Since the start of this year, I have been slowly writing about my lineage thanks to Dr. Alexis’s Pauline Gumbs Repetition is Sacred practice and more recently I have been focusing on the lineage of my paternal Grandmother. Her line of people was and has been much of mystery to me thanks to a combo of factors including my chosen estrangement from my father but there are also inherited silences, rumors, speculations. I have been learning the names of her people and it’s exciting. I have been able to go back to the 1500s in Puerto Rico across all my bloodlines and now I fill in the gaps , pick the fruit off the family tree and open it up and poke around at all the fleshy bits which also means remembering my own relationship to the island through her.
I witnessed my father’s shame juxtaposed against Abuela Lila’s pride. I learned that for some the goal was getting out and going back , physically , was a reminder of what you could have been. I learned that for others, witnessing the getting out - the success-meant a sacrifice- meant distance- disdain even , that got grounded up into small pieces- got blended into the masa of life.
And where did that leave me? I wanted nothing more than to rock in the rocking chair and leaf through the thick JC Penny Catalog and pick from each page things that I would buy for my house if I had unlimited access to money. I wanted nothing more than to eat alcapurrias and limber de coco and be allowed to sleep in her bed because it was one of those craftmatic adjustable beds that were advertised on tv.
That place was where the Three Kings would leave under my bed Garfield panties with funny sayings that I know she didn’t get , like, “Great Balls of Fire”. The television was never on - that was a tool of the devil and I don’t ever remember hearing music but life in that space, behind the patio gates, was warm and safe and slow and smelled like frituras.
I wish I knew how to appreciate that space then. I wish I had had more power to push back against my father’s shame and embarrassment and tell him - this is great - what the fuck are your rolling your eyes at?
This calls me to go back to my child space in Rio Piedras - a place where what you have and where you are is what is. There doesn’t need to be comparison or deeming of one better than the other. There is radical acceptance and I want to unlearn thinking that there is always something better- that leaving is what equates success. Can’t success also mean staying?
" I want to unlearn thinking that there is always something better- that leaving is what equates success. Can’t success also mean staying? " Yes, that hits hard.
Also, you I can never get enough of people wearing shirts with sayings that they don't understand. It's the greatest
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