People Make Places

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. ~Katherine Mansfield

My life thus far has been rich with places that have shaped the way it has played out. The pen with which I have written my story has mothered several locations, all of which have inhabited the halls of my memory since I was a small child. However, of all these places, perhaps one of the most important is my grandparents’ house. It’s second only to my house, but that would be too boring to center an essay on.

My grandparents’ house is in Las Cumbres, on the outskirts of Panama City, isolated atop a hill, with a beautiful blanket of emerald spreading around it for acres. The house itself is very antique looking. It’s painted a monotone sand color outside, the dull red tiles of the roof being the only other color visible at first sight. However, as one walks through the small gate leading into the porch, the house comes to life with vibrant hues. The patio’s floor is made of crimson colored tiles, and the main wall, which has the front door on it, is light brown. The stairs leading from the porch to the entrance are grey marble. To the side there is a small path that leads to the fenced area where they keep the many parrots, dogs, and, at one time, even toucans. Everything inside gives a sense of home; from the small marble statues my grandmother keeps in the living room to the everlasting smell of consistently good food wafting from the bright yellow kitchen. This is the house where I spent a large part of my childhood and where, even now, I can become a child again as soon as I walk through the door.

I guess this house was my house for a time, however short it might’ve been. When my parents had their first child, my sister, already two years into their marriage, they decided they needed a new place to live. They were young, happy, and, as with many newlyweds, broke. This, coupled with what they felt was an increasing sense of insecurity that had settled over the city in the aftermath of the American invasion, prompted them to kindly ask my mother’s parents if they would mind them living there for a while. “A while” slowly became four years and, before anyone knew it, yours truly had been born. I only lived there for a little less than a year before my parents moved us back to the city. However, we made it a tradition to go back to the house in Las Cumbres as much as we could.

As a child, this place was the huge backyard that my apartment building lacked. The grass, dirt, trees, hills, and rivers that surrounded the house were the elements of many stories I will be sure to tell my children. At this house was where I first learned to ride a bike and, after being tricked into speeding down a hill that had a dangerous ditch at the bottom, not to trust either of my sisters. It was also where I learned what it felt like to be stung by more than ten bees on the head, where I first saw a crocodile, where going every Christmas Day taught me what the holiday was really about, and where I expanded my knowledge on many other things. However, all these things pale in comparison to the greatest lesson I learned in this place: how important family is.

Whenever there was an event worth celebrating everyone would go to Las Cumbres. At barbecues the old would sit, drinking wine, telling old stories, and, when they had emptied the bottles, singing old Mexican songs. At the same time, the young would run around pushing and shoving each other until either a cousin crying or my mother shouting at them would put a stop to the horseplay. Meanwhile, those who were teenagers, or as they liked to think of it, “too cool for all that,” would sit inside and watch T.V. or type away at a computer. In this house I learned that family is always there, no matter what. This I came to see as I got older, and, consequentially, so did many of my great uncles and aunts. As they were all close to the same age, what my mother and I sadly referred to as the “domino effect” began to occur, and, after the first one passed away, a large part of them followed. I saw that, although they were sad times, everyone would still go to Las Cumbres after the funeral, and, after a couple more bottles of wine and some reminiscing, most would be smiling and laughing again, celebrating life instead of mourning death.

However, most important than any of the things said so far, the one thing that stuck with me the most about the house in Las Cumbres wasn’t the house itself. No, instead it was the people who inhabited it: my grandmother, always caring enough to cook anything we wanted, even after she got sick and couldn’t eat normally herself; my grandfather, who went from rocking us on his lap when we were toddlers, to giving us advice on school when we became teenagers, to discussing golf with his son-in-law; and my uncle, building puzzles with us, teaching us how to properly take care of dogs, and being the best Godfather I could’ve asked for. All these people taught me that, no matter what, family comes second only to God, and that you can never love someone too much.

Through all my experiences in this house I learned one thing. What makes a place special isn’t the place itself. It isn’t the beauty of a house that makes it important to us; it isn’t the experiences that took place there that makes the location live on in our hearts. No, instead it is the people that these places represent that make them so special. It’s what we all leave behind that echoes in our mind. It’s the shreds of ourselves, the imprints of memory we leave upon the walls that make these places worth remembering. The truth is simple, people make a place what it is, not the other way around, and I know that no matter what happens to that house in Las Cumbres, even if it’s remodeled a thousand times, sold, or torn down, my memories of it will remain intact, and, thus, it will exist forever.

Everything Will Be Alright

I’m dead. I can no longer feel my body. My soul has lost all its color. Instead of a being, I am nothing. Nothing but a whirlwind of sadness. Nothing but a lost essence becoming part of a deep, dark void. Somewhere buried inside what I used to call my mind, both Erinn Magee’s and Patty Montoya’s written words echo. Their messages float and intertwine with loose strands of thought “It can’t be…” “Not again…”As someone knocks on my door, the web strung across my conscious ebbs away and I’m thrown back into the world I seem to have left for a few seconds.

How did I get to this place? To figure that out one must journey back: years back, before the worry of death existed. All the way back to what almost seems (forgive the cliché) a land before time. Before I came to Balboa Academy, I attended a school called Colegio Real de Panama. In this school I made many friends. I still have the privilege of knowing most of them. A few I haven’t seen for a while, but remain good companions. And others I will probably never see again, since they’ve moved away. One of them, a boy by the name of Piero Martinez, went to a place I truly can’t follow.

I know I’ve written about this personal experience before, but recent events have forced me to revisit this piece of memory. Current circumstances have forced me to think back on this event I’d hoped I could forget. I was young when it happened. I don’t remember how young exactly. I do remember that day I was in the car with my dad and he was driving me back home from school. I sat in the backseat, my mind a compendium of imagined tales played out by the loyal characters that were the Power Ranger toys I clutched in my palms, and my father sat at the wheel, his hand hanging out the open window, holding a cigarette. I remember that the tip left an ominous trail of smoke behind that I could see out the glass beside me. It’s funny how I always remember the little, unimportant details when horrible things happen, but never the important aspects of the story: like perhaps, how old I was.

We arrived home and, as we were entering the elevator that would dutifully take us to the sixth floor, I remembered an important issue.

“You promised we’d stop by McDonalds this time!” The cry of indignation left my lips as if I was fervently accusing a man at a full-fledged trial, complete with an incompetent judge and a stubborn jury.

“I know, Champ, but you’re mom told me to bring you straight home. The three of us need to talk about something very important.”

“More important than nuggets?!” I inquired with an expression that hinted there was no such thing. A half-pitying, half-amused smile appeared on my father’s face. A few floors before arriving at our destination my father crouched and hugged me. The powerful smell of Marlboro smoke and Spray-On Speed Stick invaded my nostrils, but there was too much emotion in that hug for me to interrupt it, even if I had to endure the uncomfortable scent. As his arms released my tiny frame, he leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Everything will be alright. No matter what.”

Back in my room, someone is still knocking on my door, and my dad’s phrase claws its way back from a distant past and mingles with Ms. Magee’s and Patty’s as well. As the words drift across the sea of my conscious I believe them less every time. I stare blankly at the screen of my computer, reality’s waves crashing over the unprotected shore of my mind. I lift my hand to my cheek but I feel no tears. It could be because my fingers feel numb, but I doubt it. It’s probably because, as of this moment, there are no tears left. Only heartbreak.

As a younger me stepped over the threshold of the kitchen door I spotted my mother sitting at the table. The minute I saw her I could tell she’d been crying. With one last attempt at wiping the tears with her sleeve, she walked over and leaned down to kiss my cheek. She then sat me down at the table and took a seat as well, leaving my father to stand by her side, with his right hand planted on the wall behind her and his other making a fist.

“Am I in trouble…?” I asked nervously. At this my mom’s eyes swelled up; she made a feeble attempt at a reassuring smile.

“No honey. Something bad has happened. It’s Piero.” And with that my mother told me a story that I’d never forget. My friend had been playing with his brother and a cousin with what they thought was a toy gun. It turned out it was actually a real gun the owner of the house kept for protection. Someone pushed someone, a finger pulled the trigger, a shot was fired, and my friend’s lifeless body thumped down onto the floor, the only new addition to his face a bloody bullet hole.

I can’t remember how long I cried. I do remember there were days when I’d sob myself to sleep. I felt that the pool of terror and unreality into which I had plunged the moment my mom had told me of Piero’s fate was vast and deep, and I was now drowning. With time, I learned that Piero went to a better place. But this didn’t ease the pain. Still, it made the scar less visible both to others and to myself.

Now, I sit in the dormitory of Columbia University’s High School Program gazing at two new messages that now embellish my otherwise eventless Facebook Inbox. One is from my former history teacher and the other is from Patty Montoya, sister to another friend I made much later in life.

A few years after leaving Panama for his native country Colombia, Pablo Montoya became ill with leukemia. I soon learned he was fighting it with all his might. At school we all supported him and cheered him on. Then the wonderful news came: Pablo, the friend I had feared so much would die, leaving me with another bitter batch of childhood memories to mourn over, seemed to be getting better. He seemed to have beaten the silent killer, and he was even planning to visit Panama.

I read Patty and Erinn’s words over and over, making sure I didn’t miss something that might change their meaning to a less world-shattering one. But nothing changes. The words are the same. Pablo’s dead and there’s nothing I can do about this one either. This it the second time I have to ask myself if I’m dreaming. The second time that I’m mad at God. The second time I’ve died along with my friend. Every passing second I find my father’s words harder and harder to believe, “Everything will be alright…” Everything will not be all right, not this time.

This is what it’s like to be Rafael Mendez right now. My heart has stopped beating. I no longer feel. I remember joy, I remember anger, and I remember excitement. I remember what these and many other emotions feel like, but I don’t feel them anymore. I’m not designed too. All that fills me up is pain. Pain and sadness. Despair clogs my lungs. I can’t breathe. But it’s all right; I don’t need to breathe to cry. I don’t need to breathe to bleed inside. I don’t need to breathe to punch the walls of my room. I don’t need to breathe to dig my nails into my palms. I don’t need to breathe to scream.

Children of Ink

I’m sixteen years old, yet I was born merely twelve years ago. When I tell people this they look at me strangely, the belief that I might me be crazy drawn clearly across their faces. To reassure you, I am perfectly sane. I simply mean that the date of my physical birth is not nearly as important to me as the day I came alive through the one passion that would consume the rest of my life. When I was four, as a punishment, my dad gave me a notebook. I was to use it as a checklist, so he could make sure I did my homework. Needless to say, I wasn’t as interested in academic responsibility as I was in toys, games, and other childhood thrills. I simply couldn’t find any reason for memorizing words that stood for objects, places, people, and ideas if I couldn’t express how I felt about them. Then, slowly but surely, through the ideas that began spilling out from the tip of my pen, I learned that these words could be used as a mirror for my feelings. I learned they could reflect the insides of my mind so that other people could visualize everything I felt and thought.

Next thing I knew I was using this notebook to finish my first short story--now I look back and laugh because it was a bad rip-off of the Legend of Zorro--and from that moment on I knew I had found where my soul truly belonged. It didn’t belong inside my body, but hidden in the words that inhabited the endless pages of notebook paper carelessly strewn across my desk. It’s purpose was not to be buried deep within me, but to be transferred onto sheets and passed around like a public object, so those who read my words could judge and tell me what was wrong and what was right. My soul was to be my passion, the act of writing barely a formality through which I could achieve its expression.

Over the years I have realized writing is almost a different language for me. I communicate better through it than I do through speech. The written word has become the dialect in which my thoughts and feelings communicate with each other. This simple way of expressing myself has helped me cope with some hard times. The first time I wrote something to help me and not just for fun of it was after one of my best friends passed away, when I was a small child. My friend had been playing a childish game of cops and robbers with his brother and a couple of friends with what they thought was a toy gun. It turned out it wasn’t and a shot was fired. Next thing I knew my friend was dead. Many people tried to comfort me. The only two friends that succeeded were my pen and my pad.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. Most of all, however, I remember the days after. I was broken. I felt like something inside me had snapped; like a door that I had been so close to reaching had been shut, and I’d never be able to open it again. I knew who was behind the door, but I also knew he was gone forever. Finally, in a frustrated attempt to somehow bring my friend back, I wrote everything I felt on a piece of paper. I don’t know how it flowed so well; I was expecting it to come out choppy and littered with both content and grammar mistakes. Instead, my rage, sadness, and hate towards life transformed to art before my eyes.

The stories I create may seem simply words laid out on a page to some people, but I can assure you they are not. In fact, these creations are my soul incarnate, my feelings materialized so that readers might let their minds take them in and, if they’re well enough expressed, feel them too. Therefore, I must thank these creations: the short stories, the poems, and the essays. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be the person I am today: a person that’s not afraid to show his true feelings, and in fact embellishes them with writing so that they’ll look better. If it wasn’t for the offspring of my pen I might not be the same person that stands in my mirror today. If it wasn’t for the children of my ink, I might’ve never found my true self.