A Leaf, Falling In The Cold Pavement Of A Late Fall Afternoon

It’s never very clear what hurts the most. Leaving or returning. “time, nothing makes it stop,” my dad used to say, usually accompanied by “por eso, póngale, macho,” as he sat down on the couch holding hot coffee in his mug.  He meant to say, “that’s why you have to be active, Leo.” So I grew to honor that saying. What’s more, time itself allowed me to reckon it came from a deeper frustration of having wasted his opportunities in his lifetime, so it turned into a materialized dream in my lifetime. After all, and thanks to him, I had graduated from high school as he never could, I had entered a university program, as he couldn’t either, and I had, in his words, “taken advantage of time.”  I know I made him proud. And I know I made him even prouder when I told him that I had earned that scholarship to study in U.S.A. Boy, was he happy! “Gracias a Dios!” he said as he hugged me wishing to pull angels from heaven if he could, just to kiss their heads too.

Can you picture that? His son would study in the U.S., he’d see snow! He’d be in that place of good labor where you ‘really get well-paid no matter what you do.’ The land of dreams. His enthusiasm was such that he even tried helping with the Visa application, of course, not having used a computer more than the times I can count with my right hand.

01/08/17

Today, I’m crossing the security line of the airport with my family’s eyes on my back, and it feels as if I was standing on a sliding band or a mechanical escalator; simply by not moving, I am going forward. It’s time aging me, telling me to speed it up or I’ll miss the plane. So behind, pieces of a life seem to detach from me: friends, food, familiarity to surroundings, Latin American warmth, and my chest feels the weight of a feather in the feebleness of the air.

I had only done a security circuit of this kind once before, so now I’m racing and stumbling all shaky and cold, shoes on the bind or not?

— Belt!

That too?

— Laptop; here.

— it has to be out of the case, sir! Damned it! I think.

I’m juggling with emotions and actions, trying to get to the other side of the scanner, trying to keep up with the pace of a new life I thought would eventually slow down.

I just finished the security circuit, so I am glad to be tying my shoelaces on a bench at peace. Once I’m done, I look back and there I see it for the first time, I see a gap between my family and myself, a gap that from that point forward would only expand. I wave at them trying not to tell them I’m afraid, trying to tell them here’s a man, a man who is ready to travel alone.

12.19.17

It’s never very clear what hurts the most. Leaving? now staying. And so, as a good son whose life was getting pretty busy in a North American college. I tried keeping him updated through pictures, and sent many a week, so he could see what he made possible for me to see. I meant to imply a sort of ‘gracias’ in each voice note, each media post, each day… There are, nonetheless, so many things I, I guess I couldn’t share. Moments of hesitation, of absence, of loneliness, and doubt… that he, and the rest of the family, will never know for this dream will only live through the ideal I designed through social media.

Some days, for example, the landscape breathes and seems to be unmoved. Right then, one sees something worth sharing across the borders of a nation, takes a picture yet it fails to demonstrate its beauty;

“Dad, this is how snow feels like!” I wished to say, but I could only mean “Dad, this is how snow looks like.” So winter and fall slowly filled me with useless words that ultimately failed to tell him about my everyday life. After all, how to tell him you can hear the wheels of a car rolling up slush in the distance with one ear and with the other, you hear the bare branches turning into void flutes inhaling, exhaling a whisper that would sip underneath your coat?

“Out there…It feels like… when you go inside the freezer to take ice cream out.”

“Slush is like…a copo: the scrapped ice with syrup we buy at the beach when it’s really hot.”

 That’s about how much I managed to compare it. I hope that painted him a good picture.

5/20/18

It’s never very clear what hurts the most. Leaving, staying, now returning. I spent the last year comparing two worlds. Now, as I am landing back, back in Central Valley, San José, I’m surprised I see mountains after a long while of driving through cornfields in the flatness of Illinois. I can feel the humidity of the air putting a kilo or two in my chest. I’m finally passing the scanner calmly because I know that behind that door in the corner awaits an ever-shining sunny life I call home.

Despite my time away, I don’t understand why everyone expects me to summarize a year of experiences in a couple of answers. Yet, they sure seem to demand that. Exactly that! They’re cutting me short with their “okays” and “mmm… ya!” I feel like the stranger on the plane was a better audience than my own family. Where’s the latino warmth? For god’s sake, I’m back. Listen up, look at me in the eyes, stop using your phone! I’ve got pictures, videos, explanations, anecdotes, comparisons, and an indelible face of happiness: you can’t conform with “It was incredible! You had to be there” You can’t… do that. You can’t…

I can’t…

Listen! …

The landscape isn’t breathing anymore; there is too much noise around me. I know you think I’d like to talk about other people over coffee, but I don’t anymore. It’s different. I don’t gossip like that. I want to tell you how I wrote poems and stories in creative writing class. I want to go to my friends’ and have a drink or two with them without it being looked upon as it is in this home country. You don’t understand that it is ok to want to be alone for a while? I’m not miserable in my loneliness, not anymore.

So where is it? Where’s the freedom I tasted in North America, the one I apparently, exchanged with the weight of humidity and the surrounding of mountains that won’t let me fly out leaving feathers in the air as I majestically soar the heavens, creating, living and expanding the way Walt Whitman taught me to. I can’t make a song of myself like this. Where is home?

Today

It’s never clear what hurts the most, leaving, staying, returning. Now …? Adapting…

It’s true, nothing makes time stop. So I learned to see in this time that even memories could become untold, then, dusty, then personal and be silent, like the bleak winter – trapped- in the warmth of an insulated heart. Today, I am slowly making my way to bed, recounting the process, watching the flashback slide show, a feeble melody saying, ‘flying, going, learning, adjusting, living, returning, adjusting, breaking, amending, comparing, forgetting...’ There…goes a leaf, falling in the cold pavement of a late fall afternoon after leaving and returning. What a dream!