Four Walls

"It's not the four walls, but the people in them that made this home."

It was a toast, a prayer, a few words that Willo, my oldest brother, said during an emotional and final, holiday meal in our childhood home. After 30+ years in the same place my parents had decided to retire to Florida. They were trading New York's bitterly cold winters, a declining neighborhood and a small house, for cumulous clouds, palm trees and a palace with more space and land than they knew what to do with.

For the longest time, I'd been hoping they'd move...not because I wanted to be far away from them but because I wanted to see them, for once, do something for themselves, not just for us, their kids.

But when it came down to it, I was beyond emotional. The place where I'd spent my entire life was now owned by another family. I couldn't look anywhere in a single room and not think of every moment of my life there. It felt like there was an 8mm movie of my childhood playing in my head. These are just a few snapshots of what was flashing through:

*The living room wrestling matches with my brothers that I never won

*Walking up the driveway to the side door after school and being greeted by the scent of arroz con habichuelas

*Fleeing up and down the plastic covered staircase that led to my bedroom in anger/jubilation/sadness/boredom

*Locking myself in the bathroom (the only quiet place in my house to this day) to talk on the phone for hours at a time

*Sitting at my kitchen table talking, eating, drinking with my mother/best friend/brother/father

*Primping for dates and first kisses in front of the mirror in my bedroom

*Watching my mother roll a coco on the floor to get rid of bad spirits and then give la casa una limpieza with incense, prayers and candles

*The corner of our doorway that had a glass of water held upside down on a plate. (Context: mi mami is an old school puertoriquena who is superstitious like a mugh and who has this amazing intuitiveness that I feel fortunate to have inherited)

*My parents bedroom where I slept until I was 11 years old. It was a refuge where I often fled to when I was sick, menstrual or in need of emotional solitude or support.

*The basement which served as a defacto study during high school, which also hosted a myriad of familial celebrations from surprise birthday parties to holiday shindigs.

*Spending just about every Saturday dusting, vacuuming and straightening up la sala because I wouldn't be allowed to do anything or go anywhere until I did.

*My brother's bedrooms where I spent hours listening to them talk (I am the youngest so I was just happy that I was allowed inside and not being kicked out), spin records, hatch plans or just simply hang out.

This list of memories is endless--the point is that my parents, who migrated from Puerto Rico as kids, knew inherently that they wanted more for their own kid's childhoods. Dad grew up in a 1 bedroom Brooklyn apartment with 5 brothers and his parents and spent the better part of his adult life trying to recreate the sugarcane fields of his ninez. Mami had spent part of her own childhood in the mountains of Fajardo and the remainder living with sisters, aunts and cousins when abuela could finally afford for her to move to NY. I can only imagine and assume that having her own room was an idea that didn't become real until she got married. So for that reason my little house on a wide street in Long Island is always going to be a treasure. No matter if the heating sucked because the pipes were old and we used the stove to warm the first floor or if its lack of ventilation made it an oven in the summer forcing us all to sleep in basement sometimes or bunched up in Mom and Dad's room. It was home, my home because of the care my parents put into making it one. So home, because of them, is wherever they are.