Somehow going "home for vacation" sounds like an oxymoron, but when "home" is Puerto Rico you would agree it can be a vacation. When I say I went home, I don't really mean my old house – that’s rented now. It is my hometown that feels like home to me. I took a few days off and enjoyed the company of family, friends and the sights and sounds of the island.
I can tell you, La Sonora Ponceña sounds best at a "Fiesta Patronal" (http://welcome.topuertorico.org/culture/festi.shtml). If you've been to a Puerto Rican festival in the US, you’ve only experienced an attempt to recreate what Puerto Rican's have celebrated every year in every town for decades. Oddly enough, missing from the festivities were the Puerto Rican flags, predominant at US Puerto Rican Festivals (a topic for another entry, but feel free to comment if you have an opinion or observation on this).
There is something to be said about taste too. Why is it that "home" has a taste of its own and it’s rarely recreated successfully abroad? Those that have visited recently can attest that Puerto Rico is infested with fast-food restaurants. So homesick visitors like me find comfort in the small "cafetines" along "la plaza de recreo."
It was a different kind of sight seeing for me, more like a reflection of my past. On this trip, I was also able to ride by my old elementary school and visit the candy store we walked to when I was a child. The old neighborhood was modernized; big concrete homes replaced the zinc-roofed, wooden ones.
It's funny how relatives still see me as the same person I was when I left over twenty years ago. No one cares where I've traveled, what I've accomplished or who I've met during all this time in Boston. I'm still, "la hija de Ernesto y Pascuala." But my life seems light years away from where I left. I'm grateful to have lived in both worlds. One is full of traditions and the other full of opportunities.
Although nostalgic, I don’t see myself moving back to the small town I grew up in. Don't get me wrong, the question “why am I here” comes up every winter. I've settled here. Home has two meanings for me now. One home has roots in the warm breeze of a Caribbean country and the other has a window to a multi-ethnic world, full with new experiences every day.
So when I wrote about "losing interest in myself" in my previous blog, it didn’t mean that my calendar was missing activity. Maybe it is time for the person I’ve become to connect with the person I once was with sand under my feet and salt in my hair.
I like to hear from the readers of this blog about your home. Where is home and how do you know you're there?
About Me
- Diary of a Boricua
- Boston, MA, United States
- I'm an inquisitive Puerto Rican that enjoys the benefits of two cultures. I appreciate life's little pleasures and I'm happy with just the necessities to live. Those that know me well, know that I'm full of contradictions... Persistence is one of my best qualities.
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2 comments:
From my perspective, home is a variety of rose colored places where my mind has created images of each perfect moment. When I lived in Miami, home to me was Boston -- my childhood, old friends, 1st love, and a place of many 1sts :). Now that I live in Brookline, home to me is my mother's house in JP--Cafe con leche, a reflection of a youthful me, and an old life.
I have never considered Puerto Rico my home. I was born there but left the island when I was 5 yet, oddly enough, I consider myself a Puerto Rican (another blog topic ). My siblings on the other hand, have found memories of their life’s there and often refer to it as home. I have lived many places but, when embracing a memory of happiness, that memory lays claim to what at that precise moment I call home – my family, friends, work and life.
Ah! Yes the so important "Coming Home" concept (at least for me it is very important as well). As another inmigrant or nomad I battle this conflict too. I am happy at my home (you know the one that my bank owns and that I kindly sleep in and pay a huge monthly fee with the 30 yr. term loan that I was entitled because of my "Great" credit rating, and one day I will own it. When it needs to be remodeled and I'm to old and broke) But I do also missed "my home", the country that I was born and raised, the tiny apartment I grew up, the neighbors, friends, food, sounds and smells. The country I had to leave because of all the corruption and lack of opportunities for those who do not have any lineage (like me) and are creatives dreaming with the entrepreneurial dream. I remeber the first time I want back after several years of being away for a while, that feeling has not changed, every time I got back. Funny for many years I went back often for work on productions and I did not had a chance to enjoy it because it was a business trip. So I left my new home to go to my (old) home but because I was working it was not quite home. Sounds complicated? Well if you are a wierd cat like me, you might understand that I need my enviroment to feel homey, every where I go it needs to feel like "my home" from the days I used to sleep on the floor while touring with a band till today, I carry a bunch of chachkies to feel there. When I get to a hotel room, the first thing I do is unpack and make it mine. When in production I spread my chachkies in the room till it feels mine (yes I'm weird) and it usually takes a few days for the chamber maid to realize that I need my toiletries in a specific way, not her way but my way.
Now back to going home, in the early years it was nostalgic, then it hurt because a lot of people I came across will ask me "where are you from?" "You look Puerto Rican" (go ahead laugh) Nothing wrong being some one else, I loved being a "Camaleon" of sorts, but I'm far from being some one else but me. But it was obvious that I was not behaving and or talking like them... Now a days I am more comfortable with that. And I agree it's amazing going "home" that marked us so deeply. A month ago I went back and I was in such a hungry need of my land that I got a huge gorgeous tattoo in my arm of the Aztec Calendar. How could you resist? On of my old buddies own the store, his guy is one of the top tattooers and I needed a shot of my roots. So four and a half hours latter I got a piece of home in my arm. As I joked, now I have the strength of the aztec goods in my arm. So home is where you carry it, where you miss it and back where ever you lie at night.
They all keep evolving for good of for bad, but you are right, nothing beats a live music on the place it was born, with the smells and people that surround it in the first place.
Welcome home and don't worry, next vacation your home awaits for you ;-)
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