I was eight or nine, I think, when I first realized that the year 2,000 would come around in my lifetime. Boy, was I excited. I don't know why. I don't know why I would even think about it. But I did.

As clear as if it was yesterday I remember trying to figure out, with great difficulty, how old I would be in the year 2,000. When I did figure out that I would be fifty three, I remember thinking to myself that maybe fifty three was not too old. I must have been ten by then.

I still think it would be really neat to be around in the year 2,000. I don't know why anymore today, than when I was a little kid back home in Cuba. I guess some things stay with us. Its only five years away! I tell myself, and yet sometimes I can't help but think that I will be lucky if I make it to fifty, let alone fifty three.

Angel de la guardia, dulce compania
no me desampares
ni de noche ni de dia.
Con Dios me acuesto, con Dios me levanto
con la Virgen Maria y el Espiritu Santo.
Cuatro pilares tiene mi cama
y cuatro angelitos que me la guardan.

A lot has changed since those early days.

Thirteen years. That's how long AIDS as we know it, or don't know it, has now been around. Its also the age I was when I arrived in Miami. So what does this have to do with anything? I don't know.

In spite of the fact that I have a terrible sense of time - which is no to be confused having good timing, I have always been interested in time relationships. Just as I was interested in the relativity of the year 2,000 to my reality as an 8 or 9 year -old kid, the relationship of elapsed time to my life here in the U.S. has always fascinated me. I don't know why. Its almost as if subconsciously I still think I am here "only for a short while," as I remember my father saying before he put me on a plane to Miami - thirty four years ago.

When I turned twenty six, for instance, I was intrigued by what it must mean that I now had been the same number of years in my birth place as in my adopted place. Thirteen years there and thirteen years here. Did it mean that they would cancel each other out, leaving me in a kind of locational limbo? I don't know. Just like I don't know, or if, it means anything to have lived four years in Miami, four years in Kansas City, then eight in San Francisco and now sixteen in New York. Probably nothing, just coincidence. But, if I were to follow the mathematical progression and add my current age to double the time spent in New York, maybe it means that I will live to, at least, seventy nine which, if my memory serves me was my father's age when he died.

Angel de mi guardia
humilde te pido
no lo desampares
en todo peligro.

I remember being confused when I arrived in Miami. I was thirteen years old. Events occurring back home, which in some way I did not understand, were responsible for my having to leave all I knew. At thirteen I found myself terrified. What under normal childhood circumstances should have been my "terrible thirteens," quickly became for me my terrified thirteens. I was in a strange land where the natives spoke a language I didn't speak, were the familiarity, safety and comfort of my previous life was no longer a reality. Grow up fast! It was hard. But I was still a thirteen year old kid and so, for me, it was also new, exciting and very different.

Nevertheless, I remember I was very angry. I was angry at everything and everyone. I was frustrated by the language, felt sorry for my self and hated my new environment -Miami then was not even close to what it is now. Everyone was to be blamed. In retrospect, I think that I was mostly angry at the realization that life-altering decisions, decisions altering my life, had been made for me and I had no say in the matter, nor the power to change them.

Angel de mi guardia
humilde te pido
no me desampares
en todo peligro.

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