How I Learn to Swim

As I stand freezing, waiting for my boss to rotate our outside positions, I long for my Sun, my Heat and to lay on the sand as it warms my frozen toes. It’s funny the things you miss when they’re not readily available to you anymore. I moved from Dorado, Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, New York in a hurry and in 4 days time. I got on a plane, landed and headed straight to work. I barely had time to process what was happening and what was getting left behind. I lived on my island for 27 years before this and longed for an escape, so when the opportunity came I ran to it.

The years go by and you take things for granted like how the sun feels different near the equator than it does closer to Canada. Or how your movements, your features, even the tone of your voice gets lost in a foreign pitch. On days where I miss my town of Dorado, Puerto Rico my thoughts go to My Beach just 3 walkable minutes away or 4 houses down. Back home our directions rely on how many stoplights or left turns you have to take before you’re there instead of how many miles and street names you must pass before the omniscient voice tells you “You have Arrived.”

On days I can’t find the Adobo seasoning in the grocery store is when I really miss my mom and my family and our dinners with Our Food. No one makes arroz con habichuelas y salchichas like my mom does. Just a quick lunch for a little pick me up in the afternoons which more often than not, bring an awesome sunset. On days that I’m clear headed, I walk down to My Beach and try to catch the sunset there, surrounded by colors only a skilled artist can make. I take in the ocean breeze and the quiet, a luxury I learned later in life many don’t have.

The ocean is hard where I am now, it’s dark. The deep blues and greens are absent as I try the waters that are a 45 minute drive away. A trip that’s almost not worth the wait but I find that the waves calm me. I never get in because I’m afraid of the cold that surrounds the Rockaway Peninsula. Instead I sit and stare at the waves and think of My Beach and the calm it usually is and its shallow water reaching up to my stomach until I arrive at a rock formation covered in algae. Then I stop and feel the urge to just dunk the rest of my body to feel as if I’m getting baptized by my Borinquen waters. When I was little I used to get horrible ear infections and one time I even got a bacteria that nearly killed me from a faulty pipeline a few ways away. My 4 year old immune system fought it off but that meant less time in the water for me. So in turn I never really learned how to swim. Now whenever I go back home, I make it a point to go and practice whatever little technique I have. It’s not pretty but it’s freeing. I get to be one with the water, the sun and the salt that clings to my dark hair and skin. I close my eyes and try to burn this feeling into my memory and hold onto it on a rainy or particularly cold day. I realize that Nostalgia is written the same in English and in Spanish to let others know that you’re somewhere in the past, to a place that you can not be in anymore until your job is done.