I’ve been going home every Monday afternoon for the past few weeks. Three weeks ago I returned to pick up some laundry I left to dry in the garage. I took the time to have dinner with Adrian and Danny, avoid papers, and have my mom dye my hair back to a brown much closer to my natural color. Last week, I went to pick up the correct set of keys. When I left the house in a rush on Sunday, I grabbed the spare set of keys for my car. Without my apartment key, I had to make sure Isa or Adja, our other roommate, would be home so I could enter. Today I braved east bound traffic on the 10 and 60 to take my laptop in for service at Fry’s. Afterwards, I went home and fell in to my routine: take VR for a walk, have dinner and catch up on the chisme.

Last week, my mom popped in my quinceañera video. Back then, my tío Chuy had a videography business. The video begins with the information from my invitation. I forgot that I wrote a 10-line poem made up of 5 rhyming couplets. It was cute and I realized that even then I wanted to wow people with my words. There’s the standard getting ready shots. I apply some lip gloss. My mom fusses with my hair (which is funny because my mom didn’t fix my hair). From there, I’m sitting on the couch daydreaming and start thinking about growing up. The photo montage, to the tune of Boyz II Men’s “It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday” is my favorite part of the video. The strange thing of seeing those photos in succession is that I realized there were things that remained constant. My lips always stuck out and I was always with one sibling or other.

We fast-forwarded through the Mass, except for the part where my dad sang. While I knelt next to three other girls on the sanctuary in from of the altar, my father stood in a black tuxedo and sang “Quinceañera.” He seemed calm and cool, but I tried not to cry and ruin my makeup.

And even if I still felt the chills of hearing my dad sing just for me in front of a crowded church, I couldn’t remember what I was thinking. My mom asked as we watched the part of the video where we danced the waltz, “do you remember what you were thinking?”

I tried, but I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have everyone watch as you danced with 14 different boys and your dozen padrinos. I didn’t even feel like that girl was me. I assume that we’re so different, but I probably haven’t changed all that much.

I guess I write because I want to be able to look at photos or videos and remember the feeling. In the case of my quinceañera, the feeling was fantastic, but I know the almost 15-year-old girl was nervous, unsure of herself and likely trying to impress a kid in a lime green shirt.

[Note: I wrote this post early last summer. It's been sitting in the drafts list since then.]