The Melancholy of Distance: Mother of Grave Ills.

A three-week reprieve from obligatory exams and papers. Fantastic. I have the time to write what due-dates prohibited.

Over the summer, I bought my mom a copy of Beauvoir's The Prime of Life thinking she wouldn't have time for anything else. Actually, I had my dad buy her the book(the very same evening I was scheduled to be at the airport) I remember this. It was my dad's birthday. In May, I had asked him to book my flight from June to August. As customary, we dined at a restaurant and upon consuming half a bottle of Queirolo wine on an empty stomach, my grandma, convinced of living a parallel life as Duchess of Richelieu, declared "A toast for you, Raul, the exemplary father." With suicide on my dad's birthday dinner out of the question, I sought comfort in my brother's eyes who instantaneously sought mine. I remember making every attempt to ignore the concentration of emotion in my throat. The waiter arrived with plates. I ate like a released-hostage.

Out of all places, my parents romantic originated at a grocery store. They were born the same year Che and Fidel instigated a coup in Cuba to overthrow Batista. My mother in June and my dad in August. The zodiac says Leos and Geminis are made for the other. In 1978, my sister would become the only witness to prove any science behind astrology. My grandparents did not attend the wedding.

To this day, my mother tells me early marriage is a mistake. That's fine. All things are defective.

They met at the age of 18. At the time, my mother was learning German. She wanted to move to Germany where she could practice medicine. I think, before Medicine, my mother's intention was to study Sociology. I don't know which came first. My dad's motivation for Diplomacy evaporated after he was rejected from a top school. Cronyism, he says. Ten years later, when my sister thought my brother's birth was 'the best day of her life', my parents graduated as lawyers.

The past does not exist. What remains is emotional residue. Emotions are self-incurred. I can say, for example, that the scarf I lost in La Cuidad Tapada ignited an obsession to safeguard my belongings. I was seven years old and I thought my life had ended. My mother, who sought to console the dispirited child wailing in the backseat of the Nissan, could had mistaken me for an orphan. My tears were not produced by the physical absence of the scarf, but rather, its irretrievability. This mass-produced, ordinary, frail source of sensation affected me.