...The metro doors open, and the background "Mind the gap" rings. I feel myself mouth the phrase along as it is said. I wonder how long I have done that. "Mind the gap"--what a British thing to say. It falls strangely on my ears and tongue. What a polite way to warn you about a gap. To mind the gap. A good warning, too, as I always make sure to take a step that covers the distance of the gap between the metro and the pavement. Although I hear it often now, it still stands out to my ear as mind is not used as such in the American tongue. No, mind only has the normal connotation of one's mental space. What would "Mind the gap" in American mean then? Well there are moments when the mind becomes the gap as a response. These moments of silence have usually been the wrong response. It isn't good to be silent and to be always so. She never argues. Ha. My Mexican mother and father would laugh. Our daughter hold her tongue? Surprisingly, yes. Such a feat is possible only in the foreign tongue and not the native. What is native for me though? I am not native to this English metro, not native to the Texan land I grew up on, and not even native across the gap of the Rio Grande where I was born..... 

​