Being a Carreon

Being different was never something that I could deny. I was reminded of it every day as a child, when my own special bully stopped me in the hallway to challenge me with pointlessly pointed words like "why is your hair so long?" or "why do you wear those shoes?" I didn't understand why my appearance provoked such people, but I did know her words were meant to injure me, and that I didn't want to let her have any piece of me. I held my own, I thought. She was just jealous, my parents told me.

Some might say Tara and Charles Carreon raised their children all wrong. Taking the TV away in a fit of frustration, throwing it in the dumpster -- what kinda dad DOES that shit? The Tibetan Buddhist altar in our living room was so large that it took up an entire wall. Inviting friends over was always an awkward thing, hurrying past that puzzling conversation piece to the relatively typical surroundings of our bedroom.

We were Americans after all. My parents were just your typical multicultural hippie couple, if there is such a thing. Tara -- named after the earth and Gone with the Wind -- was always a complex, intelligent, extraordinarily beautiful person. Her intensity, ferocity even, was absolutely necessary, one could argue. Long blond hair, lithe figure...she could have had her pick of athletic, intelligent, all-American boys. But she loved my dad, Charles -- Carlos -- Chas -- the pale-skinned Mexican with the full head of black hair. He played the flute at the University they both attended. She chased him around the school, she would tell us kids with a laugh. That laugh that Maria and I inherited. She chased him like the Gila monster that chased them both through the Arizona desert. Why would he run from someone so beautiful, though? That's what I always wondered. Perhaps he knew if she caught him, he would never want to leave her embrace.

So many stories. That's one thing us Carreones have always had plenty of, during the good times and the not-so-good times. Plenty of stories.