Mami is Close

My mother recently left Puerto Rico for good. She sold, after years of flirting with the idea, her condo, which she, in the Puerto Rican parlance, called a "walk up." I once used that in college to describe an on campus apartment I lived in.

"Its like a walk up, Professor Allen-Gil"

"What's a walk up?"

So you know, its a 3-5 story condo with no elevator. Why it has none I don't know but this is Puerto Rico, a godless country where novelty rules and forget compliance. I took an ex girlfriend there once and she was gobsmacked as we drove down the Condado tourist district in my mom's rusty Bonneville. Because there on Avenida Ashford someone was riding a horse bare back and shirtless (Phrasing, right?).

"How can that be!?"

"Its pretty normal here."

But my mom sold the walk up. Where she fixed the broken concrete frame for the window unit AC with strips of newspaper, tape, and glue.

And now she is very close to me yet separated by what seems a larger distance. "It is too cold, mijo" Note that to her, anything below 75 degrees is too cold. "Un frio peluo, mijo!" which translates to "A hairy cold." And, note, anything above 80 is too hot. "Un calor brutal, mjio. Sudando la gota gorda." A brutal heat. Sweating the big fat sweats. And she can't drive because she is afraid and so is my sister (Who also refuses to drive in the rain) where she has shacked up. For what is likely the forever future.

My sister has a McMansion. Her husband has a kegerator and a finished basement with the square footage of my house. My mother stays in a mother in law suite nestled in this basement with her own bathroom. When I visit, that is where I stay (My mother sleeps with my nieces or nephew. Note they are running from 12 to 17 so if this is begrudging or welcomed I don't know but its weird!) and in that bathroom she still have bottles of amber V05 shampoo. And hair dye and stained tweezing combs and tubes of scented moisturizer. It's Puerto Rico...except with forced air heating.

As a teen she coveted the Victoria Secret pear scent but no such store existed on the island. It may now but in the early aughts...man  not even Plaza Del Sol had that and that was in the most Americany town you could think of...Bayamon! Well, thats Guaynabo...sorry Guaynabo City....okay, but they could not find the space in GC.

So she had an ersatz coconut line bringing her the stuff. Whenver someone went to the US they had to bring back a bottle. I never toured colleges but I once visited my sister when she lived in Norther Virginia and we had a class trip to DC and she insisted on 40 dollars just for that.

"No way am I going in there, mami! NO WAY!"

"Ask you sister." Or, the real dagger, when we went on the class trip "Ask one of the girls in your class."

Ah, fuck, mami. No way. I spent it on Hoth Expnasion Packs for the Star Wars TCG.