I arrived at the USA on July 3, 1995. My mother finally got us reunited after many years of being separated. It took many sacrifices to reach this goal.
So many memories, and time flew in a flash.
It has been 28 years since I moved to the United States of America. My home is in Virginia, but funny enough, I was in Florida when I woke up on this Monday, July 3, 2023. Florida is the first state where I lived when I arrived to Florida. The difference is that the port of arrival was Miami International Airport to what would be my home an hour north in Fort Lauderdale. As I type this article, I am onboard USS COLE DDG 67, somewhere in international waters. What a day!
A moment to reminisce.
When I first arrived to USA, I was only 16 years old. The year was 1995, and I had mixed emotions. To be honest, I loved my lifestyle back in Ecuador, where I was born. We had a beautiful house and I had tons of amazing friends. Some of which I affectionately keep in touch with even after all these years. That is despite the fact that we seldom get to talk.
But really, that is also consequence of the Navy life. In the last couple of years I don’t even get to talk much with people who live in my own house! That is my wife and daughter, mainly because I am gone out to sea so much. Let alone actually spending social time with anybody else who lives in town, and forget about anybody out of town. 28 years later, and my greatest dread of being away from those people who I loved and meant the world to me are in fact far away.
One of the things I dreaded about missing it is that back in the day I had friends with him I could spend hours having deep conversations. These deep and fascinating conversations seemed to never end, and we were happy to chat for hours and hours. It was great! Well, that is not happening in my life now (as I am typing this).
My best companion whenever I am away from home is my keyboard. I do enjoy having conversations with my keyboard. And this is not a diss to people onboard, there are some phenomenal people on this ship. It is just not the same level of depth in conversation that I used to have before. However, whenever I am back home, I do have that deep conversation opportunity. I very much dislike shallow and small meaningless talk. Like conversations that are intellectually stimulating. With my wife we can speak for hours and hours about all kinds of stuff and it is always fascinating and fun. I miss that. And of course that makes me miss my wife a lot more as I am laying here on my bunk.
It is the end of the day, and today was a long one. I feel sleepy, but I don’t feel like sleeping. How paradoxical is that? Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and we do have an Independence Day celebration onboard. There will be a few meetings and essentially a bit of a holiday routine, peppered with taskings and other work requirements. We will also have something we call “steel beach picnics” – where we barbeque stuff on this warship’s flight deck. My understanding is that we are also doing a gunnery exercise. What can be more American than that? I’ll write an article about celebrating Independence Day onboard USS COLE tomorrow. For now I want to be a bit selfish and talk about my story.
My story is not only mine.
Today I am alone, and although not lonely per say – I just feel empty. To be fulfilled in my case win when I have my wife and daughter beside me. And that is normal in my humble view, because there are a lot of emotions bottled into this date (July the third). And to be honest that is not something I even feel about talking (in person) to any of my shipmates. But at the same time I very much want to express what is in my mind. Yes, a day of paradoxes. But there is a reason for this. As I said before, I miss these deep conversations. I don’t really have that going on onboard this particular ship. And I am not faulting anybody on that. I am just not ready today to have these deep-conversations with anybody. That is my choice, and I stand by it. And as I stablish before, it is not like I have a choice anyway.
It has not been a bad day. Though I did have to deal with a lot of annoying situations, and yes some of these situations involve annoying people. I don’t say that everyone is annoying here… but I can count with at least one hand the number of people who have been very annoying to me today (I can use both hands in fact). Generally speaking I don’t let that get to me, but at the same time TODAY I really did not want to deal with all that. Sure that some of that would be trivial, but as the saying goes – there is a time and place for everything.
An example of an annoying situation, today I was getting off duty… meaning that I had duty the day before, and we turned over in the morning. But that also means that I had to be up and about pretty freaking early. And that is a bit annoying since I had to get up super early also on Sunday for duty. Being on duty away from home is annoying – hell, it is annoying even back at home. But here is a bit harder in a different port because I really don’t have a choice but to be stuck here, and when it is back at home at least my wife and daughter had come to visit me and spend time with me for a few hours onboard. And whatever a uniform person wants to chime in, let me stablish that this ship (the one I am on right now) has logged the most underway days of any other ship in the Navy in the last two years. So no, not everybody has experienced the same rigor.
Back in topic, not such a choice to have my wife visiting me today. And we were in Mayport, FL. I really even had a chance to talk on the phone. This port we were in this morning is somewhat near to Jacksonville, FL. It was super-hot, and humid. But all in all it was not a ‘bad day’ – to be selfishly honest it is not just what I would have envisioned 28 years ago. You know, that today I would be where I am at this exact second away from my loved ones, when back in that day was a reunion to be with my siblings with whom we were separated for so many years.
But then again, back then the story was just starting. There was so much I would have never dreamed about. Everything was new to me. Even seeing my siblings in the flesh after years of separation.
Sadly, fast forward to this point and my mother, grandmother, and great-aunt passed away. Recently also my great-uncle also passed away. He was the closest to a male role model I’ve got growing up. And a lot of great close friends I had have become estranged. Better said, we have all moved on with our own lives. No distain, no controversy, just lives takes in separated paths. Days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years, and before we realize it, we have lost shy of three decades.
Sure that I have a lot of friends from those years still in my personal social media – but as I said we all went our separated ways. And that includes my siblings. Even though I have two who live in the same city as I do – I rarely get to see them. And as I established lately, I don’t even get to see my wife and daughter as much as I wish. And yes, whenever I am home, my two girls are my priority.
But none of this would have been possible if it was not that my mother, who passed away several years ago – in Ecuador from all places. She brought us to USA back in 1995. It was not easy at all to achieve this. Though we arrived with a “Green Card” – Permanent Resident “visa” – attaining that was not easy at all. And I am grateful to my mother all for those sacrifices she had to endure to afford us that opportunity. I’m not going to go into detail in this article… but it is mind-bending all the complexity behind it. And although as time moved forward there was a lot which I did not agree with her. But I do acknowledge all the good she did, and highlight credit where credit is due. And there is plenty to go around.
And to be honest, that is the main reason why I don’t really want to talk to anybody, and the reason why I wanted to write this article – and though I am very tired I don’t want to go to sleep yet. This is not the type of story I want to tell in person to somebody who is sitting in my presence. First off because it might be too intense for them, and I know everybody is fighting their own demons. I don’t need to add mine to whatever they are dealing with. And on that note is because of that I feel that this is too sacred for me to just squander on somebody who might only pay a small percentage of attention to what this really means to me. Even if their intent is not disrespectful. But why even risk it, right?
As I said before, I want to be selfish and tell my story. But this story – even if read by any of my dear readers, it is really a story for my mother. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that “she’s reading this from wherever she is.” Sure, for some people who find solace on that, I’ll let them have it if that gives them closure. It might be true for all I know, but there is no empirical demonstrable science to corroborate that as I lay down here. And another reason is because this very though makes me deeply sad.
As any child did have plenty of fucked memories about my mother. But as any son, I have also a million more very fond memories about her. And to be honest, I am pretty much living a similar life as hers – except that I might be a little older than she was at the time. – Also the environment was different. You see, when I was growing up – and I was in the 4th Grade of elementary school – my mother started traveling back and forth from Ecuador to Florida in pursuit of a better life for all her four children. That’s my sister, and my two other brothers and myself. She was not perfect, and neither is anybody else walking the planet today or ever.
But because of these sacrifices I grew up with my younger brother away from her and from my two other siblings. My sister and youngest brother were after significant legal battles were able to go to USA years before we did. Mostly because my father was an asshole and he would block any opportunity for any of us to travel abroad, and this required a lot of legal fights. My mother had to fight in courts for years. And it was not until I was 13 years old that for a lack of a better description that I had to tell my father how many ways he could go and fuck himself in order to be allowed to travel abroad. And we’ve been estranged ever since. But at least we got a chance to travel and be “united” as a family with my siblings after so many years. But remember – I arrived to USA at age 16, so all these tribulations after breaking free from my father still took several years to come to fruition.
Growing apart from your mother and siblings for so many years at such a critical age creates irreparable damage to these family relationships. Period. No matter how much we tried, it was like being strangers living under the same roof. We were just such different people, all of us. I am sure that was not my mother’s intent, but I would not be able to describe all these “growing pain” in detail in a single article. Nor do I have the energy to do so at this time. So I will just say that there was a lot that happened through the years that further demonstrated how different we were from each other.
When my mother was traveling from Ecuador to USA, she would have to spend several months and even years in USA and away from us in Ecuador. In other words she always had two sets of her children several countries away from each other. That went out for so many years. We were lucky if we saw my mother coming to “visit us” in Ecuador when I was still a child… maybe see us 2-3 weeks in a year and then off she went abroad again, then return a couple of years later for a few weeks, and same thing like that. Each time we had grown a lot, and we have changed… and so did she. Yet, we were always so excited to see her return. Even though she was, admittedly, a very difficult person to deal with. That’s why any difficult wanna-be person I’ve ever met ever since are trivial to me, they cannot hold a fucking candle to my mother’s temper.
But despite all this, we were family. As I said earlier, I give credit where credit is due. And with that said, I will not embellish a story or a personality for the sake of nostalgia. I loved my mother, and because of that I will be true to the person she really was. She did sacrifice more than most people I’ve ever met – and that is not embellishment. And she was a good mother despite all the many, many disagreements we had. And many (if not all) of those disagreements I stand-by my arguments. But that does not negate the fact that she tried the best she could. And that included bringing us here to USA after procuring a beautiful home in a wealthy neighborhood. What we lived were opportunity very few people in my already privileged environment in Ecuador would have even dreamed of.
And it took me to return to Ecuador for the second time to visit to realize how much my life had indeed transformed… arguably for the best.
But as I lay here in my bunk, I cannot help but to see a parallel between my mother and I, and my daughter Sammy. Here I am, making a better life for my child while sacrificing the very opportunity to be with her – especially for her future. Afterall I was already in the Navy past the “point of no return” before she was even born. But fast forward to today, I very much know that being separated from her is actually a very toxic situation for her, and that is in the end very harmful in her upbringing – despite the many benefits trying to balance this quagmire. Hence, I will be retiring sooner than later – next April. But today, 28 years to the day later from where I arrived, I am floating on a warship in international waters and will not return home for a long time… again.
I know that someday all this will only be a memory. I am grateful for all the good I’ve received while in America. And I also know that despite the sacrifices my mother made to afford us this opportunity, nothing was easy and nothing was really handed to us after we arrived to USA. Everything has a price, even if the price is undivided time and attention towards something or the other. And one day I might write about that, because our time was certainly not free. But that is a very long story, and to be honest I just don’t have the energy to even think about it all.
Just as I close this article. I do want to thank my adopted country once again – the United States of America for receiving me. I became a citizen in May 2008, and a United States Navy Sailor in 2003. There has been so much trust bestowed in me by the United States that I am forever grateful, and I don’t take that for granted. It has been 28 years. From a teenager full of energy to an almost 45-year-old man who is nearing Retirement after 20 years of military service. There are still many adventures left ahead of me. And just like today I am telling this story about my 28 years anniversary in USA, for my 29th anniversary my desire is to write a much happier article. That’s the goal for next year. We’ll know for sure when the day arrives.
Until that time, I will continue doing my best. And in case it was not clear enough I will reminisce about my mother’s memory. And from there I will call it a night. This next conversation after I close my tablet – that will not be typed, nor spoken. Instead it will be an inner monologue as I drift into a dream. I might be able to spend time with her in my dreams and memories. As I wrote in a song, there is a line which goes “in my thoughts you’ll be alive.” HLC