Don't Follow My Lead

I’m going to change my life.   For better or worse, I’m changing my life.   And I’m scared for that.

I’m as scared of that, as I have been of anything else in my life.   I’m too old to start over, and too young to give up.  I’m too immature for my own good and too much of a thinker and not a doer.

That’s why I want to change.   I want to embrace life and start anew, but I guess I’ll start my old tale at the beginning:

My parents are immigrants from Peru, my father is a very adventurous guy.  He has lived a life that movie stars dream of.   My mother has been his steady companion for about half a century.   We didn’t grow up with much, but never poor.   There wasn’t any big extravagant things in our house, but we always had a home.  We didn’t go out to eat (rarely), but food was never scarce.

We grew up in Puerto Rico, my parents come from Peru.  Both Spanish speaking countries, and while there’s some similarities, the differences are daunting.  We speak the same language, but don’t talk the same.  We eat the same ingredients but not the same foods.  We are separated by years of traditions.

Puerto Rico, if you don’t know, is part of United States, we are not a state, but a commonwealth.  A more politically minded person can tell you the more minute differences, but with the exception of some taxes that we don’t paid, and the fact that we can’t vote for the president, we are pretty much on-par with the other 50 states.   A Hawaii that speaks Spanish if you want.

Not going to bore you with details, but Puerto Rico has never been an independent country.   Not since the Spaniards claimed it in 1493 by Christopher Columbus (yes, that Columbus).  We were owned by Spain until 1898 when Spain and United States got into a little turf war.   Spain lost and as part of the treaty, Spain granted independence to Cuba and Puerto Rico became a consolation prize to United States.  The U.S.A. really wanted Cuba, but Cuba was in the middle of it’s own independence fight with Spain, so it was easier to take over the smaller island of Puerto Rico.

Puertoricans are conflicted with this, some like the status quo, others want to become the 51st state, and a smaller contingency wants independence.   Politics are the #1 sports in Puerto Rico, followed by Baseball, Basketball, Boxing.  So every four years there’s a big fight over which party is going to take over.   As a kid it was hard to understand all the different points of views, and when I was able to see them, I realized that I just didn’t care enough.  If I wanted to become a state (my preference) it was just easier to go to the States.  I never voted in a Puerto Rico election, I was finally eligible to vote a week after the elections.  By the time the next election rolled around I was already living in United States.

Forgot to mentioned, one of the perks of being born in Puerto Rico, is that you are a US citizen by birthright, so there was no VISA hoops to go through to come to America.

I’ll talk more about my parents and Peru on my next post.