MY VIRTUAL MEMOIR

Day 1 of Year 1 1997: I am currently four years old and I just arrived to face the beautiful beaches of Miami, Florida coming straight from Bogota, Colombia; two complete climatic opposites. In Bogota, I am surrounded by uninhabited mountain regions and luscious trees accompanied by a fairly cool temperature, changing depending on the season. In Miami, however, there are no seasons and it is all one never-ending summer flooding with beaches and fun in the sun! I arrive to a pale yellow one-story house in a small neighborhood in North Miami Beach and my heart begins to palpitate from the rush of joy that just comes over me. I sprint into my room, decorated with checkered blue and white print and I notice something that I will never forget for as long as I live; behind my bed lays a window in which I can see three banana trees that had been left behind by the previous owners and are now mine. Throughout the entire day, all 10 hours of traveling, I have been wondering why I am here and if I will ever return to my home, Bogota. I will have to wait and see, but for now make myself comfortable in my new home.
Day 2 of Year 1: I hate her. I absolutely hate her. She came over my house and said she wanted to play with Barbies so I, a rookie at anything dealing with dolls, respectfully agreed. As we were playing, she ripped the clothes off of my brunette Barbie and said that all brunettes are ugly; she is a blonde, I am a brunette. I run to my mother and ask who this girl was and she said she was my cousin; my mother’s first cousin. Impossible! It couldn’t be! How could this snobby girl, a gringa, may I add, have anything to do with me?! Her name is Margot and I don’t ever want to see her again, but judging on my past 48 hours here, her family is our only friends so we will probably go to dinner with them later on tonight. I hope to make myself perfectly at home and certainly hope that my first day at Temple Sinai School tomorrow goes well.
Day 3 of Year 1: I got to school today and didn’t want to get off the car. It was a huge roundabout (well, looked huge back then) with teachers yelling the names of the students for other teachers to go pick me up. I was scared. I was tired. I was nervous; especially with adults yelling “ROCKY PUPA, ROCKY PUPA” in my face and different arms trying to get a good grasp on me to take me away. The best part of that morning was seeing Margot, blonde Barbie in hand, waving violently at me, pretending like our quarrel the day before had not occurred… NOT! Actually, I had to stay with her, for she was my only companion, and as the day elapsed we became friends, great friends! I was ecstatic when I got home, for this had been the best day so far!
Year 3 (March 4, 2000): It’s my birthday and I’m turning seven! I am so excited because my mom threw me the best party ever with girls and boys. There are two teams, the girls are green and the guys are blue, and it’s basically a color war between the two. There was tug a war, red rover, potato sack races, hoola hoop competitions and more! After all of the activities, my mom set up two huge cakes the size of a three basketballs put together, one for me and one for my twin brother, Leon, which was my favorite part of my entire birthday. It was the best day of my life! Later on that day, after the birthday party had ended and we were home watching TV together, my grandparents from my mother’s side called in to wish my brother and I happy birthday. After we had both spoken to them, my brother went back to concentrating purely on the screen, but I stayed eaves dropping on the conversation with my parents and my grandparents; they were talking about something called La Guerrilla and kept talking about Andres Pastrana, my grandfather’s best friend, who was by that time in the middle of his presidency. Little did I know that their topic of conversation was the exact reason why my family had emigrated from Colombia to the US; we came in search of a better, more economically stable life, fleeing from the mass corruption and danger that surrounded us back in Bogota with three of my uncles being kidnapped, one killed, one little cousin being kidnapped, two aunts being kidnapped and having many false alarms concerning my grandfather and members of FARC attempting to enter his home.
Year 10 (2007): I am on a vacation with my grandparents from my mother’s side at our house in the Bahamas and we begin to briefly touch upon the subject of our family history and the reasons for our coming to Miami. This conversation slowly becomes more in depth and sooner or later, without anyone realizing, I begin to hear the real story of why I moved here, being told by the soothing voice of my grandfather:
“It all began in the urban city of Istanbul in Turkey, where my father was born. He opened a new store, with the help of my mother’s cooking, which sold textiles as well as home-made Turkish dishes made fresh daily by my mother. This store was ‘the’ store to go to if you needed any of those things, but as time elapsed, Turkey went through its technological revolution, and the textile shop around the corner wouldn’t cut it if there was a shopping mall down the street. Unfortunately, my parents lost their business and, having heard of the land of the free, the New World, they left middle east and headed west to land in Bogota, Colombia. Here, they established an entirely new life by opening anther textile shop, but this time it was much more successful. Several years later, they had my two older sisters, and then me. I grew up in a poor community with barely any opportunity to get out and live in a wealthy area, but with hard effort in school as well as handling three jobs in order to maintain my entire family, for my father had died in the winter after catching pneumonia, I succeeded. I graduated high school as valedictorian, got into Cornell with a full scholarship, attended that university, studied law and then returned to Bogota only to study four more years of law in La Universidad de los Andes. When I turned 30, I married your grandmother, Esther, who did not like the idea of me entering the world of Colombian politics, but I did so anyway because it was my passion. The year your aunt was born, my first daughter, I almost became senator, but the situation with FARC had become way too out of hand and it was not good for my safety or for that of my family, so I decided against it. Years later, after studying business in La Universidad de los Andes, I met a determined politician named Andres Pastrana, son of former president Micael Pastrana, and I knew right that second that he would be following his father’s footsteps. By the time you, Raquel, were born, me and my entire family had to travel with tinted, bullet-proof windows, surrounded by body guards every step we took and this was simply not the life we wanted to lead. After more than ten kidnappings and 5 killings by FARC of our family members, your parents decided it would be in your favor to move to a safer place where we could grow up with more freedom and less fear. So, Raquelita, now you know why you moved from Colombia to the United States”.
I was shocked. I did not know how to react; whether to be happy, sad… I did not know! I mean, I was glad to hear that I had been saved from a terrible unstable country, but it hurt me to know that many family members of mine had lost their life or placed their life in danger, only to prove the Colombian government correct and the FARC wrong.
This story had me thinking for the rest of the day; I couldn’t believe it, but what most shocked me was that I had no idea about any of this until the age of fourteen!
From this day on, I have treated my parents with a higher level of respect, that which they deserve, for having saving me from growing up in the horrors of being secluded and detained even in your own home. I look back at this story whenever I am stressed or in a bad mood because it immediately reminds me that I was saved, and G-d wanted me to survive.
Year 12 (2009): Today, I am sixteen years old and to this day, I continue to reflect on my past and how I got to live such a wonderful life; I thank my grandparents, and specifically, my parents for providing me with an amazing childhood here in Miami. Honestly, there is not one thing I can complain about my life here in Miami, which my parents, grandparents and even great- grandparents endured much pain and hard work to achieve.