homesick

I am surrounded by a magical community of loving, supportive, and amazingly talented friends. From nights at the bar to Sunday afternoon potlucks to street-dancing, stilt-walking neighborhood carnivals, we celebrate our relationships with the pomp and pageantry of royalty (though I guarantee that no one has more than a couple hundred bucks in the bank at any given time). They love me and adore my kids and make me a better person each and every day, and I feel so incredibly blessed.

Yet sometimes I feel so lost and lonely. Hundreds of miles from home, raising kids in a city without my family, without cousins and aunts and uncles, without the chaos that I grew up both hiding from and relishing in... I sometimes think about going back home to Florida.

To the refuge of my mom's house with the loud TV and the outdoor kitchen and the parrots that squawk "dame la comidita" and "ay, que rrrrrrrrrico" at all hours of the day and night. And the beach and the palm trees and the mango trees. And the cacophony of Cuban culture that I swore I would never ever ever miss once I left for college. More than ten years later, I miss it all so bad. But how could I leave what I have here? My kids' dad, my friends, my job, my life.

In a perfect world, we'd all live on a tropical island with a mojito in one hand and a child in the other... or maybe it's something like the Cuban version of Big Love or The Red Tent. And maybe it's not so much the Cuban that I miss, but the people and the chaos and the everybody up in your business and the we're all in this together. My life here feels too quiet. Too polite.

I know the answer isn't Miami. Trina and I outline every reason why not in this radio piece for Under the Sun. So maybe I just need my sister... or a sister wife. A big, loud, Cuban sister wife with a mean recipe for vaca frita and a healthy disregard for housework. Que rico!