the pink politic

An Autobiographical Adventure!

My grad school autobiographical essay...

Writing about myself makes me so self-conscious, like on my birthday when everyone is staring at me as I open presents. I haven’t even written a diary entry in over a year. I want to be a journalist to write about what others do, but write about it through my eyes. And although we strive for unbiased news, what I write will be interpreted, ever subconsciously, through my eyes – the eyes that have watched the story of my life play out over the past 21 years. And now that I think about it, these eyes have seen quite a bit.

On those few and precious nights I spend in the home where I grew up instead of my dingy college house, the evening entertainment is always the same. Mom and I are lounging in the family room, likely sleeping and reading, respectively. Maggie, our ebullient three-year-old bulldog is snoring next to us. In the kitchen, Dad opens the dishwasher. Maggie opens her eyes; her ears perk just a bit. The front of the dishwasher falls and the clang of plates barely reaches my ears. Maggie is midair, and a moment later, on top of the clean dishes barking and biting until Mom or I subdue her. Maggie often needs at least 10 minutes to calm down and sometimes walks away from the tangle with a cut or two.

Our home is by no means quiet and that’s precisely why I love it. For two years now, my parents and I have become accustomed to the music and laughter that floats up the steps from our basement several times a week. My 17-year-old brother is the lead guitarist in a ska band and my family makes up the road crew. I’m the band biographer and No. 1 groupie. Whenever possible, I’m a front-row fixture at their shows, unless of course, the skank dancers get too close. I like to keep a safe distance from the band’s core fan base – sweaty adolescents with wildly flying limbs. Mom is the videographer. We have to be patient with her because she never remembers to charge the camera’s battery, so we end up with several halves of shows on tape. Dad is stage manager. A guitarist as a teen, he was an inspiration to my brother and taught him how to play.

My Dad was born in Cuba in 1950. His father had the foresight to get the family out of the country before Castro would make it impossible to leave. Five-year-old Hector, chubby and bespectacled, was thrust right into public school upon his arrival to the United States, not familiar with a single word of English. His schoolmates laughed at his strange name and inability to speak the language. I think this is why we’ve never spoken Spanish in the house. I’ve never identified with my Cuban roots, probably because the closest we come to celebrating my father’s heritage is to make the Spanish dish paella once in awhile. But that doesn’t matter because Mom and Dad created for my brother and me something more special than strict ethnic identity – a unique and perfect family.

I discovered in myself a passion that equals my love of family, friends and writing when I joined Phi Sigma Pi, a co-educational honor fraternity on campus, and learned service is more than cleaning beer cans from the side of the road. On our trips to Dupont Children’s Hospital in Wilmington, we’re given strict instructions not to ask the children about their illnesses as we help them make foam turkeys for Thanksgiving or design snowmen out of cotton balls. So I usually try to delude myself into believing the reason I don’t see the little girl I played with at the hospital last year is because she was healthy enough to return home. I can hardly imagine how my Mom deals with illness everyday at work.

An office manager at a doctor’s office, Mom never finished college and sometimes speaks of that regret. She wanted to be a teacher, but instead realized that goal by leading my Girl Scout troop for years. She is both my best friend and parent, and usually the dual roles act in tandem, but not always. When it comes to parental decisions I disagree with, my usually animated friendship with Mom is quiet for a few days if she puts on her parent hat and takes Dad’s side. Case in point: although I was accepted to my dream school, my parents wouldn’t allow me to attend New York University for undergraduate study. Between the expensive costs and the leap from quiet, suburban family life to loud, lonely city life should I attend NYU, they decided the school simply was not the right fit for me. Eventually (and begrudgingly) I accepted my parents’ decision, realizing that the University of Delaware was the ideal location for my years as an undergrad. But I never lost my desire to live in New York City.

Like a magnet, I’m drawn to the city at least once a year, even when the lack of time and funds should persuade me otherwise. The second my foot hits the city pavement I feel a burst of energy pumping through my veins. I’ve seen all the clichéd touristy sights: Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Rockefeller Center. Now that I’m older, I’ve become less interested in the places and more in the people. Every person in the city has a story; city life simply demands a story, as is vividly depicted in the musical “Rent.” As a writer, I long to find New York City’s true “Angel” or tell the stories of Alphabet City’s real-life dwellers. It’s said that truth is stranger than fiction, but truth is also more beautiful and devastating than any stage show could ever capture. And to be able to write that truth in the most thriving city in the world is like being asked to find a grain of sand on the beach: the possibilities are limitless.

posted by Tina @ 11:11 PM