I lived in Puerto Rico for several years back in the mid-1980s during grade school and college. My father moved the family from New York when he retired. Even though I was about 11 years-old when we moved, I knew this would not be my final destination. I couldn’t wait to get back to the States. At 20 years old with my first degree in hand, I moved to Florida, where I lived for several years, and later settled in Colorado. I’ve pretty much been gone from the lush Caribbean island for about 28 years.
I visit my family in Puerto Rico every year. I’m the only one who left. My mother, brother and sister still live there.
During my visits, I feel I go back in time. Not much has really changed except for the fact that there are more obnoxious drivers, and overly stressed out and hard-working, underpaid people. The house where I grew up as a teenager has not changed very much either. It’s a bit more dilapidated but still in overall good shape. My mother has done a good job maintaining the property after my father’s passing five years ago. Still, however; staying there for a few days is challenging.
This year was the worst visit ever. As soon as I arrived and was on my way up to the porch to hug my mother, her car, which was parked by the neighbors fence, was stuck by another car. My sister had borrowed her car to pick my husband and me up from the airport. I could not believe this had just happened. My mother took it well, but I felt horrible. After the accident was dealt with by the police and all parties involved, we finally had the opportunity to sit down and say proper hellos. I went to bed exhausted, wondering if this was a bad start to what was supposed to be a great holiday with my family.
Well, it rained almost the entire time we were there, except for the last day. Our trip was only five days, and we were expecting bright, sunny days to soak up at the beach. That didn’t happen. The one day we went for a walk at the beach thinking the sun would stay up, it rained.
The house I grew up in, has very small bedrooms furnished with oversized furniture. Bruising on the lower limbs is inevitable, and you practically have to watch where you’re going all the time to avoid running into something. Her neighbor (whom we call “the chicken man”, because his property is ridden with chickens and roosters running all over the place), plays music through outside speakers until about 11:30 p.m., making it impossible to get a good night’s sleep. Then his roosters start crowing at midnight. This goes on throughout the night, carrying a constant melody that could drive anyone insane from lack of sleep.
The shower in the only bathroom may be the highlight of this story. The bathroom is very old, and small, and nothing in it has ever been updated. I can still feel transported back in time, each time I enter through its doors. I make sure I take care of my business quickly so as not to spend too much time in there. The toilet flushes so slowly, you almost have to stand around and wait to make sure everything has gone through, otherwise you have to flush it again.
My mother has a Glad air freshener that fires a thin mist when there’s movement on the top shelve over the toilet, and my six foot tall husband gets sprayed each time he would stand in front of it. Each time he exit the bathroom I think he has tried on a new cologne, and cannot quite understand why he chose such a fresh and fruity scent.
The water heater is an inline water heater. This means is that the heater is between the shower head and the pipe coming from the wall. The heater is plugged into an outlet in the bathroom that allows the electric heating coils to warm the water flowing through the pipe when the water is flowing.
So basically, the water that flows through is only one temperature. For most people who live in the island, cool water is fine, but for an ex-Puerto Rican yuppie who is used to hot showers like me, the experience proves to be torturous. During most showers, I found myself washing just the important parts to finish the agony as quickly as possible. The shower head situation isn’t much better. It’s old and sprays droplets so scattered at times I feel I have to constantly move between drops in order to rinse myself completely. Washing my hair is an adventure in itself. For those who do not know me personally, I have crazy curly hair, shoulder length. Skipping through drops did not get it clean or completely shampoo free for that matter. My hair felt dirty and my scalp very itchy, probably from the accumulating suds that remained in my scalp. After a couple of days, I just decided to wear a pony-tail for the rest of the trip.
My mother’s towels are paper thin. You almost need one for each limb to dry your entire body. After using one of them, I’m sure if you wrung it out, you’d get a lot of cool water flowing out.
Showers are quite traumatic for me in that house. Two years ago, the water was shut down for days, and as for long as I remember, this has continues to happen often. It had not happened during any of my visits, but it did this year. Our shower choices were to wash ourselves with bucket water (a bucket full of water that you heat on the stove) that you use to sponge bathe yourself, or go to my sister’s home, which was under remodel, and take a cold shower, not with the crazy water heater but with freezing water. We chose the cold shower, of course, and almost ended up with pneumonia.
I love visiting with my mother and family. She’s the most giving and hospitable person I know; however, I think that next year, we may stay at a hotel. At least I’ve experienced this during my childhood, but my poor gringo husband hasn’t. I can only imagine how much worse it is for him. He, however, has a great attitude about it and laughs it off.
After a week of no sleep, and a lack of adequate hygiene, we went home. The first thing I did upon arrival was … take a long, hot shower!
