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12/26/05

When I feel too down for life I tune up Michelle Branch on my stereo or Eminem or Mandy Moore or the Backstreet Boys and sing the blues away. Michelle Branch is most soothing though because she never fails to make me feel ok.

I haven't been home for like three years now. I miss the room I used to sleep in...the old stuff toys. Back home I used to take off dust from the little library I and my sisters built on a weekly basis.

It was back home where I used to stay up late till the wee hours of the morning, couched and watching late night movies or writing to my heart's content.

Those afternoons are long gone when Daddy would cozy up and sit in his favorite place , smoking a cigarette before calling for me for his usual "Thank You" and a smile. That thank you meant a cup of black coffee. It was like a secret code that we shared. I miss Daddy even though I am not Daddy's girl, because that would be our eldest.

In the rare events that my mother and I were ever close, I miss her too and her serenity and vulnerability. I long for another time when I could run out to do errands for her. I want to experience back the usual. I want to cook and wash clothes for the family. I want to clean the house again until all of it is rearranged, dusted and my body on the verge of breaking into pieces.

Whenever summer heats up, I recall how I'd go around the neighborhood with my cousins to play at the plaza and rush for a swim at the Puente Colgante where we jump from a really tall acacia tree into the deep river, shouting "Shaider!" oh, we had so much fun then!

I also miss talking freely with my elder brother John on the topics of love. I don't know, but we are so comfortable with conversations like we are best friends. I am closer to him than my sisters. We look so damn alike that at times we are taken for as twins. This gives me the freaks of ever thinking to sport that boy-cut again. At that one time I ever had the nerve to do so, his girlfriend mistook me for him from a distance! Crazy.

And the Witches. Pam, Theren and Jen equals the Power of 3. I laugh whenever I think how we can be so cruel with the girls in our brothers' lives. How we project and bag the thrones of the Ice Princesses and Snobs to the nth power.

Now, perhaps, he is not my most favorite person in the family. And, perhaps, we might have too many bad encounters when we were younger, but I do smile at the thought of Epifanio Jr.,and his chickens and pigs. He is one hell of an Einstein who is too damned lazy to realize it. Ironically, though, he is every bit the poet I am.

And, of course, the two little darling boys who are not too little these days. There's Oliver, my pet sibling in our brood. My inspiration and strength. The beloved kid bro who used to sleep in one bed with me, has grown in my absence, who, according to stories told, is already much taller than I am and looks promising with dancing or a band. Oliver is so good with the guitar and sings his heart out all the time.

Now Elias Felix. Who will not be endeared by this kid? The youngest in a brood of seven, who, up until this time still runs to our mother for babying. That and all of fifteen years old! He eats a lot of junk food --- so fond of it --- and loves to babysit at the neighbors. He stands out from the three other boys because he got the looks of the great grandfather Zoilo on my mom's side who is Spanish by bloodline. Elias Felix has tons of admirers that he abhors. Pam fondly relates that he loses ground when teased with his "German Mama".

Ah! All these for missing home. The opportunity is so dang elusive. Yet I long for the day until i get to go back to the land where i was born and raised. So that I can again enjoy the usual life I had there.

"Home is where the heart is". Yes. this is so true and more so. Indeed there is no place like it!

Bienvenidos!

Copyright ©2005 Theren Alexander