i was born on long island the daughter of a gorgeous, perfectionist gynocologist with tiny hands and feet and an absurd way of speaking that only sincere people can really get away with; an explosive and playful criminal defender with infinite energy and ambition, limited time, dreamy/scary secrets and a movie-star smile; an eternal softy whose belt and cooking love you but in case you don’t know it, she’ll give you her last dollar (but never tell you directly about the ghosts surrounding your head); a benson&hedges-smoking caribbean saint who gambled, womanized, drank johnny walker red and gardened; one of my three sisters, but only for a brief time – now we are sisters, but she remains a mother and i a daughter. i’ve lived in urban, suburban and rural. i arrive in barcelona in february 2006.
my atypical upbringing had everything that a typical great neck, long island upbringing should have, and that made it difficult for me to admit that i secretly obsessed over it. “who is that man that lives over the garage?” friends would ask while slowly backing away from the wallpaper in my mother’s house. grandma answers: “i’ll get the thirsty”, and she takes the spoon out of your hand and replaces it with a pencil. one of my sisters is practicing six different smiles in the mirror and saying “no” in varied tones to prove that she is losing her hearing, and my father just threw out another new cleaning lady for stealing his old underwear. you can say my brother and i stopped talking because of call waiting, but the man over the garage consoled me by sneaking in bacon (chaza) wrapped in layers of tin foil so my father wouldn’t see… or eat it himself, hiding in the garage.