I come from a background of divorce and grit. My young mother, with dreams bigger than her reality, married a much older man. He was an airline pilot in Cuba, his third marriage, and I’d be the last of his many kids. He was 64 when I was born, my mother in her early thirties. The man was tired, worn out. They divorced when I was three, in New Jersey. Immigrants, scraping by with hard work and blue-collar jobs. My father took whatever work he could find, mostly driving trucks. The communists in Cuba had torpedoed any real chances for future success in the United States. My two brothers and I ended up on public assistance. Then my mother started dating another man, and that’s when the real chaos began. Drugs and alcohol stormed into our lives, ushering in years of domestic violence, drama, and constant moving. New schools, new roach-infested apartments every six months. One day, a neighbor had a garage sale. We couldn’t afford much, but my eyes lit up when I saw a trunk full of draw...
Little bursts of inspiration come in so many different ways. It always seems like they come exactly when you need them. We sometimes make goals and just when you are struggling with reaching it, something acts as that impetus to go on. Going on a road trip can act as a metaphor for attaining a goal; you have a goal/destination, a beginning(usually accompanied with excitement), a middle that can be monotonous and where we might have doubt of the endeavor. The way this light careened in this rest stop and blurred the quotidian at the exact moment I needed it, made me think of creating this piece.
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