First Memory

Christmas was always a great holiday for my big family- It usually played out the same way every year- my whole family got together for a gift exchange and a dinner, the gifts would be passed around amongst the adults and the kids got to open it after it was distributed. This memory is from the Christmas of 1997, all was great.

It was the morning after Christmas, I was 5 years old that year. I woke up and grabbed my stereo from the box it was packed in. My aunt had bought me a Selena CD and I was excited to listen to it. Wasn’t Selena just the greatest?

I heard my dad yelling "Leave! .. Just Leave!"

My parents often argued very loudly, sometimes they would stop at breaking things, and other times it would escalate to physically beating each other. I could hear a little bit of yelling across the house, they were on the north end and was on the south end- between us was a hallway with the bathroom immediately to the right of their room, the next right was my brothers room, it then opened into the living room with the front door parallel to my brothers room, the living room opened into the kitchen, to the right of the kitchen was a hallway with the washer, dryer, and a back door, the same hallway opened it my room.

I opened the stereo top to insert the CD, I listened to a few songs and the yelling got closer and louder. I cannot remember anything other than hearing my dad yelling at my mom to leave.

Suddenly I hear a clashing sound, I ran out to the living room and instantly felt an unknown pain in my feet. I looked down and saw the broken glass, my parents both looked at me, neither of them was too worried that I was bleeding on the clean carpet. However, my dad screamed at me to go back to my room, so I listened.

It had to be over an hour that I heard them yelling each other, it grew louder and louder, so I turned up my music. I did not know what Selena was saying when she sang in Spanish, but it was dreamy. As I avoided the sounds of my parents breaking more glass and telling each other how much they hated each other.

After about 6 or 7 rounds of the same song, I started to learn the lyrics, change in pitch, and the tempo for Como La Flor. I later found out Selena was singing about a love and how heartbroken she was to be at the end of her relationship. I did not connect the two at the time, but were my parents fighting about the same thing? Did one no longer love the other? Why could not they fix their issue after an hour of screaming.

I came out of the room and my mother was gone, dad was making food for Edvan and I, hot pockets! Yummy! My dad cleaned the carpet and asked if we wanted to go get ice cream from the store, of course we jumped in excitement, when returning from our walk to the store, he handed the ice cream to us and told us he was going to sit on the porch for a little while and cool off, we knew to leave him be. My dad was my favorite person in the world, so my first thought was to cheer him up. I got my brother dressed and we went to play in snow with him. Just like that, all was well once again.