Graciela María González

Migrating is a way of destroying, you must change everything, get rid of a bunch of stuff,  change your landscape, and erase a home, find poetry elsewhere.After arriving in Spain and changing his last name, my great-grandfather became a builder in Boal, Asturias, building stone walls and houses, many of which still stand after so many years, untouched by the passing of time.

My grandfather built his own house close to the beach in Palenque, Dominican Republic. This house had a stone wall and a fruit garden. He tended the garden every day, figuring out clever solutions for making each plant happy. He made special watering devices and hanging pots. You could tell it made him happy to make things that cleverly work.

I remember my father building office furniture for the house, drilling holes in the walls, making a wall planter out of an old metal gate door for the climbers in the garden. He too loves to take care of his garden. 

Stones, gardens, arches, and I, the last link in the chain, my vestige today, is writing about them.

I feel misplaced sometimes, I do not feel like I could build a house or a wall, even a wooden desk to last, to be forever where I am right now. I have moved houses twice in a row since I arrived in the Netherlands. It is hard to think of forever when you're on a soon-to-be-expired contract and uncertainty hits. I wish to find a place where I can grow a fruit garden, where I can maintain a roof to outlast me just like my father, my grandfather, and the people before me did. 

Like my ancestors, I am also building, not with stones, wood, or plants, but with words. I am building a home of time and memory, a collage of all the houses of my childhood, all the things my grandparents and the grandparents of my grandparents built. Although this house might not move, it helps me to move forward.