Tag: nostalgia

Thoughts in Spanish

Thoughts in Spanish

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 4 Comments

I want to write about Mexico.


About what it was like to return somewhere after 22 years and feel like you’d always been there.


I want to write about Mexico, but my thoughts are scattered among mountains, and cactus. They are running rampant with stray dogs along winding roads lined with palm trees and pop up food stands.


How do I make sense of everything that happened in the two weeks that stretched out like an eternity.


Things run slower in the motherland. There is an urgency, and need for immediate gratification that doesn’t exist there. Time has slowed down. Or maybe it’s that time is just running along at the right pace and we’re running too fast in the States?
Either way I came home tired.


And that title is misleading.


My thoughts have always been a jumble that predominantly exists in English. A place where Spanish shows up like a fond friend who’s mostly traveling and cannot be tied down.


No pos guau.


When I close my eyes and think of Mexico all I see is color.


Mexico is the brightest blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.


It is dark green mountains rising up towards it.


Red dusty earth.


The golden tan skin of people who rarely have the sun hidden from them.


When I close my eyes and think of Mexico, all I can think of are ghost stories, bygone times, and memories that don’t belong to me.
I think of blood that is a stranger to me and a longing to know who they were.


The family gathered, their aunt had come home. The baby of the family, who’d been away for so long had come back for a visit.


Naturally a pig was slaughtered and there was feasting and drinking and singing.


I watched my cousins clasp her hands and ask her one by one if she remembered them, if she knew their names. She nodded until she was overwhelmed by the amount of people, and questions.

I watched a cousin break down and cry as he tried to reconcile his memory of my mother– strong, vibrant, full of life, with the fragile, quiet, woman that stood in front of him.

I sat with her, holding her hand as the tears slid down her cheeks, for reasons I don’t think she understood.


When I think of this trip, I think of a loved one saying, “goodbye.”

Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 2 Comments

“It smells like summer,” she said. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, as they drove along the foggy road.

“Hmm?” He glanced at her not turning from the road ahead, knowing it was at times like these that deer liked to dart into the road.

“It smells like summer.” She repeated, breathing in deeply again as if trying to pick out the notes of what exactly summer smelled like. “You know, it’s the scent of that chill that only happens late at night or early in the morning on a summer’s day before the sun has a chance to heat things up. When everything is still covered in dew and the air is moist. It smells like wearing shorts with a hoodie and trying to find dry firewood to make a bonfire. It smells like memory making and like bittersweet nostalgia. It smells like not wanting the nights to end. It smells like summer.” She sighed and leaned against the window.

He smiled at her and reached for her hand. She squeezed it tight and scooted across the bench seat leaning against him.

“That’s a very specific scent.” He told her and leaned down to give her a quick, soft kiss on her forehead.

“It is.” She agreed.

And they drove in silence the rest of the way to the carnival, lost in the thoughts of summer.

NPM 17

NPM 17

by TheSecretLifeOfPandas ♥ 4 Comments

My body remembers the movement to old music.

Dancing by the big window on the third floor at lunch.

I loaned you one of my skirts.

Turns and turns.

I taught you steps.

It feels so long ago those Friday evenings when it was just you and me.

Or those nighttime walks with the pups that turned into dance sessions and impromptu choreography.

I hear old songs and I’m taken back to rehearsals with the girls.

Five, six, seven, eight.

Not a one, two, three, four.

It’s a kick, ball-change, followed by a turn clap clap.

We made notes on the paper table cloth as we ate crepes and drank coffee.

A group will enter here, she’ll have a solo there, everyone will come together in the chorus.

Do you remember the one where we jumped off the stage?

Or how about the one where we moved like skeletons?

I loved the one where I made you tutus and I can’t forget the one where I made you wings.

Sometimes I remember the one where we all cried. Oh, there were a few of those.

And sometimes the songs and movements just blend into a dance that has spanned decades.

It never ends, just goes on and on, song after song.