Sunshine

300 days of sunshine stamped across the college fliers.
My “cool youth culture” that was a “marketing bonanza for producers... who do all they can to enlarge that culture and keep it grinding” showed across these sheets of glossy paper (Edmund- son 41).
Colorado, coloRADo
Rad, adj. (a) challenging, risky; extreme (b) more generally: admirable, excellent, fashionable; “cool” (OED)

1. (a) Does not describe anything about myself. I cannot handle breaking rules, overstepping bounds. The clenching in my stomach and pounding of my heart when my friends asked me to ditch class or when I lied to my mom about anything, even what I had for lunch, was not me. The teasing and laughing about me being a “goody two-shoes,” the splotches on my legs from “accidental” tumbles on the playground, the looking to get lost in books to escape the darkness: that was me.
2. (b) Everything I want to be. Admirable, like my mother, excellent, like my father, fashionable, like my perfect goddess cousin, “cool” like everyone but me. This was not me either, but maybe it could be.

Maybe Colorado could be me...
After all, the salty shimmer in my mother’s eye when she saw me long for colorado was challenging, the gut-wrenching feeling every time he heard me accidentally utter colorado was risky, the idea of leaving chile, primos, Las Sandias, and mi corazón for Colorado was extreme, but who am I kidding,
I can’t achieve admirable, excellent, fashionable, especially not “cool.”
Sunshine isn't me.

Mountains

Las Sandias

The Watermelons
Watermelon was the fruit of the summer in my house since I was very young. My dad liked it with salt, so of course I did too.
My mom liked it plain, but still sprinkled salt on her watermelon.
I bought it in August and kept it in my mini-fridge.
I had no salt with me, the taste in my mouth wasn't the same.
From anywhere in the city you could see the watermelons.
They stood tall, declaring their power and glory for all to see.

After years of looking at the same mountain landscape, one tended to get bored of them.

They began to look rigid, dusty in color, completely still, and completely stupid.
Moving in from the city to the mountains, I was astonished at the softness I was able to find in the ridges, the color I was able to find in the dust, and the wisdom I found in their stillness. These mountains made me.

They were the river that carved away my granite soul; repeatedly thrashing against me with its battering current.
I am hidden by the shadow of these watermelons.
I became a taller mountain.

The Flatirons

I first started straightening my hair in middle school.
My hair is stick straight.
I used a flatiron and changed my straight hair to “straighter.”
I didn't like the waves around my face or the crimps along my neck.
I didn't like the way people spoke about me: a mystery, a hard ass, a bitch.
They didn't get me, I was strong, didn't like the fluffy, sugar coated goodness of life, and pre- ferred my stone cold, sensible, practical mountain instead.
You got what you saw, take it or leave it.
The first time I drove by the Flatirons on the way to Boulder to watch my “cool” cousin, play his “cool” football game, with my “cool” aunt and uncle, I was enchanted by the cool mountains. I wished to explore, I wished to see them, take them in, but I had to leave them.
Maybe next year! They would say to me.
Four years later, I took next year, into my own hands and came to Colorado.
The mountains are visible, but they aren't my mountains yet.
I am a taller mountain.

Cars

My first car was a test.
Like everything in my life, it was testing my ability and skill.
How far can we push her till she breaks?
The 2001 Jetta nearly killed me.
My fearless father assured me he had fixed everything on it.
A week later, after hearing metal screeching, I looked at the break pads, and could see nothing but Lincoln’s shiny copper head staring back at me: no brake pads.
I needed new rotors too.
My life couldn't stop, I had no brakes.
I tried so hard: excuses, medications, therapists, interventions, inspirations; nothing stopped it. I couldn't catch a break.
I learned to love the speed; my car finally let me push my limits.
I passed the test; I bought my dream car.
I was invincible: flying through time and loving it.
The 2004 325i saved me.

My grades rose, I was happy, in love, and life couldn't get better.
It showed me the way life could be for me, if I only pushed the limits I held so dearly.
My brakes worked but I didn't use them, I didn't need them, I didn't want them.
Thats when I hit her green bumper.
My brakes weren't enough to stop me.
My parents, one a mechanical engineer, the other an electrical engineer, gave me an engineer’s brain.
I hate math.
I began calculating the speed I was traveling, the impact against her car, my following distance, velocity equals distance over what?!... if I had only taken physics instead of AP Biology dammit!, but nothing was rational; it was blurry.
My crystal clear illusion of my invincibility and all that I thought I had achieved and built up, shattered in front of me while my bumper crumpled against the force of my speed.
My airbag saved my head, but it couldn't save my pride.
The whiplash in my neck and the dent in my wallet was not nearly as painful as my internal in- juries.
She's broken.
“Are you okay?” was all my strong dad said to me when he came to the scene.
“Take this as a wakeup-call and move on.” was all my consoling mom said to me as I sobbed into her arms.
“Sweetie try to stay calm, you're okay.” said my loving boyfriend.
“It could have been much worse.” said my concerned best friend.

Gradually my wounds healed, undoubtedly with a scar still peeping through my skin.
I was still able to travel, but much more cautiously.
I learned to love and embrace my caution in absence of my speed.
As fun as it was to be reckless, or perhaps to better phrase it: free, I much prefer to air on the side of caution.

I’m not “cool.” I’m not invincible. I’m safe.
I’m comfortable.

I arrived in Colorado in the same car that drove me to my first day of kindergarten, to middle school, to high school, and now to college.
We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies with our BMW equip with a car-top carrier and hitch carrier loaded up with my stuff.

I brought as much of home as I could with me, but I couldn't bring my home’s heart: my parents. “Don’t go” I whimpered, but it was irrational, they had to leave.
They drove off, from these mountains to theirs.
They used to be mine too, but I don't know which are mine anymore.

I’m uncomfortable.

A car is a home to me; it is my sense of place.
It is not solely the transportation factor; planes, trains, buses, carpools, I tried them all, they didn't satisfy what I was truly craving for.

A space that I called my own, a room of one’s own, had always been my car.
This space was where I searched for this “pure fluid, the essential oil of truth” (Woolf 25).
I have had to find spaces in other places.
This isn't home yet, but neither is the place I used to call home.
Perhaps home, in the greater sense of the word, is found not in cars, cities, or mountains, but somewhere within.

Blonde

Hair Color

In elementary school my yellow marker marked my hair color in all my self portraits.
My hair was white, then light light light brown, then light light brown, but never stark yellow.
I was never sunshine.
Is sunshine yellow?
I colored the sun yellow in all my pictures too, but it is not yellow, it is a sort of blinding white. White is not a singular color, but rather the absence of colors.
Is white a color?
White in a sea of brown hair in Nuevo México.
A Guera
I was not the “minority blonde” in Colorado, I feel lost.
No one got my “spanglish” jokes, or why I had green chile in all my food and strange names for things like tortillas or statues of Mother Mary.
I like being unknown, I like being blonde.
Blonde: White and Brown

Intelligence

Blonde jokes grew old so quickly.

What happens when a blonde gets Alzheimer’s disease?

Alzheimer’s took my great-aunt on the third day of college.
I wanted to reach out, but she doesn't know me.
Perhaps she once did, but she no longer does.
How frightening, to lose everything, memories and knowledge, without any effort, without any control, without being able to fight against it.

I am a fighter.

Her IQ goes up!

“You’re sharp!”
“You can do better, you're better than that!”
I am smart.
My grades, low or high, are worthless numbers, that hold so much weight over me.

College.
Scholarships.
Medical School.
These are not reflections of me.
I am a perfectionist who fights academic perfection. I was top of my class for two months and hated it.

I wasn't myself.
I’m the girl in seventh grade who failed her math final on purpose to move down to an easier math class in order to take a harder Spanish class, when her teacher refused to let her drop down to the lower math course originally because she was “doing fine”.
I am smart.
“We still have a lot of climbing to do, but on the trail we discover it’s easier than yesterday” (Pir- sig 231).
I am still climbing these mountains, the trail is sometimes easier than it was the day before, but some days it is only harder.
I am smart enough to keep climbing, even when I don't want to.

Why don't blondes call 911 in an emergency?
My grandma once told me our hair was blonde because white fire is hotter than red fire.
“The red heads are supposed to be spitfires, but us blondes are straight from hell.”
What good is fighting Grandma?
I think her lack of answer was a fight of its own.
I am a fighter.
They can’t remember the number!
I remember crying to my father, the encyclopedia, the brainiac, about not being able to memorize my biology terms.
I memorized my alphabet before age 2, my home phone before age 3, and all the states before age 5.
I know every song lyric, even after only hearing a song once or twice.
I can remember something my boyfriend said four months ago in an argument.
I can remember my parents telling me they were proud of me.
“It’s the stress. Just buckle down and do it.”
It was not the compassion I was hoping for, but it struck something within.
My vault opened up, I was able to memorize.
I am smart.
I am a fighter.
I am blonde.
I’m comfortable.
I’m uncomfortable.
I am a mountain.
But I am not sunshine.
These are all parts of me,
I am summarized and vague,
mysterious and clear cut, cloudy and bright, somehow all at once.