22 Years in 72 Hours: Part 2

Feels like it took me 22 years to write this second part.

ICYMI: 22 Years in 72 Hours: Part 1

On my last day in the Dominican Republic, I decided to go to the town where my family is from and where I spent so many summers of my youth at my grandfather’s house. This is the same house where my grandfather had a showdown with an octopus and won.

Even though many had already seen the house and had warned me that it was derelict and condemned, I still wanted to see it with my own eyes. As our driver pulled up to the house I could already see the state of despair it had fallen into. It was barely a shell of itself. So many of my childhood memories stem from this forgotten home. From running outside into the warm Caribbean rain with droplets the size of marbles hitting our heads to sipping the water of a coconut at the malecon that separates the ocean from my grandfather’s house. This place was part of my identity and crumbling before my eyes.

The front facade of the house.

This used to be an outdoor kitchen of sorts. It’s where my grandfather would clean and prep fish including that live octopus he made into a tasty salad.

Whenever I pass an abandoned home or a house that’s dilapidated I remind myself that someone lived there and that at one point someone loved that home.

As I stepped up to the gate that led to the ruins my stomach was in knots. Why had it come to this? I knew my grandfather’s children couldn’t upkeep the home from abroad and there was also the problem of selling it. For so many years there was always an argument of who had rights to the house and how much it could be sold for. The age-old problem of when someone dies and doesn’t leave specific instructions of what to do with their property.

Little ol’ me sitting at the malecon in front of my grandfather’s home.

Current view of the malecon from the house.

What I think happens when you truly miss a place is that you ultimately miss who you were while you were there. An old version of yourself that can only have manifested itself in that time and space. It’s a yearning that can never truly be fulfilled. What I really missed was my childhood ignorance. The ignorance of differences of skin color, race, and ethnicity. I guess it only took me twenty-two years to figure that out.

Sitting in the same spot as my childhood photo.

Going back to my beginnings helped me realize that I found the end—the end to a self imposed two-decade hiatus. I could finally let my shoulders rest while I looked out into the ocean. I could finally release the breath I had held tight in my lungs since I arrived at the airport. I could be Dominican. I could be American. I could be Black. I could be all of those things all at once. I didn’t have to be anybody else but me, which felt liberating.

Cook. Eat. Repeat.

Natalie ❤️✨