confessions of a reformed tourist
The thing about being young is that you can’t imagine forgetting.
You can’t imagine that you won’t remember the name of that Italian movie, the one that takes place right after the war, the one where soldiers who aren’t supposed to be soldiers are slogging through a marsh, not knowing who they’re supposed to shoot because [...]
He’d had a passport but it got wet – ruined – in the hurricane. The day of the storm he’d gotten home and found the contents of his house afloat and the dog perched atop the refrigerator. Bean’s father – though he was not yet Bean’s father, had not yet even laid eyes on Bean’s [...]
His after work ritual began as soon as he walked in the door, when he’d sit down on the chair in the verandah that looked like wicker but actually was made of fiberglass.
He’d slide his fingers under the laces of his sneakers, which were invariably sparkling bright, white and clean. Slowly, deliberately, he’d pull on [...]
This one time Bean and I were hanging out at the boatyard and he took off all his clothes (as nakedly) so I sprayed him down with a hose because it was hot and he was covered in salt from the ocean but then he got hold of the hose and turned it me.
And some [...]
Do you remember when I was 16 and going to Hawaii? You told me about the Honolulu Santiagos, your cousins who left Puerto Rico as teens, like you did. Except they went to Hawaii instead of New York. (They’d heard, you said, about the pineapple.) You wanted me to look them up.
But Grandpa, I countered, [...]
As long as I can remember, my dad has gone through “phases”. Like a kid who has just discovered baseball cards. He goes out and collects every single thing he can about baseball cards. These things he collects are both concrete (the cards themselves) and abstract (biographical details and stats and other such ephemera). And [...]
Make an entrance. Use your words. Take that trip. Forget fear. Love hard. Swim with dolphins. Hold your own hand. Hold on. Let go. Slide.
My sidebar mysteriously jumbied itself the other day. Which is probably yet more proof that Benadryl and CSS do not mix.
Anyhoo. The content of my invisible sidebar, not including the widgets that are built into my WordPress theme, is now available on its own page. It will live there until I get around to sorting [...]
“You may call me Bean or Honey. And I will call you María.”
He spoke those words to me yesterday, in response to my saying, “Joaquín! Don’t climb on the kitchen table, please!”
A few hours later he told me that he and his grandmother went for a walk to the pond. I asked, “Oh, you [...]
Well, [the face] doesn’t [require different products than the rest of the skin]. Nor do you need eye cream. Or decolletage cream. You could just slather your whole self in Vaseline and call it a day. You can use Oxy pads on your face and your feet. You don’t need any of those thousands of [...]