Missing things you never had

I lay in my bed, listening to the night sounds. It seems my neighbor kids are running a marathon up the stairs, somebody honks a horn. My dog growls at the night. I listen to my breathing…The smoke alarm tells me again I need to change the battery. The boiler starts again. I drum my fingers at my forehead. Rho is always telling me I need to describe better, with description I can reach those 50000 words. I sneeze. Scratch one side of my head. I wonder. My toes are numb. I have to describe better, she says. My room is blue, like the sky in my country. The sky in here is gray. I hanged curtains a couple of months ago they don’t block the sunlight completely, that is the best alarm in the world. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and I still don’t know if I’m going to a couple of invitations I received. Looking back I don’t remember a single Thanksgiving Day with my mom and dad. I know they celebrated it because I have a picture of my dad pointing to a turkey with a knife in his hand. He looks happy, at least in the picture. I wonder if he is having turkey tomorrow or if he is grateful for his life. Oh, I just remembered, he is a Jehovah Witness now so he doesn’t celebrate the Holidays. I’m sure my mom is having turkey at lunch. Her husband likes to cook so she will only wash the dishes. My relationship with her is kind of stranded but I remember with kindness the last time I saw her. She cooked pork chops for me and she was very proud I enjoyed them. What is this I’m feeling right now?…Yes is a very recurrent nostalgia, missing those things that I never had.

Longing

I miss the salty smell of the sea. I miss going with my father to watch action movies I don't care about but go to see anyway for the sake of sharing with him. I miss the rice with corn that my Aunt Sara Awilda cooks. I miss a Saturday movie at Fine Arts and buying a chocolate chip cookie at the jewish pharmacy. I miss walking at el Paseo de Diego with all the shops where you can buy from a cell phone to a fake Coach hand bag. I miss that longing of running towards something unreachable.

Swimming with Jaws

My father never considered the rating of an R movie an obstacle for me to watch it. I was around eight and I was sitting in a theater watching Jason cut some heads and impale a couple of teenagers in bed. Blood and violence never scared me. So when my father took me to watch Jaws we never thought it will impact me but it did. I’m still scared of the heart beat when the shark is about to attack. I remember being awake in bed, listening to the water pipes, thinking Jaws was going to come inside the pipes and eat me. But I had a defense plan, when Jaws will break the pipes I would yell to the top of my lungs. Then my mother and father will come to save me. I would push my mom to Jaws’s mouth to distract him and then I would run and go to a safe place with my dad. I’m conscious my therapist would enjoy to make something out about my relationship with my mother. After Jaws, I was never able to look at the beach without thinking about that shark waiting to eat people. I never felt comfortable enough to learn to swim. And that in the place a grew up is a sacrilege. I grew up in Isabela, Puerto Rico, a place where the beach was less than 15 minutes away. Jobos, a beach known because of surfing tournaments, was one of my father favorites. My brothers learn to swim unless me. My father never taught me to swim, maybe because I will get kind of hysterical each time I saw a wave and couldn’t stand water in my face. So I never learned. I enjoy kayaking and this past summer bought one and people get shocked when I tell them I don’t know how to swim. I guess that is one of the things you cannot teach yourself to do.