Foreword: At First Glance
Growing up in Midtown Manhattan, I never knew I was a little spoiled. At least, I never acknowledged that I was. Maybe that makes me even more spoiled. My mom was an elementary school teacher, my dad sold buildings and property. Or, he didn't do the actual selling. To this day I have no idea if he was a real estate agent or a loan officer or what he did. My older brother Nordin was four when my twin sister Valentina and I were born - we're not identical, but fraternal. Sororal, actually, which is the word for non-identical girl twins.
I'm rambling.
We went to Midtown Academy and then Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. I didn't realize it until my cousin Tatum pointed it out to me, but Jackie O High was a little... nicer than the schools some of my friends from around the neighborhood attended. Tat dragged me around to see some of them. And then I realized that Val and I never got invited to or inside a lot of our neighborhood friend's houses. The older I got, the more I wondered why not. Did they think we were stuck up?
When my dad left, it blew all of our minds. And when he left, he left. I'm talking, he was out the door so fast you would've thought the house was on fire. A lot of things changed that day. Mom went into hyper supermom mode. Seriously. This woman did everything. I wish I could have been more like she was when Richard was gone, instead of falling to pieces the way I did. But Tat actually said it best, and I remember this, decades later, that I wasn't able to keep it together because I never had a chance to say good bye. She said we were like a fairytale that someone ripped the last page out of. No one expected me to be sane.
But that's another chapter, for another day.
Let's start at the very beginning, shall we...
I'm rambling.
We went to Midtown Academy and then Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. I didn't realize it until my cousin Tatum pointed it out to me, but Jackie O High was a little... nicer than the schools some of my friends from around the neighborhood attended. Tat dragged me around to see some of them. And then I realized that Val and I never got invited to or inside a lot of our neighborhood friend's houses. The older I got, the more I wondered why not. Did they think we were stuck up?
When my dad left, it blew all of our minds. And when he left, he left. I'm talking, he was out the door so fast you would've thought the house was on fire. A lot of things changed that day. Mom went into hyper supermom mode. Seriously. This woman did everything. I wish I could have been more like she was when Richard was gone, instead of falling to pieces the way I did. But Tat actually said it best, and I remember this, decades later, that I wasn't able to keep it together because I never had a chance to say good bye. She said we were like a fairytale that someone ripped the last page out of. No one expected me to be sane.
But that's another chapter, for another day.
Let's start at the very beginning, shall we...