I Finally Made it Home!

It was a midsummer's morning, yet too early to know if it was gonna be a beautiful one, or not. The sky was gray, but then again, it was too early. The sun had barely started to make way behind the black shadows, chasing them by the second, eating them alive. And the air was still cold, crisp and cold.

I approached the window and looked toward the mountains. I could see the roughed silhouette of Montserrat defining the horizon. I inhaled deeply, the chill of the morning air hurt my lungs, or at least that's what I chose to believe. The chain smoking from the night before, as an alternative to my poignant cough, was not a thought for early morning. Not one I cared for anyway.

I thought about going back to bed and wait a few more hours to get up. Wait and see if the day was gonna be filled with the colors of the rainbow, or just another black and white page in a calendar. But I have never been able to fall asleep once I'm up, not even before sunrise, and I hate sunrise. The first lights of the new day always depress me, and as the thought crossed my mind, I knew I was doomed. A gust of Levanter made me shiver all over and I was depressed.

I sat down on my desk, and started organizing my day. I would first brush my teeth, then get a shower and some breakfast. When I get depress I tend to stray. Therefore, organizing, having a plan and writing down the list of things to do it always helps. I checked my closet, and chose two different possible outfits. A white linen sundress splashed with bright yellow flowers if the day turned out to be a sunny one, and another more severe in tone if the gray persisted. I then started writing down all I had to get done during the day. First, there was an interview at the employment placement office downtown Sabadell. Then, and depending on the time left, a trip to my old neighborhood in Barcelona, a visit to the migratory services office and the nice lady who doesn't want to accept my letter signed by the Spanish consul in Puerto Rico. For the afternoon, I had nothing planned, not yet. I will play by ear, I said to myself.

By the time I was finished with the hygiene part of my morning, the sky was a deep intense blue, not a single cloud crowned its royal presence, and the birds were chirping joyously. They were always chirping, only today it was more noticeable. Unbearable. Probably because I had nothing to chirp about!

The interview went as expected, it was good, very good indeed. Then again, I have this gift for wining people's favor. But something as expected as this doesn't really cheer you up. It ends up been just another ordinary boring thing!

On my way to the station I walked past Casal Pere IV, and went in to get information on an advanced Catalan course. I grew up during Franco's dictatorship, and Catalan was a forbidden language. The only Catalan my generation ever knew, were the ill patched colloquial phrases exchanged between family members. A once glorious past forgotten under the fascist reign of terror! I couldn't even understand completely the many official forms I now had to fulfill on a daily basis, and it was really getting to my nerves. It was all in vain though, fucking summer schedule! I would probably feel otherwise if I had a full time job, but it ain't the case.

As I was exiting the Casal, I glanced at my watch... too early to go home, too lonesome to go home... yet too late to do anything else.

I walked down the station anyway, and for a moment there I hesitated on which way to go... North, where home was, or south to nowhere? I headed nowhere.

As the train left the insides of Sabadell and made its way into the open, the bright sunlight made my jeweled thongs glisten all over the compartment, turning the fiberglass walls into an early 80's disco. Hundreds of miniature rainbows sparkled over my peaceful reading. If it had not been for that, I would have never started to pay attention to the running landscape outside my window.

It was right there when I saw, I mean, I really saw them for the first time... the pine trees of my childhood. Spreading their rounded canopies against the bluest of skies like a thousand pregnant bellies, like the fertile womb of an expecting mother... my mother. And I knew. It stroke me with the kind of certainty that only visits you once or twice in a lifetime... All I'd ever done, everything I'd lived for up until that moment, came down to the realization... I had finally come home.