Arrived

It's a strange feeling. I belong here, and I'm a tourist, but when I open my mouth, they know. And they welcome me. I come from friendly people who know how to have fun. At margarita's house, we went through a hundred or so family pictures, ate together, cried together (again and again), and I sobbed through the old house, my house, where I was born. I walked in and was flooded with old memories, buried long ago. Sitting on the window by the rejas, peeking over the columns in the front, the tile on the porch where I played, the nanny lining up chairs while cleaning my room and I, playing train in the chairs, the kitchen, the yard, the front room at christmas, exactly where my new doll was on three king's day, waiting for my mother by the window and watching her walk up the walk in her purple teacher smock...so much at once. I was dizzy with emotion, too much to process, and never enough. I'm in Cuba. I'm amazed and very, very happy.