I often dismiss holidays, as my experiences commencing two years ago included either early lunches with my aunt or remaining alone in my dorm for the rest of the weekend while my housemates spent it with their families. This is a kind of loneliness people are experiencing more than ever due to Hurricane María, as families left to start what would be considered a better life for their children and/or themselves. I, on the other hand, have experienced this emptiness since 2016, seeing my family occasionally through FaceTime while sharing vague feelings and experiencing a vast loneliness despite the closeness of my dear aunt. Holidays have never truly been important for me, but for a woman who’s changed me for the better and not being able to share a card or a hug on a day where mothers are put on a pedestal, is utterly heartbreaking for me. This feeling is unbearable, as the members who once annoyed you to bits exist virtually and through airport terminals. But what only airport terminals know is the discontent and bitterness knowing I have to come back to an empty island.
My family, including my mother, reside in the middle of a Texan city that’s constantly “Keeping It Weird.” What’s weirder is the distance that separates us all, for in my mind 2,090 miles is nothing. That nothing includes one layover and an early breakfast at the McDonald’s next to the terminal to Austin in Houston. She’s coined the “one day you’ll miss me bitching at you” and the very unique “you’ll miss my snoring in the middle of the night when your older.” Never would I have thought the getting older part was something I’d have to experience at 20, having been accustomed to seeing them every day as a part of my college experience considering the fact that everybody goes home for the weekend. Home has become my phone, and that’s where I guard them.
To a mother who’s roughly 2,090 miles away, I can’t express the content I feel for you all moving on to live a life better than the one you knew here for so many years. Your often-bland food impacted me after school and college drastically, but we all know papi is a better cook. To a mother who’s punished me, but not as severely as others, I thank you, for my idiotic-ass self would still be wandering around aimlessly with no high-hopes into what could possibly come out of life. To a friend who took me to an alien “sky” watch, there’ll be no card this year, but I hope the look on my face when I go back to a home recently created for me will mend for that. To a mother who shares “alien footage” and has a crystal/pendulum collection a hipster would be utterly jealous of. To my dearest aunt who serves as a second mother, there are no words to describe how thankful I am to have a physical mother-figure on the island. To a mother who’s 2,090 miles away, I thank your punishments, existence, love, care, and encouragement.
Read this, mami, and you’ll see that all this time of me growing as a better person were worth it, and I can only hope you think of it as improvement as well. Mami, there’s no resentment in leaving, as things only got better once you started anew in a town that fired me after three-days for being unable to pack popcorn quickly enough.
(It’s not photoshop, I swear. Circa 1978)
To mami, and all the other mothers whose children can’t be physically present with this year due to families leaving to start a better life, we love you.