The things I do for friends

So I've been tagged...apparently there's some type of blog "game" I'm unfamiliar with that my bro' down in the A wants me to play. Since I love him dearly and recognize I've been neglecting my blog (I am embarassed to say that it's been more than two weeks since I've written) I've taken up the challenge since I found the topic funny and interesting enough to keep myself and whoever reads this amused. The topic is "Five Weird Habits" and so I'm sharing what my own weird (or as I prefer to call them eccentric) habits and idiosyncrasies are. No judgements here people:

1) I eat perogies (for those that don't know, these are Polish potato pockets that you boil and fry in butter) by cutting off the outter layer first, eating the potato inside second, and then eating the outter layer and pocket itself. I know it sounds really gross, but in my mind it makes sense.

2) I can't stand seeing the outter rim of a sink covered with water so I am constantly wiping down my kitchen and bathroom sinks dry.

3) I rub my feet together like a cricket when I can't fall asleep. It keeps me warm and knocks me out in a hot second.

4) I'm obsessed with grooming my eyebrows. I constantly tweeze them, no matter how much time I do or don't have.

5) I constantly crack my knuckles even though I am really scared of developing arthritis (is that even true?)

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.

"Allow me to reintroduce myself..."

Hola! My name is Jessy and I'm a 28-year-old U.S. Latina (Puerto Rican to be exact) living, loving and learning in NYC (Brooklyn!). I'm a journalist/editor/poet/truth seeker/media-mogual-in-training. *Additional slashes will be added when I've taken on other skills* I've been writing since I was in the single digits and decided at 10 this is what I would do when I "grew up." So while I don't feel completely grown, I've been pursuing my love of words ever since.

I'm an intense and passionate person so I don't believe in doing anything half-ass, but much to my surprise, although I technically started this blog back in June 2005, this is my first time posting anything. So seven months and one new year later I'm finally sitting down to get things going. That's the great thing about holidays, birthdays, life-changing experiences, it's God's way of nudging you into action, giving you another opportunity to do something--anything--one more time.

So what took me so long?

I hesitated in revealing my thoughts out of fear (I am an artiste after all and am sensitive to all my creations. Why put myself out there for public consumption?), laziness (I'm a big napper especially on cold days), and procrastination (I'm always running around doing something so there's always a reason to not do something else). But without risk there is no gain. If I want to change the world and make people think, what better way than using a free-forum that technology has provided me with? So here I am...Jan. 2, 2006 finally getting started.

What you'll find on here are my thoughts, opinions, rantings, ravings, and musings about the world as well as my little corner of it. FYI...I have the habit of code switching (or speaking Spanglish as some call it) so I'll do my best to translate where I can. But like the movie, nuances are lost in translation, so you won't always get what I'm saying. Sorry!

And in case you're curious about the name of my spot...that's pretty easy to explain.

Although I was born and raised in the states, I've always hungered for knowledge about my background and history. All I heard growing up from my Dad was that I should never forget where I come from (and no he wasn't talking about the suburbs of Long Island where we lived) but rather my Puerto Rican culture, heritage and ancestory. But I didn't always know what that meant. As a kid, being Puerto Rican was the rice and beans my Mom cooked, the salsa music that was always blaring out of our stereo system and the Spanish language that I grew to associate with home, love and familia. But growing up in a predominately African-American community, I knew that I was different. So I started asking my family questions and researching on my own what "being Puerto Rican" was all about. One of my many discoveries was our history of resistance and the struggle of Puerto Rican nationalists who fought to gain the island's independence from U.S. colonial rule. One of those people was Lolita Lebron, a woman who who was part of the struggle and who led an armed attack on the U.S. Congress in 1954. I read the transcript of a letter that was found in her purse after the failed attack and upon her arrest. I viewed it as her "love letter" to the world. To honor her and the respect I have for her tenacity and valor, I titled this blog after her and the idea that this, in manyways, is my love letter to the world.

With that I bid farewell. Until next time...