Summer night "Si vuelves tu"
36" x 36"
oil on canvas
2025.
Work Description:
There was a summer close to 15 years ago my mom , twin and I took a trip to visit my grandma who at the time lived in PA . It had to be the first time we traveled over there to visit since they(my grandma and aunts/cousins) moved away from our Hometown. We took a “Barahona” bus if you know you know. You paid at the time like 75 dollars and the bus drives you mid way and then you take another bus to drive you the other half of the trip. Our trip without stops would have been 8 hours , this was not a stop free ride. Barahona and bus companies like them are notorious for taking long, picking up more passengers than the bus can hold , they will literally also drop you off anywhere (think shopping plaza parking lot) but it used to cheap, we packed light and did what we had to do. Being willy nilly with rules, arriving super early or late and blasting music in what used to be non commercial use vans…
On our journey the first stop was NY and from NY at the NY bus station we would then get to PA. It was summer and boiling , The humid heat that makes highways look melted. we made it to NY station and unfortunately missed the last bus scheduled for PA. We were essentially stranded in NY .. My great aunt lived in Ny , I found out on that day …I don’t remember where in Ny she lived but I do remember taking a cab over to a “walk up” like a marble building ? Next to a blue teams stadium. There was also a subway line right in windows view of the apartment.
The last memory I have of my great aunt whom truth be told …was kind of distanced was when I was a child.I remember I was laying on my grandmas bed and she had came to visit . I had never seen her before so when she walked into my grandma’s room and we made eye contact I hid under the covers. She asked , “y ese es el hijo de Clara?” My grandma said yeah and said the phrases most shy kids are used to hearing , “he’s shy ,once he gets to know you…etc” My great aunt then said “I’m your grandmas sister you don’t need to hide etc” from the corner of the sheet I could see them speaking and a small card tucked in the dresser mirror of two parakeets kissing. My grandma was notorious for keeping everything, I know some stuff for sentiment , others decorative and a small bit of stuff for reasons I still don’t know.
We pulled up to her building and pressed the buzzard and she let us up. She visibly looked older than i remembered and so much time had passed that her face appeared fresh, unfamiliar like a stranger. Her hair I remembered sleek, long and salt and peppered. She kept birds and had bird seed everywhere on the floor , husk of seeds , whole seeds , the dehydrated corn. Her home minimally decorated , she sent us to get plantains from a store across the way from the building. Admittedly I was not really feeling the Dominican food in the sweltering heat. Eating amongst birdseeds and chattering parakeets. The sky was setting and although it wasn’t raining , the humidity and I assume some other static creating weather pattern created a dry lighting. My Mom being her niece and us Being children we slept in her bed and she slept on the couch. I could not sleep the apartment was hot , the fan was cheap and from the open living room window the subway car roared and lighting flashed. I wandered around a little in the apartment , thank fully we only needed to be there until 5 am /6am as we had arranged the Barahona bus to pick us up from the apartment and take us on the rest of our journey.
One thing she told me during our time there stuck with me and maybe she wanted to feel relieved/redeemed in saying it , she told me she was mad when my grandma was born , how she was 20 and couldn’t believe her father had another child. How she stopped talking to her dad for awhile and how it was only later in life she and my grandma were able rekindle or start having a relationship. Of course details and age accuracy fade with time but the point was she was an adult or close to adult when my grandma was born. Having those feelings in her heart , she was not mean to us at all . But id find a similarity between my great aunt and my grandma later in sharing vulnerability something not common for Dominicans.
We never saw her in person again, She passed maybe a month after my Grandma did.
In reflecting on this moment and my first moment in meeting, grief , my grandma , there similarities ,there admissions of regret, feelings etc . How the longing I feel now for my grandma parallels the longing I felt to leave my great aunts apartment at that time. Ive reimagined that time to encompass the fullness of that memory in retrospect. The feelings of that time stretch out and take on different meaning now.
