Barefoot chronicles

 

I walk barefoot on a daily basis. I was told it’s a good way to reconnect with your roots, so I stuck to it.

I like to walk barefoot, not just literally, but figuratively. I listen to the music that ties me to my childhood, no matter how painfully nostalgic and raw it may feel.

I used to tell my mom to turn off her music because all my friends listened to Britney Spears and not Paquita la del Barrio. 

Now I melancholically sing along to "Tres Veces Te Engañé," even though I've always been the faithful one in my long list of failed love attempts.

I walk barefoot every day.

I feel a sort of connection to the food that built the taste palette that fills my heart with warmth when it's cold outside, and not even my North Face coat can shelter me.

Food seems to have some emotional relevance in my life. I think it’s because it comes from the ground that I walk barefoot on, but maybe that's a stretch—and either way, that's a topic for another day.

I walk barefoot on a daily basis, even though my mom tells me that that's the reason I'm always getting minor coughs and getting sick twice a year.

It's okay, Mom; I'm a tough cookie. You know that.

I was the easy kid growing up. My mom says I helped out a lot around the house and helped raise my brother most of the time. To this day, the running joke is that if my brother doesn't listen to my mom, he will definitely listen to me.

I was an easy and good kid. I learned English in elementary school through an ESL program that gave us snacks and let us play a lot of cool learning games after school hours (thank you for the granola bars, Mrs. Thompson). The games made me the default family translator at home—a solid first job, if you ask me. Whether it was asking for the price of clothes at Macy’s or Googling financial documents at home, those granola bars were my driving force.

I was an easy kid growing up, except for when I would walk around barefoot because then I would bring in dirt into the house, and it was obnoxious to clean up. Once my brother got a little older, he started walking around barefoot too. Yikes, sorry, Mom; that’s on me. He’s a good kid, though; maybe because he knows when to walk around barefoot and when not to.

I walk barefoot on a daily basis because it keeps me grounded to who I was. It keeps me centered to who I am. It keeps me on track to who I strive to be. I think that's a good trade-off for risking a cold. Ya know, because my mom says that always being barefoot is gonna get me sick one of these days.