Platial | Who and What's Nearby
Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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Since it’s warming up outside, Buela’s moving back to her house tomorrow. It’s the same old routine. During the winter she comes to live with us because the only means of heat that she has at her house is a wood stove. She’s not exactly the most muscular 78 year old so to save her the trouble and us the worry of her carrying logs all over her house, she just comes to stay with us. Each year we pray for the announcement that she’s just going to stay, but on that first warm day she starts packing her bags. A few days before the official move, we all go over to her house to clean up what hasn’t been cleaned thoroughly in months. My uncle watches the house, and by watches I mean, he comes to get the mail every once in awhile and he feeds the cats in the garage. Buela doesn’t like the idea of returning to a dirty home and she’s the one that taught us to clean a house from top to bottom so it’s never a chore to complain about when the times comes.
I rarely ever see her anymore. Nowadays, it’s just when I come home from school and on every holiday. But each time that I do get to see her, it’s like Heaven on earth. There’s something about her…about just being able to wrap my arms around her that fills me with a sense of peace—temporarily anyway. Near her, I feel protected. I always have. Yes, she’s my grandmother, but to me, she’s an angel.
She practically raised me in this house. She raised me and all of my cousins in this house. Each time I walk through the front door, I step into my childhood. And a visit never goes by without a session of Remember When? Corner at the big dining room table that we’ve sat around for years as an extended family. When I walk through the door, I stand in the dining room and behind it is the kitchen. When the door shut behind us, it was always a race to the warmest tortilla and then to the TV for first dibs on picking the channel. We’d take advantage on what little TV we got to watch since any minute we’d be summoned to the kitchen to wash dishes or the garage to sleep the floor or the back yard to pick up sticks. While you think grandparents spoil their grandkids, we lived in a completely different setting. Buela taught us discipline, but at the end of the day, Buelo would come home from work with a Big Size Crunch bar that he’d sneak to us without Buela knowing. It was a nice, little system we had going for us, really.
Since it was warm out the day that we went to clean up, I went for a walk around the house outside. Memories began to flood from when Buelo made us a golf course in the backyard—little dug up holes randomly created on the ground—so we could try our hand at knocking a golf ball into them with a stick we found in the garage; in their long driveway where Buela would take me for a walk every day to fetch the mail and along the way we would pick up those big rocks that had tiny diamonds in them which caught my eye every single time. She would never attempt to break my heart and tell me that they weren’t diamonds at all. I walked back to el monte which was just an extension to the backyard where Buelo would keep his tractors and trucks that he would fill with tomatoes and drive over to the Red Gold facilities. There were a number of tiny sheds that I was always too scared to look inside of and a lot of parts to God knows what that were just rusting in their place. I don’t visit this place often, but each time I do I come back to the house more fascinated than before because when I was little, it all seemed so much bigger. I specifically walk back to the hole in the ground that we used to burn trash. There was only one day in my entire life that Buela took me back there and we had a mini-bonfire. Sticks, hot dogs, and all, we started a fire and had dinner out there. Today, I can barely ever find where the hole used to be.
On my way back across the yard to the house, I can’t help but feel a little heartbroken that it’ll be another long while before I’m back here again…before I get to be with Buela again. Each time she leaves, I fill myself with fear with the thought of the inevitable. I never long to say goodbye and drive away. And it never fails that each time I leave, she cries. She tries so hard to wait until I leave, but she just can’t and seeing my grandmother cry is one of the hardest things I deal with in my life. She blesses me before I walk away and when I get in my car, my heart breaks even more. If she only knew what I did. She tells me every day that we’re together how proud I’ve made her and that she knows I’m going to do good things. She’s convinced that I won’t screw up and when she compares me to all of my other cousins who aren’t in school, who have kids, and aren’t married, I can’t help but cry at the realization that I’ve already failed her.
If she only knew.
Since it’s warming up outside, Buela’s moving back to her house tomorrow. It’s the same old routine. During the winter she comes to live with us because the only means of heat that she has at her house is a wood stove. She’s not exactly the most muscular 78 year old so to save her the trouble and us the worry of her carrying logs all over her house, she just comes to stay with us. Each year we pray for the announcement that she’s just going to stay, but on that first warm day she starts packing her bags. A few days before the official move, we all go over to her house to clean up what hasn’t been cleaned thoroughly in months. My uncle watches the house, and by watches I mean, he comes to get the mail every once in awhile and he feeds the cats in the garage. Buela doesn’t like the idea of returning to a dirty home and she’s the one that taught us to clean a house from top to bottom so it’s never a chore to complain about when the times comes.
I rarely ever see her anymore. Nowadays, it’s just when I come home from school and on every holiday. But each time that I do get to see her, it’s like Heaven on earth. There’s something about her…about just being able to wrap my arms around her that fills me with a sense of peace—temporarily anyway. Near her, I feel protected. I always have. Yes, she’s my grandmother, but to me, she’s an angel.
She practically raised me in this house. She raised me and all of my cousins in this house. Each time I walk through the front door, I step into my childhood. And a visit never goes by without a session of Remember When? Corner at the big dining room table that we’ve sat around for years as an extended family. When I walk through the door, I stand in the dining room and behind it is the kitchen. When the door shut behind us, it was always a race to the warmest tortilla and then to the TV for first dibs on picking the channel. We’d take advantage on what little TV we got to watch since any minute we’d be summoned to the kitchen to wash dishes or the garage to sleep the floor or the back yard to pick up sticks. While you think grandparents spoil their grandkids, we lived in a completely different setting. Buela taught us discipline, but at the end of the day, Buelo would come home from work with a Big Size Crunch bar that he’d sneak to us without Buela knowing. It was a nice, little system we had going for us, really.
Since it was warm out the day that we went to clean up, I went for a walk around the house outside. Memories began to flood from when Buelo made us a golf course in the backyard—little dug up holes randomly created on the ground—so we could try our hand at knocking a golf ball into them with a stick we found in the garage; in their long driveway where Buela would take me for a walk every day to fetch the mail and along the way we would pick up those big rocks that had tiny diamonds in them which caught my eye every single time. She would never attempt to break my heart and tell me that they weren’t diamonds at all. I walked back to el monte which was just an extension to the backyard where Buelo would keep his tractors and trucks that he would fill with tomatoes and drive over to the Red Gold facilities. There were a number of tiny sheds that I was always too scared to look inside of and a lot of parts to God knows what that were just rusting in their place. I don’t visit this place often, but each time I do I come back to the house more fascinated than before because when I was little, it all seemed so much bigger. I specifically walk back to the hole in the ground that we used to burn trash. There was only one day in my entire life that Buela took me back there and we had a mini-bonfire. Sticks, hot dogs, and all, we started a fire and had dinner out there. Today, I can barely ever find where the hole used to be.
On my way back across the yard to the house, I can’t help but feel a little heartbroken that it’ll be another long while before I’m back here again…before I get to be with Buela again. Each time she leaves, I fill myself with fear with the thought of the inevitable. I never long to say goodbye and drive away. And it never fails that each time I leave, she cries. She tries so hard to wait until I leave, but she just can’t and seeing my grandmother cry is one of the hardest things I deal with in my life. She blesses me before I walk away and when I get in my car, my heart breaks even more. If she only knew what I did. She tells me every day that we’re together how proud I’ve made her and that she knows I’m going to do good things. She’s convinced that I won’t screw up and when she compares me to all of my other cousins who aren’t in school, who have kids, and aren’t married, I can’t help but cry at the realization that I’ve already failed her.
If she only knew.
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