2025/Zachary C.-

My home is in the deep south of the U.S.A. The second largest state in the nation, a fact that I boasted with pride when I was younger for some reason. A lot of my time was spent at my grandparents’ houses when we lived there. I barely remember the house or apartment my parents were renting, probably because I had to stay with Nayna and Boppy or Mimi and Papa while mom and dad were at work. Nayna is my mom’s mom, but Boppy isn’t related to me by blood, but he’s my grandpa, nonetheless. Nayna had remarried after my blood grandfather died of cancer, and I never got to meet him. Mimi and Papa are my dad’s mom and dad, respectively.

My cousin lives with Mimi and Papa. Both of his parents and a brother were dead by the time he was 15 and he had nowhere else to go, so he’s been there for a few years now. He struggled in school a bit, but now he’s currently in college. He’s a role model for me, he showed me that no matter how low your life is right now, you can always bounce back. Granted, I don’t know a lot about his relationship with his parents. I remember someone saying that he had a good relationship with his dad and brother, but I don’t know about his mother. That’s secondary information, though, I never really heard about them from my cousin himself. Fair enough.

My grandparents have had the same houses as I can remember. Mimi and Papa have a log house in a forested area. The neighborhood is a little bit on the sketchy side – There were a group of teens who’d shoot guns in the backyard of the house in front of my grandparent’s place and drive off when the police came. Nayna and Boppy’s house, according to my Mom, was also a bad place. I hadn’t heard of anything happening there, and I’d go out with my friends occasionally and we never saw anything bad.

I’ve lived in a lot of places. The dry heat of Sonoran Arizona, eccentric California, corporate South Korea, but none has my heart as much as Texas, as awfully flawed as it is.