Paris for breakfast, New York for lunch, Puerto Rico for dinner.
After being awake for over 30 hours on one of the longest travel days of my entire life, I finally landed in La Isla del Encanto, at the edge of a hyper state of exhaustion.
I awoke to the gentle calls of coquis and gallos like I had so many times before. The heat, the smell of pinchos, the taste of pan sobao… it was good to be back in Puerto Rico.
Anyone who knows me knows that Puerto Rico is my favorite place in the world. Being back is like seeing your childhood summer camp again. Memories flash by with a different nostalgic tinge; mangoes, jellyfish, waves, snakes, domino… my grandparents.
Like clockwork my family went back, we never needed an excuse. Giddy excitement and FOMO would always propel my other aunts and cousins to join in the fun. It was there that I broke my arm, it was there that I got stung by a jelly fish, it was there that I found out Michael Jackson had died, and it was there that it was there that I grew up. The ties run deep between me and this island of mine.
In recent years we’ve been back less… It gets harder as you grow older. Life seems to do that doesn’t it? Some memories make it hard to go back. This time around was hard. My trip was incredibly short and difficult, laden with intense emotions. For years now, I’ve felt the island slipping from my grasp. My culture, my people, my island was becoming more and more distant.
Adult Summer Camp
I think sometimes as we grow up we chase the feelings and places that meant something to us when we were young. Club nights replace sleep overs, lake days replace water balloon fights, cocktails replace kool-aid.
For so long I’ve grasped onto the revelries of childhood, determined to maintain the magic, desperate not to let it go; and while some things stay the same, some things change.
My trips to the island will never be as they once were. I’ll never play domino with my grandfather again or hear my grandmother calling the cousins to eat. I’ll probably never climb the same tree where I fell and broke my arm. Perhaps I’ll never know what it is to swing in the lull of the hammock in that house that I love with the people that I love looking at the sun setting down over the jungle that I love. Maybe, maybe not.
But memories turn into memories turn into plans. Life is what we make it.
My short trip to Puerto Rico was a trip down memory lane, and also somehow, a glimpse into the future. We said goodbye to our childhood and the one we now can’t provide for the next generation, but a twinge of hope crept in as I left the island. This is what adult summer camps are for. It will never be the same, but it will be what you make it.
Maybe in the next 20 years there will be a bit more bachata in the house, a few more cars in the driveway, a bit fewer lizards; but our beach days, our malta, our domino, our Borinquen, our family, our magic, will remain.
So, as we’re getting to the end of summer, remember to take out the family scrapbook and start planning your adult summer camp, it’s worth it.
Me voy, pero un dia volvere…
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