Alien in a familiar World

There were multiple books on the floor in my sister’s room. I know this because I was the one who put them there. It would be around now that I would hear my sister asking what the heck I was doing in her room. In shame,I would ask myself the same question, but luckily she was out shopping with my mother. I continued my search through my sibling’s old book collection to the rhythm of the outside rain hitting a nearby window. I scrambled through the multiple works of Doctor Seuss until I found what I was searching for. It was the key to understanding a world that was so familiar yet so alien to me. It may even help me see life in a whole new point of view. It was the children’s guide to learning Spanish.

Finding this book, I recall my most recent venture to the country of El Salvador. It was a venture that I was forced to endure with my family almost every year as a child. And since I was such a young child, not going to visit relatives was not an option for me. I never looked forward to any of these trips. It wasn’t because I had a grudge with the country itself. The area where we stayed was surrounded by the lush green of the jungles that were nearby. The country’s air smelled of papusas being made nearby. I also didn’t hold anything against my relatives there. They always enjoyed our company and are nice people all around. No, I hated these trips for another reason. For as familiar as the land has become to me over the years, part of it was always out of reach.

Despite my parents’ heritage, I do not know Spanish. Probably since I was born in the United States, it was never my parents’ top priority. And every time I left the airport after arriving in El Salvador, I’d pay the price for it. My time there usually goes the same way. I would always stay in the sleeping room because I couldn’t play or talk to the neighborhood kids. I would have to see my aunts and uncles try to speak to me in a dialect I knew nothing about, just to have my father remind them. I would have to stand by my mother at all times, like a clinging mama’s boy, in case anyone tried to talk to me. The two weeks I had to stay for the latest trip couldn’t pass by soon enough.

With that haunting and embarrassing memory still fresh in my mind, I continued to study this colorful scripture of a children’s book. I was on the section that showed the different animals and objects you would find at a farm. Turning my head to ensure no one was watching a boy reading a book he was clearly too old for, I took a deep breath and pronounced the first word I saw: Pollo.

Notes:

I placed the most work on the introduction. I wanted to set up a story that would help illustrate how much Spanish meant to me, and how it was a foreign yet alien concept. I was sure to return to it once I had written the essay's main point, to give a sense of closure.