Escape From Pink Flamingo

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Ever since the age of 13, I’ve noticed the degrading state of everything around me. The poor people, the worthless dollar, and the disappearing Social Security have landed me in a negative haze where all I can think of is getting out of here. Surely, no where else could be better,no? Since people are always talking about coming here, and all of the immigration, it surely must be great. But what better way to break a person than when they’re thousands of miles from home?

Over the years, I’ve witnessed my family come over from Cuba. At the arrival of each one, you could see that face of brand-new possibilities, a look of ‘I’ve finally left everything that’s been eating at me behind’ on their roster. Only months later, when the government just can’t support them any more, and neither can my mother, the newly arrived must now go job searching, mind you, in a world where the native tongue is not their own. After plenty of failures, they finally manage to acquire such ‘job’ and if there’s been a job that all of my relatives have passed through, it’s carpentry.

Now, they have to support themselves; Pay for light, water, food,etc. They manage, with just enough money left over to buy gasoline for their 15 year old white Toyota. Before you know it, they’re back at my mother’s house, ’saving for something bigger and better’.

Some years go by, better never gets bigger, and they’re living in some tiny apartment with three men. I smell success.

Of all my relatives, it is my oldest uncle who has the saddest story. The man traveled frequently in his younger years as a doctor helping those in need. In his early twenties, he was a professor of math and science in Cuba. When he hit his forties, he had a most strange idea- To join his sister in the ever happy America. With his foot on American soil, that fateful face, and all but none of his belongings, he took a breath of what would be, could be. He left his daughters, their daughters, and his degree behind.

Another carpenter, living with a wife that would only hold him back, he made a living on what seemed a huge demotion. And years later, he ended up back at my mother’s, alone, working 13 hour shifts as a security guard. But that’s America for you…The Land of Possibilities.

Then my grandfather dies. My mother, her brothers, none of which can get to Cuba in time to see him one last time because none had neither the money nor the permission. They all huddled near a phone, listening to their sobbing sister in Cuba tell them their father had died. It’s been near a year, and they haven’t been able to see his final resting place.

But hey! : )

There are worse stories out there. You know, those orphans, and the people with no houses, or those with incurable cancer, or worse! Those with curable diseases that die because their health insurance doesn’t cover treatment. Mine is but a speckle in a sea of dismal accounts.

However, I cannot criticize this country I live in. Not because it has done great things for me, but because I’m sure every country has it’s problems(some more so than others). Until I can leave this nation of obsequious sycophants and hypocritical,ostentatious flamingos, I am stuck forever more in false adoration for the one country that has housed me all my life.

Until then.

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Filed under Family, LT, Life

Tags: american, carpentry, cuba, doctor, hardwork, hate, hispanic, impossible, possible, poverty, sad, story