The Scissors and the Baby Blanket

The photo album is a no brainer.

Too heavy and too big for a twenty-three kg suitcase. If I take it with me, I’ll have to pay the extra money for the extra weight, and I’m definitively not doing that. Besides, it’s not like I’m not coming back.

I am coming back.

“Take scissors with you, you never know when you’ll need them.” My mom says while holding a small purple knitted clutch against her chest. She made it herself, and I think is so tacky.

It’s filled with a variety of small and insignificant necessities, that you never care about until you need them in a foreign country. specially because they have always been there.

Who bought the first scissors in this house? Was t a gift from my grandma? Did they moved it from their previous home?

I wonder.

“There will be places to by stuff, you know?” I try to argue with her, but after a moment I take the small container from her hands. As we say in my country: ‘A prepared woman is worth two.’ And I don’t want to spend money in things that I need, but I can’t eat.

My dad brings her a cup of deep black coffee, and the smell makes me want to get up from my knees, to stop everything I'm doing and sit with them. Only to talk; because in a Latin house, when coffee is there, conversation must follow.

But my dad stares at the suitcase on the floor, mumbles something about the difference in weather and turns: leaving me and my mom with our untold coffee-time stories.

I take a sip from my mom’s cup and continue packing, just the basics, what I need to get started in a new place.

“Can you give me that jacket over there?” I say after arranging my work pants. I know I’ll find a job soon because my resume is good and I was a good student, it's meant to happen.

I get up one more time from the cold tiles and add a thick sweater to the suitcase. I bought it in one of my trips. It takes a lot of space but who knows? Maybe my dad is right, and my clothes won’t be appropriate for the weather.

Though even here in the Caribbean, we have some cold in December, and I mean cold is cold, right? A jacket is good anywhere. Or so I think.

I’m almost done, there's only one more thing I need to pack; and even if it doesn’t fit, I’ll wrap it around me in the plane.

My baby blanket.

I don’t know where my mom got it. It wasn't in one of those expensive stores that promise that their fabric will last forever. Because this blanket is filled with holes and, if I lift it against the lightbulb, I can see through it.

But this pink, piece of cotton is mine. It was the first thing I touched in my crib and it’s the first thing I touch when I’m going to bed.

I think it will help me in those first nights when I’ll be hearing mysterious creaks in an unknown house in a foreign country. Maybe.

My mom smiles, but she acts like if holding to a safety blanket it’s the most normal thing in the world for a 30-year-old woman.

She makes lists of everything I should take with me; and, as a knowledgeable woman, she has the last word on everything.

So, I put the scissors inside one of my sport shoes and continue folding my t-shirts. All in good shape and in basic colors.

A first impression is everything, or so I’ve been told.

She’s a harsh woman, my mother. But I hear her at night crying in her bedroom. Asking my dad not to mention it, because I need to be strong, and she needs to be stronger. This breaks my heart.

I can’t hear what my dad replies, sometimes is easier just not to say a thing; and, as a Latin dad most is said with grunts and frowns than with words.

My sisters are juggling with devastation and excitement. I’m the oldest, so they take it to imagine how my adventure is going to be and how I’ll clear a path for them to follow me after.

Because they have good resumes too, and they were amazing students; so it just have to happen for them too. They will succeed too.

It’s the law of life. Or so I tell myself.

The rest of the family is not that supportive with my departure

“She’ll be back when she sees that things aren’t as easy as she thinks,” I heard my aunt saying the other night. My mom nodded; she knows better, she knows me better.

They can’t see it yet, but everything is going to hell so fast that in a couple of years there won’t be a suitcase to fill or a chance to take. This is my only option to secure a future for them.

More and more industries are leaving the country. More and more people are being kidnapped and killed by his followers. Those that adore the man that robbed my generation of a future and my parent’s generation of a well-deserved and peaceful retirement. Those that feel entitle to take the country on their hands, not matter the cost.

My family can’t see it yet.

They are certain that everything will get better.

“It must” they say. “It can’t get any worse, the regime wouldn’t dare to pass this law or take that right away.”

They still rule their life by a deceased and obsolete moral code that only them and their parents remember.

“People in this country wouldn’t allow it.” I hear the same chanting all the time. And I also see the transgressions stager one over the other, sandwiched by some histrionic declaration of the opposite political party.

Bread and circuses. Said the Romans.

In this country, is all part of the same circus, just different acts.

The new group in power didn’t grow with my parent's values, they didn’t grow with any aspirations to work for a better life. They only grew with hate.

It's a heavy one, the one they have. The hate of achieving nothing in life and not knowing why; the hate that comes when there’s no food and the roof above your head let the rain in.

The problem is that the hate is misdirected. My parents didn’t take their jobs, I didn’t make them poor. But hate is hate, and I'm paying for it.

And I get it, I do.

I will have that hate too in a couple of years. I will be consumed by the same hate when I look back and realize that no, I’m not coming back.

I should have leave the expensive shoes behind and bring the photo album with me. Because I’m starting to forget their young faces and my baby self. The baby in one of the pictures, wrapped in a pink baby blanket.

Or so I think I remember.