The House of My Dreams

My Background

When I married Trevor I believed it was forever. Until his creativity, values, and dreams became disillusion, strict rules, and obsession. Everything is now fading away; but his outbursts still echo in my mind.

Today, I woke up ready to live.

A quick glance in the mirror to check my lipstick, and I rush to the office in my new Mini, blasting a mix of dance music. I left the shadows of the past to those who prefer to live in them. I am a good woman, who just passed thirty, and is in charge of her life.

I was born in L.A., for many the city of celebrities with crazy lives. But for me, a place of happy and creative people with a unique taste for diversity, where the ocean's waves make us all Californians.

I grew up in a big house with several bedrooms, a guesthouse, a movie theater, and a fully equipped gym. I guess I was a Bel Air girl.

"You must thank God every night, and always remember that not all children are as fortunate as you," my grandmother, the mother of my father, taught me. She was a strong woman, who came from Tahiti, and never learned English.

When my grandfather passed away, she kept on living in a little apartment, refusing to move in with us until her own death.

My mother was an heiress with a degree in medicine, who ended up losing most of the family money into a private hospital venture by the time I was in college.

My father, on his end, didn't have an easy upbringing; he grew up in a rough neighborhood in East L.A., but managed to get a scholarship to UCLA Medical School, where he met my mom. He also learned Spanish on his own and now, semi-retired, provides pro-bono medical assistance to people in need. He has never been money driven and, for the most part, is reserved and confined in his Polynesian pride, although he wears a Dodgers cap every day. It still puzzles me how he married a Beverly Hills heiress; an odd match that lasted until today, and produced three children.

My older sister used to dress and treat me like her doll, while my younger brother forced me to play war with him, pushing me left and right, pretending that I was the enemy. I was barely out of diapers, and he had already turned me into his own target.

We all went to a private school, and I remember the excitement on my "First Grade" graduation day. After having rehearsed on my own for an entire month, I sat by the door of our house ready to go, holding the graduation hat, and listening to the screams of my parents arguing. It went on and on, until they dismissed my emotions with a simple, "Ok, we forgot! We will take you next year."

I walked back to my room, and took off the gown without knowing that, at the age of six, I had just learned that big houses are not enough to produce happy families.

Tonight I go out with Frederic, a surgeon from France I started seeing recently.

Frederic doesn't scream, and speaks French, just like my grandmother.

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