The moment you try to hold onto it, the present slips away.

Relationships are similar –just when you think you understand where you stand with someone, or that shared DNA will guarantee affinity, time shifts… and what was once certainty becomes memory.

Like Bergson’s “ungraspable present,” love often lives in the tension between what was and what we hoped would be –never still, never fully knowable.

Here are my adolescent scribbles on a scrap piece of green construction paper, titled ‘Things I want to share with him:’

1.  I made the Bolivian National Swim Team!

2.  I competed in the South American Games!

Abuelo is stubborn, hilarious, and unforgettable.

I remember his visits… always accompanied by Elvis Presley playlists. My brother and I constantly reset his CarPlay, only for him to put Elvis on repeat. He’d hum most of the songs until the chorus, which he’d belt out in English –thick Cuban accent and all.

I even dressed up as Elvis one Halloween, complete with gold sunglasses and red cape.

“Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?”

Elvis’ lyrics still reverberate. When Abuelo became estranged from us, I wondered if he did.

Meanwhile, I kept beating my own swim records:

3.  Came just 0.02 seconds from Bolivia’s only medal at the South American Games!

4.  I’m a 4x Bolivian national record holder!

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As a Cuban immigrant, Abuelo’s American Dream was simple: a Corvette and a home.

He achieved both.

Later, he gifted his children the corvettes. A 1985 purple Corvette waited for me, sunken into overgrown grass. Its tan leather seats stained, the gearshift cracked, and carpets missing.

But it didn’t matter. It was mine and we’d restore it together.

Before the fallout, he’d visit in a black Corvette. His exits were legendary. He’d back out of our cul-de-sac, circle it waving goodbye again and again, watching us laugh until we couldn’t anymore.

In the meantime, I grew:

5.  I was 5’2”— now I’m 6’2”.

6.  I learned to drive.

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“Then came act two, you seemed to change, you acted strange,and why, I’ve never known.” Elvis

He and my mom had a fallout.

My mom broke cycles that tried to creep into our home. I watched her protect us from things she never had the luxury to avoid herself.

Early on, I struggled with ADD, but she didn’t dismiss me like Abuelo had dismissed her. She taught me my strengths and weaknesses, the keys to succeeding.

He’d continuously suggested she drop college and work:“School simply wasn’t for her.”  She went anyway. When that same voice told her I wouldn’t amount to much, she silenced it. She wouldn’t allow her past to devour our futures.

More landmarks:

7.  I got a dog!

8.  My brother got into the University of Miami!

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They say time heals, but Bergson would say it transforms—as we explored in a class discussion.

A restored Corvette doesn’t return to new –it gains history. The same goes for relationships. Restoring the car—and my bond with Abuelo –became parallel projects, both needing patience and care.

9.  I’m now a USA Swimming Recognized ‘Scholastic Athlete All-America!’

10.  I traveled to France, Italy, Canada, Argentina, Bolivia!

Bergson believed time wasn’t just a sequence of moments –it was a duration (la durée), a lived experience shaped by memory and consciousness. It unfolds in real time –unpredictable, alive.

The same goes for the legacy of Elvis, a classic Corvette, and Abuelo. Their influence doesn’t just live in the past. It moves with me… even if he may never return.

I’ve endured, experienced, and changed. These memories might slip through the present, but they stay with me –reshaping me.

In that slow unfolding, there’s space to build something stronger. The car restoration will take time. But for now, mom was right… and the list has grown:

11.  I’m applying to college!