I Remember

Today's post will be an excercise from the book Old Friend From Far Away by Natalie Goldberg called "I Remember." The excercise is simple, write for 10 minutes anything and everything you remember. No subjects, no restrictions. Just thoughts and memories as they come and flow thorugh your mind onto paper...or in this case, blog. You'd be surprised how much you get down in ten minutes. Let your mind flow, and dont be concerned about grammar or punctuation. Let it all out. Go.

I remember from the age of nine through 12 or 13 my family was very united. Today I sit here on this table celebrating the marriage of Tia Petra to her now husband Fernando.  I remember back in the day my mother and her other sister Rosario got along so well and today, at this celebration there continues to be tension between them that has caused a drift in both families.  I remember every weekend we’d go visit and how close all my cousins and I were. I remember my cousin asking me advice on how to treat a girl when I was only 11-13 years old. I didn’t know then, what I know today but I do remember telling him to treat her nice and hold her hand when he meant it, not just to get into her panties. I remember telling him to look her in the eyes and tell her how deeply he cared about her. I remember the first time I met my cousins. I remember Noemi was and still is a tiny skinny girl that was short with pin strait hair. I remember sharing a toothbrush with her because she didn’t have one. I remember not knowing you weren’t supposed to share your toothbrush. I remember what it was like living in a trailer I was embarrassed about at the time. I remember lying to my friends and saying I lived in a big house over the fence but it was being worked on so we stayed in the trailer in the meantime. I remember living all alone at the young age of 12. I remember my mother having to work nights and needing me to stay all alone during the evenings because my sister had married and my brother worked as well. I remember not being scared and rather enjoyed my solitude. I remember growing up very poor. I remember evenings when my mother and brother and I would stand outside the company she worked for and sell tamales with hot champurrado because we were so poor that selling tamales and champurrado was the only means we had to make money after my mom’s accident that led to her disability and disability insurance wasn’t enough. I remember how much my mother struggled and how much she overcame to raise us all on her own. I remember feeling so much hate towards my sister in law, to the point I ransacked her room and lied and said someone had came inside to steal things. I remember being sent away to live with my sister in 29 Palms for a few months in the 6^th Grade and how much I missed my boyfriend Tino. I remember a late night drive one night out in the desert and staring out into the night sky, every time I remembered kissing him, butterflies shook up the inside my tummy. It was our first, last and only kiss.  I remember how my first boyfriend Tino would always call me from a payphone and how we’d spend hours and hours on the phone and how he’d constantly tell me how much he loved me. I remember the day we broke up, how much it hurt me and how devastated I felt.  I remember riding the bus to school everyday, and going to the high school to swim during the summer. I remember the first time I fell off my big brothers bike I was a kid, maybe six or seven years. I fell over onto the black asphalt and remember scratching my toe over the rocky black asphalt. I remember looking down at my toe and seeing the red blood gush out like there was no tomorrow and instantly freaking out and cried home. I remember thinking it was the end of the world and that I was going to die. I remember trying to walk over a cable in school and hitting the asphalt so hard that the next time I remember waking up I was in the arms of someone carrying me to the nurse because I had passed out. I remember waking up once after the school bus had returned to school, I had fallen asleep on the bus and never got off on my stop. The bus driver couldn’t drop me off anywhere so she dropped me off at a house I knew my mom knew how to find me. I remember not knowing my own phone number to call her and have her pick me up. I remember not knowing how I got home that day, just being picked up from that house which was out in the middle of no where. I remember.

To Be Continued....