As a child, I wanted to be just like the adults who stood taller than me. I wanted to wear the brown skin shoes and baby-blue button-ups with pearls on the sleeves like the ones in my dad's closet. The purse that my mother carried hung with weight on proud shoulders. Her hair was always done but never constricted, refined but never filtered, a proud woman who hid her indignation well, perhaps in that heavy bag. Although I knew very little, I knew I craved a life like theirs.

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A life like theirs was stable and consistent. Mornings were usually accompanied, if not beaten, by the high-pitched beeping from my father's Casio. Though I couldn't tell you what time the alarm usually went off, I can tell you no one else woke up early enough to hear it but me. After a while I began to naturally wake up minutes before that alarm, lying on my twin bed listening and waiting for my dad to shut it off, then, and only then, did I know I wasn't the only one awake. Breakfast was always ready and served by mom shortly after; Eggs, toast, y un licuado. The kids were in school by 8:15 a.m and parents at work by nine. Eight hours of public education was to be strictly fueled by high-fat, low-cost, gluten-free, artificially flavored, colored, and processed meals. The American dream was pre-packaged, punctual, and repetitive.

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The weekends spent in Chihuahua were my favorite. My grandparents lived in a one-story, three-bedroom home that hadn't been changed or renovated since the ‘70s. The same Kelly-green cabinets that first came with the house still lined the kitchen wall, and beneath, white and lime-green mosaic tiles that, over the years, had faded into a faint orange hue. The furniture wasn't any different. The couches were reupholstered, and the wooden doors, frames, and knobs retained every memory from years of countless touch.

 

My grandfather had bookshelves in every room. The shelves were still full of the books andpictures that had been left behind by my mom, aunts, and uncles. I never paid them any mind. The faces of strangers in places I had never seen meant very little to a child, it wasn't until I grew older that one of the faces caught my eye.

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As the years went on, time between visits to chihuahua grew further. Christmas with cousins became rare and my grandfather's hands had more wrinkles every time. The same house felt quieter, bookshelves collected dust, the color of the faces in the pictures faded except for one. The photo was of a group of friends laughing. Amongst the smiling faces was my mother. She was new to me, a perspective painted by naivety had never seen anyone so themselves. Her eyes were the same. Her smile and mannerisms were just like the woman who had picked me up from elementary school, yelled at me for smoking weed in high school and drinking at my graduation. She was probably 18 or 19 at the time the photo was taken, apart from a few grey hairs, I knew it was the same face. She had been like me.

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You don't expect someone to die on a Tuesday; there's nothing significant about a Tuesday but after the death of my uncle my dad didn't like returning to chihuahua. A face foreign to tears doesn't know how to cry, I had never seen my dad cry before, and it would also be the last time; like a child fighting for air after a tantrum. The drive to chihuahua was 4 hours. If we left now, we'd make it by 10pm. Theres a lot you can say in 4 hours, but he didn't say much to me. Sporadic memories shared with little to tie them together painted an image of my dad I had never experienced before. Anxiety seemed so far removed from the put- together man i thought i new. It was a lie, grief crippled him just like it had me.

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“Se me notan las ojeras” my mother's voice was usually soft, but when she spoke these words, she sounded tired. I looked up and across the dining room table, the kitchen lights above us illuminated the only two people in the house. Silence followed, for a brief but what felt like an infinitesimally long second. Comments like these were typically followed with a reassurance and comforting denial, but for a second, I stayed silent. For the first time I had looked up and seen an old woman in front of me. Beautiful, nonetheless, I justhadn't noticed that the woman who watched me age was aging with me. Gray hairs where brown strands used to be reminded me of the photograph in my grandparents' home. I wondered if she had noticed the time pass by. If I would notice my hair turn gray and eyes turn tired.

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Who my parents had been before kids was unknown to me. I couldn't help but feel I was dealing with smiles I'd never meet but smiles none the less. Whole lives had been lived before me, the life I live now. With fuck-ups, and friends; love and regret. I have never seen the brown skin shoes that my father wore at any of the stores that I shopped at, and though the way my mother sets down her purse when she walks into the house carries a level of urgency and relief that was foreign to me, I was content, because I got to know these two strangers a little more.