点亮一根火柴

　　I feel funny. So very funny, telling you about my life, my feelings, my secrets. I do not know how to welcome you into my heart and soul.You see,nobody ever asked me what I thought or how I felt about life’s challenges.Or,maybe,they never really cared about what I thought.

　　 My journey to Burlington County College began many years ago in Caracas, Venezuela, where I was born and grew to a young lady full of energy and life. My parents called me Regina because there was something regal about the sound. They had high hopes of my marrying a local boy from a good, wealthy family. You know the kind—slick, black hair, long sideburns, driving a sports car. The kind who brings you flowers on every date and swears his undying love for you three days a week, and the other days he is sleeping with Maria, the local social worker.

　　 To get even, or because I was in a romantic haze, I met and married a U.S. Marine from Des Moined, who was stationed at our local Embassy, where I also worked.

　　 Marriage, a home in America, and three beautiful children occupied twenty-five years of my life.

　　 Where did my life go? It went some-where.But there is no lost-and-found department for a life lost in the years.

　　 The marriage was bad. It was so bad that I cried every night for all those years. I would tell myself, “You are in a strange country—maybe the customs are different. The children need me, and I cannot admit failure to my parents back in Venezuela.”
　　
　　 As luck would have it, fate intervened. My ex-Marine husband found someone new and left me and the children with no money, very hurt and depressed.

　　 I quickly took an inventory—foreign-born, with not a great command of the English language,no money, no job training and two kids in college. The future looked bleak.

　　 But it did not stop. My father died. I loved him so much, and he was always my source of strength in need.Mother became ill.

　　 I felt very hurt, lonely, angry, and very sorry for myself.

　　 However, I remembered a saying my Dad would quote to me when things were going wrong and the future looked black. He may have gotten this quote from the Spanish edition of Reader’s Digest. He would say, “my dear it is always the darkest when you are fresh out of matches.”

　　 “Dad, I am out of matches.” Or so I thought.

　　 I decided to make my life something worthwhile by helping people. I wanted to help and heal and maybe, at the same time, heal myself.

　　 I appeared before the college doors with my knees shaking and full of doubt. I wanted to be a nurse.

　　 I enrolled in college. I was proud of myself for not falling into the garbage pit waiting so close by.

　　 Then the fun began—subjects which were very hard for me.

　　 In order to survive, I managed to get two jobs to keep up with house payments and food. The kids found college money by working and by appealing to their father. I met my challenges on a daily basis.

　　 Now, my days are very active and long. Before the sun makes its appearance, I stumble bleary-eyed to the shower and afterwards select the day’s outfit. After a quick check in the mirror, I make my way downstairs to prepare a quick breakfast along with my lunch, feed the cat(who happens to be my alarm clock), and do what seems like a million other small chores. Then I drive for forty-five minutes to the Pembeerton Campus, while studying my chemistry key notes on index cards before a test. I would do this with tears in my eyes. You see, at the same time I am worrying about the situation with my water heater that slowly but surely is leaking and may not last until the new one can be installed. In addition, I am anxious to schedule my exterminator’s visit to treat the termites discovered in my basement. My preoccupation, with such household woes, is due to a canceled appointment to have my furnace cleaned, which resulted in a periodic spray of soot.

　　 After a hectic morning of classes, I rush to my car for a hurried thirty-minute ride to the office,where a desk piled high with impot documents is waiting for me, along with innumerable phone calls from the brokers, custom officials and suppliers. Meanwhile, an impatient boss wants to know the precise location of one of the fifty containers traveling between eastern Europe and Burlington, New Jersey.