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Home: A Personal Reflection

Anna Braverman

I packed up and left the home I had been building for seven months in Puebla, México in three days. It’s truly amazing how thin walls can be. I guess I thought that the glue of hard-work and dedication and love could keep them together. But, alas, a pandemic is blind to circumstance. Even though I’ve had to physically leave my home, can I somehow carry it with me? 

 

Since I arrived at my childhood house in New York almost two weeks ago, I have struggled to feel at home. My entire family is living here for the first time since I was a senior in high school. It feels anachronistic, like all of our present selves have been transported into a past reality. One would think that my relationship with my brother would have gotten more convivial over the years; comically, or tragically — depending on how you look at it — our relationship is more or less as toxic as it was six years ago. As our world-views expand outside of the house, they revert back to their insular prototypes in the confines of these walls. Ah, the irony. 

 

I have been struggling to feel at home in Scarsdale because I feel like my family is in Puebla. There live, or formally lived, the people who supported me throughout my 7-month Fulbright grant — the people who helped me celebrate the good, overcome and transform the bad, and survive despite the ugly. 

 

I am referring to my landlady, Ade, and her husband, Jesús, and their 19-year-old daughter, Andrea, who referred to themselves as my “Mexican family.” We enjoyed peaceful breakfasts together in their outdoor patio and spent many evenings chatting and laughing. As roommates came and went with alarming frequency, they remained a constant. I feel like they understood me better, and listened to me more empathetically, than my blood family. I felt more seen and heard with them than I have with my blood family in a long time. 

 

In Puebla, I developed rituals that contributed to a feeling of belonging. For example, despite its numerous flaws, Ruta 10 became a safe-haven for me. I caught the big red and yellow bus from the same spot every morning, and rode it home every day from school, often accompanied by students after soccer practice. 

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Every trip offered a new glimpse into Mexican society. Diverse musical genres blasted through vintage speakers; casts of characters who otherwise were unlikely to occupy the same physical space unconsciously worked together to create space for the elderly; familiar and unfamiliar street performers offered entertaining shows in exchange for money; miserable people appealed to passengers’ moral consciousness, and more likely than not they succeeded. I came to love the rhythms of Ruta 10, from the slightly sickening sound of an ancient engine revving to a halting start to the shows of talented musicians; I saw many more than once. While the bus was simply my mode of transportation to and from work, it became an opportunity to familiarize myself with Mexican culture; in the limited space of the bus, private lives unfolded into public dramas, and what I experienced with my eyes and nose and body soaked into my subconscious. On Ruta 10, I picked up mannerisms, vocabulary, songs, fleeting friendships, and much more. 

 

I miss my routines and rituals, but above all I miss the people who opened my mind as they touched my heart. I miss my students and their constant jokes and their loving attitudes and their relentless positivity; I especially miss my soccer players, who taught me more about perseverance and dedication and sacrifice in seven months than I learned throughout my entire life; I miss the vets who treated my cat, Luna, and who always waved at me through their practice’s windows on my way home from work; I miss the 22-year-old woman who did my laundry and who let me play with her newborn baby whenever I stopped by; I miss the two women at the paper store who filled me in on neighborhood gossip; I miss the French girls who lived down the street and the strange assortment of nationals and foreigners who populated their house, especially the dashingly intelligent and good-humored Ro and Mimi; and I miss Marcos, the man I love who showed me parts of Puebla largely invisible to the foreign eye, and his band of hilarious and generous and welcoming and humble brothers. 

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As I sit in my childhood room thinking about home, my mind transports me back to my house in Puebla. My eyes fill with the sunlight stretching into my open bedroom windows, and the ancient green castle across the street, and Luna, sitting resolute like a sentinel on the balcony, as the sun lights her golden hues on fire. My nostrils fill with the scents of Marcos’ skin — sometimes covered in Axe body spray and other times in sweat after riding his bike furiously from his house to mine. My stomach gurgles when I smell the roasting pork and beef from taco stands lining the streets near the Bodega. I hear the gas truck play its pre-recorded rambunctious melody out of old speakers that echoed in my head days later like a broken record, and the rush of pounding waterfalls in San Luis Potosí, and the gentle buzz of hummingbirds in the garden, and Luis Miguel’s voice, smooth as honey, pouring through the radio. 

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I was physically in México for seven months, but my mind will be there for a lifetime. I feel disjointed, but I know that I will be whole again. Or maybe I was never broken; after all, mobile homes do exist.

Travelling home from soccer practice on Ruta 10 with one of my soccer players.

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LEPE Women's Soccer Team.JPG

LEPE Women’s Soccer Team after our first game. I started LEPE’s first ever soccer team and coached the players throughout my 7-month grant.

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Luna sitting like a sentinel on my bedroom window.

Cultural and Personal Reflections

Anna Braverman

Anna Braverman was a Fulbright-García Robles English Teaching Assistant in Puebla, México in the 2019-2020 school year. In that capacity, she assisted at an escuela normal (teaching college) and founded and coached the college’s first ever women’s soccer team. Anna graduated Summa Cum Laude from Colby College in 2019 with a dual-degree Bachelor's in History and Classical Civilization, published art history research in the Colby College Museum of Art’s journal, "The Lantern," and presented her research at the American Historical Association’s 2019 Annual Conference. She is passionate about history, archaeology, and humanity’s ceaseless search for truth and justice.

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