7 years

7 like your "favorite" number. The one you chose to assign when you were not sure. ("How old where you when it happend?"... Thinking... "Seven?" You would say, doubting.)

I left Nen with a friend and had a chance to honor your memory. But how? It was too last minute, so I wasn't able to meet anyone. I was driving on Homestead and thought of paying a visit to our home. I would park across the street, on the new "Franco Park" (the old tennis courts). Or perhaps I would be lucky and some tenant would happen to drive in and I would follow.

It was a low-traffic time, 11 am, so that would be too lucky. But it was... somebody signaled left, moved to the left-most lane, and waited. I stopped right behind him. He punched in the code, and I followed him. I drove slowly, but not too slow to catch people's attention. I turned right and found my favorite open spot available. I liked it because it gets the most shade, as it is in between two carport areas.

I walked around for a few minutes and so many memories came to mind... Vivid patches of the more than four years that I lived with you and scarce touches of the two and half that I had to live without you. "I need to record all this, it is too much." And I went to the car to get my iPhone.

I walked to "las piedrecitas," the small fountain area where we took our one-year-old Nen to watch the water and play with the little rocks. The wall of the water enclosure looked so tiny now, up to my knee... but I remembered Nen's arms barely reaching over to touch the water. And I remembered the casual way he had to watch not only the rocks but all things around him, the way little children do.

I headed to the barbecue area and remembered the big parties we threw for your birthday. And others, like the one a month before you went to the hospital, when we were chatting with our Japanese neighbor and her American husband at some kid's birthday party. I could see the evening light during that conversation. Beautiful.

I continued observing the pool and the image of you with our baby Nen toward the end of the summer at his first pool swim. We have a picture. And traveling further back in memory I saw you and him when he was eight days old and we took him on the first walk out. And the photographs I took. You, proud dad, with your little bundle. Literally, as it was still January, its last day.

I looked diagonally over "the green square", toward were our unit was--like I said, the best in the complex. I didn't head there yet though. I continued walking on the east side of the square, and remembered little things like when they repaved the parking lots and we were forced to park on the other side, unknown to us (that complex is so big!).

On the north side I remembered seeing Ivona with her bike, and her little sister, Ana. There is another fountain in that side and it had water today. In the past, it used to be turned off and even emptied, so the kids would get in and walk on the rocks. I remembered getting upset with a kid who was mean to Nen.

I walked west and remembered where, right by the base of our stairs, you gave Patrick a present from us. He had just been adopted and you got him a doctor's kit for kids. I remember the care and love you took to choose it. Amy and Christian were just as excited.

And I remembered people: our Brazilian neighbor Rosana, the Chinese mom who said she couldn't let her baby crowl in her apartment because it was messy and full of boxes, the Indian mom who worried that her son was 13 months and still not walking, the Malaysian mom, Lee Yan, with the sweetest and handsomest boy... autistic.

Finally, I reached the socializing square, where the action of moms, dads, and kids took place, mostly during the evening in summer, or on winter afternoons with only moms, while dads were working. I remembered once when, despite all that action, we were sitting and I was sad because you were not feeling well. And then one of the overlapping memories from after your departure popped up and filled me with pride. Yeye had lost a screw from his glasses. I asked Nen to look for it and, to everybody's amazement, he found it!