everything is set I run into the bed and lay still waiting for my spot to warm up. The usual trumpet melody of twentieth century letting me know that the movie is about to start, I remove the blanket covering my face and beg my mom to play with my hair. To which she easily relents since she loves to play with my long black hair, it always makes her remember her black youth hair now turned auburn. 

As soon as the movie starts we make our bets. Romantic comedies although entertaining can be awfully predictable. Common predicitions are" I bet you one trip to the grocery store Bullock falls in love with the young what's his name hottie!!" or " I bet tomorrows breakfast that Cameron gets dumped and meets someone at the summer trip!" And we went on and on like this. We both ended up winning and the bets forfeited because of the tie.

What goes on at our movie night is something like this: Me stuffing myself with water and cocoa making my mom pause the movie repeatedly for bathroom breaks making her laugh at the face ,Eva, ashton, Jennifer or whoever the star, was paused at. Screaming and fighting over who we liked best for the dumpee or player to fall in love with. Me covering my face and blushing at the kissing or whatever hanky panky scenes in the movie there were, and my mom embarrassing me saying" Oh! you won't be thinking that when you grow up my darling" and me thinking "haha if you only knew" (just being honest here Mrs. Kelsey).

By the second movie we are both dozing off. So we vote and decide we should call it a night. As usual it is my turn to put everything away. As I shut off the tv and the dvd I think about how the night started. Whining and complaining about the weather , not appreciating the night it could be. Amazing how an impulse and a great idea changed everything. 

Now when I feel cold weather coming I don't hate the idea of it , in fact I sweetly remember that night we spent with my mom rolled up in the blankets just having a great time and making the best out of our night. Now if anyone asks me what my favorite weather is I shall always reply cold, nose numbing, toe numbing, cocoa filled predictable nights.

Salt, lemon and pepita crush!

It’s Sunday and I’ve been thinking about what to write next and I thought well I always have my childhood right? Who doesn’t? To tell you the truth I just couldn’t remember anything. I was having such a hard time and I don’t know if it’s what a psychologist would describe as blocking bad memories or if there’s something wrong with me because well I’ve had a hard childhood. Don’t get me wrong no one hit me or mistreated me but I’ve gone through a lot as all of us humans I suppose. I just guess we all have different ways of coping with hard times. I was dealing with this new found knowledge of me when I remembered, and I thought to myself laughing “well, there you are childhood! I was worried about you!” breathing a sigh of relief I started remembering.

There’s this one great memory that I would love to share and although it’s silly and probably unimportant, If It’s the one that popped into my mind first; I’m classifying it into my top ten happiest moments. It’s one of those moments that separates itself from time, it doesn’t matter in what circumstances it happened or what you were going through you just know that you had a good time.

We have a lot of rural areas here in Guatemala, and my grandparents, Papa yin and Panchita (that’s how we call them, I know, you can laugh) own a sort of farm right in Chiquimulilla.We used to go there almost every weekend when I was a little kid. It was a big gathering since my mom doesn’t have one or two siblings as you would normally think right? No no no she has eleven siblings!! Meaning that I have eleven aunts and uncles and adding to this number all of my cousins (By the way, I haven’t met them all… Yeah I know! It’s ridiculous, how much we girls can stand! Imagine being pregnant all the time. Grandpa he should’ve taken a grip, I guess boys will be boys) Well yeah you get the picture.

 I remember how the ride over there was just as much fun as being there. The smell of gas station coffee and diesel bring back the way my favorite cousin, Sofia, and I used to be smashed together in the back seat were all the coolers and the groceries my mom bought for Panchita were put. We always said “next time we’ll bring cards, Barbies and my Britney spears CD so we can play and dance on the way over!!” We were asleep fifteen minutes later(yeah not much time left to play) ,there’s something soothing about long car rides and bumpy roads that makes you fall asleep and drool on the person next to you always, no exceptions.

 There’s a restaurant/shop on the road ,nothing elegant it was simple humble even, were we always stopped . When we were a few feet from entering the parking lot my mind was already flying with possibilities. What will it be this weekend? Condense milk with fruits? Or maybe salt, lemon and pepita? I don’t know why I always wandered because I ended up with a salt, lemon and pepita crush every weekend. I can feel my mouth drooling just with the image of it. My dad would buy carnitas, rellenitos and tortillas for everyone. When we were on the road again my mom would act as car chef since we all wanted a tortilla with carnita, and when she opened the box containing them the smell of pork meat and wheat filled the air with the delicious promise of a happy and fool tummy.

When we got there we hugged anyone who was already  at the farm (even if we didn’t know them) and some would go eat more, some would go to the ranch and lay on a hammock, some would go ride the horses, most of the kids loved to climb the trees and collect mangos for later. Sofia, Krista, Berenise and me, we would go to the old abandoned small house just a little to the right and behind the main house. There we would find old, dusty skillets and buckets full of water. Our favorite game was to play as if we were housewives. Not your regular housewive, we replayed what we saw and we dramatized. Typical dialogue lines would be “Oh Berenise! What am I going to do? I don’t have enough to feed my kids!” or “I only have these fish (tree leafs) some corn and wheat (mud) God help us!” to what the answers would be” I know what we can do! Let’s do mud pies! We could feed the whole family with them!”

 And so that is how we started to make mud pies. A typical mud pie contained: Dust, water, leaves, and whatever rocks we could find for “decoration”. This mix we would pour into small containers we found on a box that had been left there on the house. We left it outside to dry and voila! , a delicious mud pie would be ready (if it was this easy we could’ve stopped world hunger a long time ago… ah! To be children! Those great far away times of mine) there was this one time when I decided I was going to be creative and take a risk … guess what I did? I added corn to my mud pie!!! (Genius child) and I poured it into an empty bleach container I had found that had the top of it cut off. By doing this, we later found out, I created the perfect conditions for corn to grow and soon my very own miniature corn plantation was developing right there in my mud pie filled bleach container. I was ecstatic, I will never forget you mud pie/corn plantation (R.I.P).

We would end the trip by eating all together at late afternoon when the sun was just setting. By this hour the fireflies woke up and thousands of tiny lit dots would fill the pastures around the house. In the car when I looked back the image saying goodbye to me would be of Papa yin and Panchita standing by the gate, arms entwined, and  around them the blurred firefly rears shining that would make them seem as if they were floating .By this moment my eyes were getting heavy and my mouth opened to deliver a gigantic yawn, but as I closed my eyes in my mind the image of them was the promise of another weekend, another salt, lemon and pepita crush, another tortilla, another mud pie, another body smashing car seat, another gold dotted night sky.

It dawned on me. I found it

There are defining moments in life that make you.

There are goals you just have to reach that unveil you.

The real you.

Somewhere along the path of what my life has been I was miscarried. I was going nowhere .Everything was in pause and I was waiting for something to happen without realizing that I was the only one who could press the play button again. I watched people changing their lives every day and I said to myself “when I finally have my dream body I’ll be happy and everything will change”,” when I have a boyfriend I will be happy “,”when everyone admires me my life will be perfect”,” when my parents get back together this squeezing pain in my chest will finally go away”. I spent weeks and months and years thinking like this but never doing anything about it. The year of 2011 changed my life in a matter of months. If I look back to January I wouldn’t be able to recognize the superficial face I had. The look of unhappiness, the look of a grieving but not yet knowing it girl. It is so often that people are suffering and they don’t even realize it, that we accept this state of mind and pass it as normal and we even believe we are really okay that we should stop playing victims and just cope with it. Everyone has problems after all, even bigger. And that’s where we go wrong. We don’t have to accept it! It is okay to feel. It is okay to talk. It is okay to cry. And it is okay to ask for help. It is your life after all and you decide how you are going to live it and how you will see yourself as. So many parents make the mistake of telling children not to feel  and they don’t even know it, trying to calm them when they  cry .Why not just letting them cry? Letting them feel? Letting them find peace and letting it all out.

Somewhere along the path of my life I lost myself. Somehow I saw myself as someone inferior to practically everyone. Somehow I didn’t see myself as the perfect being I am and the healthy, happy and beautiful girl I could be. There’s a glow in people, a joyous overwhelming glow, which bursts out of them when they finally know what is missing in their lives. I’m not talking about material things; I’m not talking about people. I’m most definitely sure that when people find themselves for the first time the glow takes over them. I was pondering, meditating call it what you may. One of those times when you are waiting and you find your mind drifting away, When you are at a point in life when you have taken action and changed completely but haven’t really realized it yet,  and suddenly I knew it. I had made it. I had finally taken charge of my life and changed it. Sure it had taken exercising and dieting to start this all over change, but I started it, I endured, and I succeeded. It wasn’t just physical, but by changing this small aspect of who I was I started to change from the inside too. I started to believe in myself and now I find that I can be everything I want to be. I find that life is mine to mold. The world is my playground. And I am taking over it.

While running towards nowhere, outside feeling the hard, wet pavement under the soles of my Nikes, running as hard as I could, the small drops of water left from rain on the branches of the trees smashing against my face. Air buzzing and whirring past my face. Breathless. Heaving. My strained leg muscles starting to tire and feeling the ache creep up from my ankles to my calves. An explosion of fresh air hitting my lungs filling my body with renewed strength. I stopped. I smiled to myself. I felt a hot tiny tear slide across my cheek to my trembling lips, because for the first time I finally accepted myself. For the first time I could be myself. No reservations, no limitations, no pauses. I was finally letting go, I was finally free again.

What I had been looking for, all of this time was right inside of me waiting to be acknowledged. I felt warmth feel my body at that exact moment and I knew then that it was never leaving me. I know right now as I sit in front of my computer in my blue faded jeans with my black hair all over the place, my body warm and my olive skin glowing that it is never going to leave me. What I have found and what I have realized is myself. That is pure gold. It is never going to leave me now, I can feel it like a river leaving its warm water behind and its currents washing away everything that is stopping me. Passing through me and taking it away, never to come back again. Leaving in its wake hope, strength and beauty. Nurturing my soul. Pushing me forward.

Hallmark moment

Have you ever met someone…? (Let me finish before you say well yeah duh!!) Who you instantly connected with? You know one of those persons who your first impression of was oh she seems quiet and sweet and then all of a sudden BAM! She explodes right in your face and it’s like a breath of fresh air because you finally found someone who gets YOU. Well if your answer is yes ,what a lucky person!if your answer is no, well feel free to laugh at me, I know how cheesy I sound, because someday it’ll happen to you and let me tell you you’ll just want to laugh some more, might as well get a head start. Let’s reminisce now, once upon a time (image starts to waver and you magically get transported to one of my memories) I went to a medical mission trip as a translator (yes I’m a good like that and yes I am modest … I know you’re raising your brow right now) at Huehuetenango with the team of HELPS international. They are from Minnesota and basically they volunteer to come help the people in need of medical assistance who can’t afford it here at my country and they are really good hearted people who don’t receive anything in return for helping and they still keep coming and paying all their expenses, just thought I’d mention this since it never hurts to mention the good things that are happening today. Back to my story, well as I already mentioned I was volunteering as a translator and there were a group of us, two of which were from Minnesota .Enter Kenzie and Megan, when I first saw them they were sitting with the rest of the crew in a table apart from ours.  Kenzie is this pretty girl with short,boyish,baby soft, brown reddish hair with big brown eyes framed by beautiful long lashes and a fair face with a huge smile who was wearing a hot pink band’s t-shirt almost always and if you asked her about it she’d just laugh and say “ Everybody keeps  asking me if I’m a fan! In fact it is a really lame band and I just wear it because it’s comfy! Oh no wait! I can’t know if they are lame because I haven’t even heard them yet!”And then she’d laugh some more, she is that girl you can share the goofiest parts of yourself without looking stupid, she was always smiling and singing and you always saw her face lit up, oozing energy and I just couldn’t help feeling the same way when I was around her even if I was feeling down .While Megan with her blond curly untouched , pony tail styled hair, small eyes, fair skin and coy smile always with her camera at hand and her signature soccer team t-shirt was a bit of a tomboy, she was usually quiet but when you got to know her you just couldn’t help smiling, she is the down-to-earth, humble, adventurous girl who can definitely make you laugh with her silliness and knows what she wants and is up for anything new and let me tell you she definitely knows how to get by with Spanish while Kenzie always proudly accepted she didn’t  speak Spanish she spoke clear spanglish thank you very much. They both had something in common though and I can’t really put a finger on it but I could relate with both of them. We just instantly bonded and I felt so very comfortable around them all the time. Yeah we are girls, so we giggled, we sang, we braided our hair, we took funny pictures, we danced, we talked and played with the kids at the recovery room and much much more. There was this one time, our last night at the mission, when Kenzie and I were heading back to our rooms and we were singing “blinded the light” hand gestures and eyes closed kind of singing( I know everyone has done it ha!) and we were laughing and suddenly the atmosphere changed and Kenzie got quiet and I asked her “What’s wrong?” and she said “ Well,nothing really it’s just sad because I have had the greatest time here and I met you guys and you are just different from my  friends back home and I just feel like I love them but it will never be the same as it is here with you guys”, by the last word we were both already crying and I was telling her how I totally got her .And it is just so unexplainable and amazing when  friendship develops out of nowhere  even though you have had such different lives, different backgrounds, different cultures, different languages. Who knows maybe it was because we were secluded back there or maybe if we lived in the same country it would’ve been a beautiful friendship but that’s how life is and now we all look back and think what an amazing experience it was and at least I know I’ll never forget it even though we are very far away now  and may not always keep in touch.I’ll never forget because it taught me not to be afraid of something new and different because I know sometimes people scare us and new experiences do too and the experiences we are afraid of are exactly the ones we will never forget and will bring you the greatest experiences, in life if you take a chance and open up and get to know the persons who appear in your life you always take a piece of them with you and this forms you this makes you grow. The world has a way of turning our lives into books sometimes and it is always good to know that we humans will always have those little and unforgettable hallmark moments no matter where we come from.