Life

 As I approach the later part of it, I realize that life truly is a journey. A journey in which we have one single purpose, to learn. We come to this world with some innate knowledge, things like body functions, breathing and eating, but everything else we must learn. It is sad that most of us realize this a bit too late and some, never at all. We get too wrapped up in our everyday, mundane happenings to even look at “the big picture,” let alone understand it.

I hope I have not waited too long in my journey. I’ve had some breakthroughs and made some painful self-discoveries, the trick is to be able to improve, to make the rest of my life a meaningful and satisfying one. 

I find myself now, standing mostly alone. I am aware that it is a loneliness of my own making, I have isolated and distanced myself from most of the people that could be considered friends. I have very seldom allowed anyone to get close, other than my wife and son. 

Perhaps it all boils down to being an immigrant. I have never felt I belong anywhere since leaving my home in Cuba. It started a year before I came to the US. I moved to a city, far from the one I grew up on, far from my mother, my brother, grandparents, and friends. I felt like an outsider then and the feeling has not really gone away, since. 

I have tried many times to belong, to fit in, but inevitably I end up moving, going to a new promised land, new horizons. 

The closest I have come was when I met my wife, 34 years ago. I was able to settle for some time, start a family and get some roots. We stayed put for 19 years. We did not want to make a change before then so my son could continue his schooling among his friends and have his family around. After he graduated, he got accepted at a university 1500 miles away. This was our opportunity to try new possibilities, as a family. 

We packed and moved from Miami to Boston. We went further than when I came over from Cuba. Having lived in Alexandria, VA a couple of years before meeting my wife, I thought I was ready to handle the change. The experience was not a very pleasant one. We were the outsiders, coming from a vast different environment. The housing market correction was on the way and businesses were circling their wagons, I was laid off four months after transferring to the new city. 

A couple of years later my son moved to Orlando where a lot of his classmates from high school were located and we moved to Richmond where we thought we had some friends. We were there for two years, before moving to Norfolk and eventually returning to Florida. We went to Fort Pierce where we were only about a hundred miles from my son. 

Recently, my wife was offered an exceptionally good position in Bellingham, WA. Once again, we packed everything and drove 3500 miles this time, to our new home. We have been here almost a year and I must confess I love the city. The weather turned out to be much better than we anticipated and there is a lot to do here. 

There are a lot of outdoor activities in the city and the surrounding areas. I am going to get back into camping. The last time we went camping my son was around 10 years old. It was different then; we were a lot younger and still able to sleep on the ground without waking up to a thousand aches and pains. 

I am starting out on my own. I got information from one of my wife’s coworkers, who is an avid outdoors man, on some campgrounds nearby. I do not have any gear, so it will take a while to be able to do any prolonged stays, but I am looking forward to it. When we started camping in Miami, my son was five years old, and we found most of the original gear in garage sales around town. 

We started with one tent and three sleeping bags, a cooler, and some kitchen utensils. The first trip was just one night, but it evolved from there. We bought a small travel trailer and used it for a couple of years, before going back to the tent. Eventually we had a utility trailer where we hauled tubs filled with gear. By this point, we camped for weeks instead of days. Some of my son’s best memories from childhood are from those camping trips. 

I am looking forward to getting back into it. I am excited to see how it goes.