A Memoir of Love
Forget about this I’m going to talk about something interesting, about something perplexing, about something extraordinary, and then promising.
Perhaps the one thing I wish I could do better in is in school. The reason for this change in topic is because I finally decided on a something to talk about the issues I have with regarding my school experience. I remember telling myself that I was going to rapidly pick something to focus on and then write the memoir. But this was not the case. The real issue here was relentless contemplating of the focus I wanted to head towards and my stubbornness. Stubborn because I did not want to pick something that would venture into my soul; I was not in the mood to do this for some number of reasons. Nevertheless, my journey at Kean started around September of 2004 and I was freshman.
I was a freshman at a new place of learning. A place where young minds as myself would walk to class and walk out of class more educated each time. I remember getting up early in the morning my first semester, very early, to catch a train from South Amboy to Newark. From Newark, I would head towards Union. I would get to my first class about fifteen minutes late, not too bad to start off my new semester; but it was not because of my deliberate action, it was because of the way the train schedule to Union from my house was setup. I wasn’t going to get up an hour earlier than I was since I was already getting up an hour earlier than I really needed if I drover there and I was not going to wait an hour at school until class begun. That was a big no for me. Surprisingly, my father did not disagree with me and my professor at the time was rather nice and allowed my continual lateness for the rest of the classes. School for me was a weeklong mission; I had classes every day. I did not have any jobs at all at that time. It was my first semester in college and well according to my dad; I had to focus completely on my studies. According to me though, it wasn’t the case. I had intentions of taking a year off after high school; I wanted to take a year off and save money, I don’t know why, it would waste a year of my time, but I just did. I wasn’t in the mood for school, especially college level school. I wasn’t in the mood for waking up early; barely making it for the train left me standing at the small station a block from my house. I was not in the mood for school. I was not in the mood until something extraordinary happened.
But before I get ahead of myself, let me talk some more about my perplexing freshmen semester. The reason why I say it was perplexing was because, I was actually in a state of confusion as to whether what I was doing was what I wanted to do or what I should do and if what I was doing was good for me to do at that set time. Well, for one thing that’s a pretty perplexing sentence right there, because it was a strange time for me. Me growing up, stepping into adulthood, all by myself. My dad did not babysit me, I was on my own for the first time ever, but for the most part he was fairly distance for the majority of my life. Not too much but only enough, to be noticeable. What is odd about this, and this is irrelevant to my perplexing freshmen semester, is that now that my parents are divorced, we are closer than when he was married, which is weird, strange and perplexing but let’s get back to my growing up. I still did not feel like a man as a freshman at Kean, I felt like a man taking an extra senior year at high school. But thanks to my dad, I got up to go to college every day given that he would pull off the covers when he knew it was time for me to wake up, and then I would take the train to school to get there fifteen minutes late. I did my annoying homework every day, annoying because of the remedial classes, two of them, easy but annoying. I also had a political science class and a philosophy class. We didn’t talk about God in that class which was sort of a letdown since I was interested in God and about that sort of stuff. It was interested nevertheless; I actually got pleasure from reading the books assigned for the class.
Yet what was so perplexing about my freshmen semester. Or, what if it wasn’t perplexing at all, I just remember it as being perplexing since it was a while ago. What if what was really going on was something called laziness. I hate that word. I remember growing up as a little boy saying to myself that I was not and will never be lazy. I remember others talking about my father, my relatives, talking about him, behind his back but I heard them. I remember them saying that he was a lazy man, always sleeping, making my mother do everything, but he did work. He got up every day and went to work. He came home a slept, didn’t do much most of the time, but he went to work every day. They still said he was a lazy man. I grew up hating that word and when someone called me lazy I got serious and proved that I was not. One day, I was eleven years old, maybe a bit younger, I remember I was helping my grandfather early in the morning make cement for an equipment shed we were building next to our house in Puerto Rico. Yes, I lived over there for about four years, came back to the states at around sixth grade. Anyway, I remember I was helping him, but I was bit slow and relaxed, since I had just woken up from a beautiful Puerto Rican sleep. On a side note, I loved the Puerto Rican nights, they were very peaceful. Well after one Puerto Rican night, this particular Puerto Rican night, I was still in bed although my hand were wrapped around a shovel and slowly jabbing on the sand, gravel and cement mix I was standing in. Well I about started to daydream when my grandfather, “Que pasa, eres vago!?” which in English translates to,”What’s the matter, you’re lazy!?”, and I about shoved that shovel down to China after he said that. I started to constrict that shovel so tight, I didn’t have to brush against the wood to get some splinters embedded into my hands. I just ran up the hill to where the trucks dumped the concrete bags and sand, my shovel bouncing around the wheel wagon I was pushing and brought over the concrete he needed down making trips from the site to the pit so fast, as fast as my eleven year old body could go, that in the end he smiled hugged me and gave me a dollar for some candy. Looking up at him, the tropical sun blaring down on my face and the back of my grandfathers head I said “Gracias, manana vamos acer mas?” which in English means, “Gracias, are we going to work tomorrow.” Then I ran along to do whatever, I don’t remember, maybe I thought about how much of Spanish Americans really know.
Okay, so then during my perplexing first semester at college was perplexing because I was lazy I was a lazy freshman. It took some growing up to admit that I was lazy, it wasn’t until about a year later that I would finally come to realize that I would sometimes be lazy, and trust me that was not something I could do on my own. I still hate laziness though, in me, in everything and everyone around me, not that it gets personal with anyone else but with me it certainly does. But during the time I did not know this. I did not think that I was lazy, but I guarantee you, if someone told me I was, I probably would have constricted my pencil or pen until I got splinters and worked harder but I still did would not have loved what I was doing. And what is this, Love, a new word in this story. That is right I had no care, I did not know what the heck I was doing with my life, what I was doing at Kean and taking trains, I was lazy, confused and perplexed, until something changed in me.
Middle of October, I was not lazy, but perplexed, living like a perplexed lazy freshmen, even though at the time I did not admit the lazy part. My church’s youth group had a weekend getaway where one could go and come back a changed person. Well as for me, I only embarked because my parents wanted me and only recently became interested a little more in God. I grew up going to church on a regular basis, my father played the keyboard and only played the keyboard at various churches. My mother sang along with him. I always had a deep respect for the things of God and the church, but I never really committed to God and just didn’t feel like being ‘different’, even though during the summer before I accepted Jesus into my heart at a youth meeting at my church, I just put my faith in Him. You know one of the most perplexing people are people who grow up going to church, grow up hearing about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, perplexing because they follow God one month, and not the next. It’s almost like a little game of monopoly. You pass go, you get closer to God, you land on go, you get farther from God. And that was me for most of my life until that weekend getaway. It was during one of the night services after an eye opening message, that I about balled out crying like a baby for no logical reason at all! Nobody said anything morbid to me, I was not thinking about any beached whales, no one in my family had passed away, I was normal before I got there, just a little anxious over the homework due the next Monday, but I just started to cry. All I remember doing is actually saying to God, that I surrender to Him and that I want Him truly, and I started to cry. I’ve never cried for any reason like that ever. I always had a reason to cry. Weren’t even singing anything remotely depressing; we were singing “More Power, More Love”. It was extraordinary. After that weekend I did not care who did not believe in Jesus, I didn’t care what my parents said, my friends or what my mind said about how does this and that happen, is there an after-life? I did not care anymore; I know there is an afterlife. That weekend I was taught that if I did not make a decision to follow Him, then I did not make it at all, and when I die, I risk going to an abysmal place I now know exists and had no excuses- I grew up going to church and hearing about the same message and did nothing?! And so I cried after that message, and I put my faith in Jesus.
After that the rest of my semester was not perplexing. I went to school in the morning willingly, my dad never had to come into my room and rip the covers off of my bed to get me up anymore. I just got up. I took the train and loved what I did. As for getting to class fifteen minutes late; no, I did not take the earlier train. But I was not upset about that lateness anymore. My teacher was okay with it; I said “Y’sure?” he said with a deep confident voice,”Yep”. I made sure of it so I went to school peacefully. I continued to grow in Jesus and the next year through Him I was finally able to identify when I was lazy and admit it. Right now I’m just trying to figure out why I get lazy. Hey, here’s that love word again, I’ll uses it again. I love Jesus.
Forget about this I’m going to talk about something interesting, about something perplexing, about something extraordinary, and then promising.
Perhaps the one thing I wish I could do better in is in school. The reason for this change in topic is because I finally decided on a something to talk about the issues I have with regarding my school experience. I remember telling myself that I was going to rapidly pick something to focus on and then write the memoir. But this was not the case. The real issue here was relentless contemplating of the focus I wanted to head towards and my stubbornness. Stubborn because I did not want to pick something that would venture into my soul; I was not in the mood to do this for some number of reasons. Nevertheless, my journey at Kean started around September of 2004 and I was freshman.
I was a freshman at a new place of learning. A place where young minds as myself would walk to class and walk out of class more educated each time. I remember getting up early in the morning my first semester, very early, to catch a train from South Amboy to Newark. From Newark, I would head towards Union. I would get to my first class about fifteen minutes late, not too bad to start off my new semester; but it was not because of my deliberate action, it was because of the way the train schedule to Union from my house was setup. I wasn’t going to get up an hour earlier than I was since I was already getting up an hour earlier than I really needed if I drover there and I was not going to wait an hour at school until class begun. That was a big no for me. Surprisingly, my father did not disagree with me and my professor at the time was rather nice and allowed my continual lateness for the rest of the classes. School for me was a weeklong mission; I had classes every day. I did not have any jobs at all at that time. It was my first semester in college and well according to my dad; I had to focus completely on my studies. According to me though, it wasn’t the case. I had intentions of taking a year off after high school; I wanted to take a year off and save money, I don’t know why, it would waste a year of my time, but I just did. I wasn’t in the mood for school, especially college level school. I wasn’t in the mood for waking up early; barely making it for the train left me standing at the small station a block from my house. I was not in the mood for school. I was not in the mood until something extraordinary happened.
But before I get ahead of myself, let me talk some more about my perplexing freshmen semester. The reason why I say it was perplexing was because, I was actually in a state of confusion as to whether what I was doing was what I wanted to do or what I should do and if what I was doing was good for me to do at that set time. Well, for one thing that’s a pretty perplexing sentence right there, because it was a strange time for me. Me growing up, stepping into adulthood, all by myself. My dad did not babysit me, I was on my own for the first time ever, but for the most part he was fairly distance for the majority of my life. Not too much but only enough, to be noticeable. What is odd about this, and this is irrelevant to my perplexing freshmen semester, is that now that my parents are divorced, we are closer than when he was married, which is weird, strange and perplexing but let’s get back to my growing up. I still did not feel like a man as a freshman at Kean, I felt like a man taking an extra senior year at high school. But thanks to my dad, I got up to go to college every day given that he would pull off the covers when he knew it was time for me to wake up, and then I would take the train to school to get there fifteen minutes late. I did my annoying homework every day, annoying because of the remedial classes, two of them, easy but annoying. I also had a political science class and a philosophy class. We didn’t talk about God in that class which was sort of a letdown since I was interested in God and about that sort of stuff. It was interested nevertheless; I actually got pleasure from reading the books assigned for the class.
Yet what was so perplexing about my freshmen semester. Or, what if it wasn’t perplexing at all, I just remember it as being perplexing since it was a while ago. What if what was really going on was something called laziness. I hate that word. I remember growing up as a little boy saying to myself that I was not and will never be lazy. I remember others talking about my father, my relatives, talking about him, behind his back but I heard them. I remember them saying that he was a lazy man, always sleeping, making my mother do everything, but he did work. He got up every day and went to work. He came home a slept, didn’t do much most of the time, but he went to work every day. They still said he was a lazy man. I grew up hating that word and when someone called me lazy I got serious and proved that I was not. One day, I was eleven years old, maybe a bit younger, I remember I was helping my grandfather early in the morning make cement for an equipment shed we were building next to our house in Puerto Rico. Yes, I lived over there for about four years, came back to the states at around sixth grade. Anyway, I remember I was helping him, but I was bit slow and relaxed, since I had just woken up from a beautiful Puerto Rican sleep. On a side note, I loved the Puerto Rican nights, they were very peaceful. Well after one Puerto Rican night, this particular Puerto Rican night, I was still in bed although my hand were wrapped around a shovel and slowly jabbing on the sand, gravel and cement mix I was standing in. Well I about started to daydream when my grandfather, “Que pasa, eres vago!?” which in English translates to,”What’s the matter, you’re lazy!?”, and I about shoved that shovel down to China after he said that. I started to constrict that shovel so tight, I didn’t have to brush against the wood to get some splinters embedded into my hands. I just ran up the hill to where the trucks dumped the concrete bags and sand, my shovel bouncing around the wheel wagon I was pushing and brought over the concrete he needed down making trips from the site to the pit so fast, as fast as my eleven year old body could go, that in the end he smiled hugged me and gave me a dollar for some candy. Looking up at him, the tropical sun blaring down on my face and the back of my grandfathers head I said “Gracias, manana vamos acer mas?” which in English means, “Gracias, are we going to work tomorrow.” Then I ran along to do whatever, I don’t remember, maybe I thought about how much of Spanish Americans really know.
Okay, so then during my perplexing first semester at college was perplexing because I was lazy I was a lazy freshman. It took some growing up to admit that I was lazy, it wasn’t until about a year later that I would finally come to realize that I would sometimes be lazy, and trust me that was not something I could do on my own. I still hate laziness though, in me, in everything and everyone around me, not that it gets personal with anyone else but with me it certainly does. But during the time I did not know this. I did not think that I was lazy, but I guarantee you, if someone told me I was, I probably would have constricted my pencil or pen until I got splinters and worked harder but I still did would not have loved what I was doing. And what is this, Love, a new word in this story. That is right I had no care, I did not know what the heck I was doing with my life, what I was doing at Kean and taking trains, I was lazy, confused and perplexed, until something changed in me.
Middle of October, I was not lazy, but perplexed, living like a perplexed lazy freshmen, even though at the time I did not admit the lazy part. My church’s youth group had a weekend getaway where one could go and come back a changed person. Well as for me, I only embarked because my parents wanted me and only recently became interested a little more in God. I grew up going to church on a regular basis, my father played the keyboard and only played the keyboard at various churches. My mother sang along with him. I always had a deep respect for the things of God and the church, but I never really committed to God and just didn’t feel like being ‘different’, even though during the summer before I accepted Jesus into my heart at a youth meeting at my church, I just put my faith in Him. You know one of the most perplexing people are people who grow up going to church, grow up hearing about Jesus and the Holy Spirit, perplexing because they follow God one month, and not the next. It’s almost like a little game of monopoly. You pass go, you get closer to God, you land on go, you get farther from God. And that was me for most of my life until that weekend getaway. It was during one of the night services after an eye opening message, that I about balled out crying like a baby for no logical reason at all! Nobody said anything morbid to me, I was not thinking about any beached whales, no one in my family had passed away, I was normal before I got there, just a little anxious over the homework due the next Monday, but I just started to cry. All I remember doing is actually saying to God, that I surrender to Him and that I want Him truly, and I started to cry. I’ve never cried for any reason like that ever. I always had a reason to cry. Weren’t even singing anything remotely depressing; we were singing “More Power, More Love”. It was extraordinary. After that weekend I did not care who did not believe in Jesus, I didn’t care what my parents said, my friends or what my mind said about how does this and that happen, is there an after-life? I did not care anymore; I know there is an afterlife. That weekend I was taught that if I did not make a decision to follow Him, then I did not make it at all, and when I die, I risk going to an abysmal place I now know exists and had no excuses- I grew up going to church and hearing about the same message and did nothing?! And so I cried after that message, and I put my faith in Jesus.
After that the rest of my semester was not perplexing. I went to school in the morning willingly, my dad never had to come into my room and rip the covers off of my bed to get me up anymore. I just got up. I took the train and loved what I did. As for getting to class fifteen minutes late; no, I did not take the earlier train. But I was not upset about that lateness anymore. My teacher was okay with it; I said “Y’sure?” he said with a deep confident voice,”Yep”. I made sure of it so I went to school peacefully. I continued to grow in Jesus and the next year through Him I was finally able to identify when I was lazy and admit it. Right now I’m just trying to figure out why I get lazy. Hey, here’s that love word again, I’ll uses it again. I love Jesus.
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