Neither here nor there

My mother came to New York from Colombia when she was 14 years old.

"I don't feel Colombian but I'm not American."

The one thing more interesting than the actual concept was that I had never realized it.

She got here when she was 14. My dad got here when he was about 17. And they've hardly gone back. They feel no need to.

Yet I feel a pull -- I want to create a connection, with this distant place, that I feel I should have but I don't.

In my desire to go create this connection for myself, I discovered the tattered connections my parents feel to their birth country -- the murky lines of identity that lie alongside their dual citizenships.

My dad said he met a guy about his age who had a Cuban background but had also been in Queens in the '70s. They talked about old discos and reminisced -- they had never met before but had been at all the same '70s hangouts.

He had more in common with this random Cuban New Yorker than he would have with someone about his age from Colombia. The connections of time and place and memory were there -- ones he "wouldn't have with his own people."

-- Carolina Hidalgo