#44 - 2011, this is it!

This is my 44th post. Just eight shy of 52. Considering that this is my first year blogging, trust me, I’m thinking 44 entries is a pretty neat accomplishment for someone as lazy as myself. So, yay me!

My intention is to keep up the discipline of writing once a week in 2012. Who knows? Maybe I’ll reach that magic 52 and can boast of having written regularly once a week.

This is it for me this year. I will not post (I don’t think) until next year. I will try to rest and enjoy my family during these last two weeks of 2011 and I will continue praying for a healthier and more prosperous and peaceful 2012 not only for me and mine, but also for you and for our lovely planet.

Peace my friends,
Margarita

#43 - My Movies - Melancholia

I saw Melancholia this week. Let me tell you it’s a strange but very interesting movie.

I’m not familiar with the director. A Danish guy, Lars von Trier, who apparently likes to stir in some controversy around his films and himself. I read that the idea for this movie came after he had a depressive episode and found that, depressed and indifferent, he actually was stronger and able to withstand more of the hard things in life.

So the movie starts with the end of the world due to some planetary catastrophe. Then the story centers on two sisters, Justine and Claire played by Kirsten Dunst (this part was initially planned for Penelope Cruz) and Charlotte Gainsbourg. We attend the wedding of Justine and Michael, a big event planned by Claire and financed by her wealthy husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). Claire wants to give her sister the perfect wedding, but soon we realize that it cannot be. Justine is actually pretty strange and ill. To start off, the bride and groom arrive to the reception two hours late. When we meet the girls’ parents we can explain to some degree the total dysfunctionality of this family: anger, resentment and unresolved conflict bubble to the surface of this family’s dynamic.

The wedding ends with a bride so disengaged from and indifferent to her wedding that she wanders off to the beautiful palatial gardens to urinate on the grass and in her wedding gown and to have sex with a stranger. The heartbroken groom finally leaves with his family.

This wedding seems a bit odd to me. Justine’s family, self-cenetered and all, is obviously aware of her mental illness, that to impose a wedding on such a frail individual seems clearly ill-advised and counterintuitive.

I guess because the story in reality deals with the impending end of the world and humanity’s tendency to not believe that our end can be almost uninmportant and meaningless. I understood how sick Justine really is, because as she says herself she “knows things,” and she knows that the planet Melancholia won’t pass by the Earth but that there will be a head-on collision with us and that we will end with it. And still, she remains in total silence and indolence, not ever once showing fear or despair, when you would think that any other human being would do something, at least share it with her loved ones, no matter how useless she knows it all is. But Justine’s listlessness is extreme and her disregard of all things human is really serious.

The acting by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg I thought was powerful and Wagner’s music is heartbreaking to the point that even your bones vibrate, especially at the end.

#42 - Post “a la Freud” or Pedaling Memories

I was busy all last week being grateful (and, trust me, I have much to be grateful for) that I didn’t write a post during the Thanksgiving break.

But me is back! With not much to write about. I’m thinking of letting myself go “a la Freud,” letting my ideas flow as in free association mode.

The other day I was thinking about the several decades of my life and how my past gets mistier year after year. I thought this when I saw a child joyfully riding his bicycle and I thought to myself, “Hey I used to know how to do that!”

I remember the last two times I’ve been on a bicycle. The last one is a bit embarrassing because I fell off the my brand new shiny blue bike (a wonderful birthday present from my husband’s son Octavio) and I was semi-drunk. I say “semi-drunk” because I achingly remember every detail of the incident, the burn on my calf, etc, so we shall say that I was somewhat tipsy. The fall happened right before I even attempted to try pedaling. I didn’t think I could fall, trusting as I was on that notion that you can’t forget something as easy as that, that it would be exactly like “riding a bike”!

But long before that in 1989 it turns I was in Toronto with my first husband, our friend Beatriz and her chef boyfriend, a French-Canadian that we shall call Pierre. That day Pierre had cooked for us. I remember how amazed I was that a salad could be so utterly delicious. Pierre said that the secret is always in the dressing, and that the one we had enjoyed was his own creation. Well, Pierre, it was exquisite!

The four us ended on an island whose name I do not remember, nor can I recall how or why we went there. All I remember is that the four of us were riding bikes. And it was exactly as the saying goes, easy “like riding a bike.” The day was hot but beautiful and oh my gosh, all that greenery. I remember picking up some pebbles from the beach and bringing them to San Antonio with me and putting them as little decorative remembrance pieces on the window sill of our apartment to remind myself of that that sunny and falsely carefree day. The little rocks have long been lost, but the memory has not been misplaced (thank goodness).

Hey! There was another bike ride before the embarrassing fall and after Toronto. Raúl, my husband, is living in Houston. Our friend Rafael and I are visiting him fo the weekend and we decide to go to Galveston. We wanted to see the sea (ha, “see the sea!” get it?). Before that I had only been to the beach once in Mexico, in the beautiful state of Colima. Raúl and Rafa are both poets and you can imagine the words and descriptions they had to share about the ocean. So there we are, walking among tourists and Raúl and I have a mega-fight and he says rejects the idea of renting a bike that can be pedaled by four, but Rafa and I rent it anyway and we pedal on the beach. I remember him encouraging me to pedal beyond my own astrength. I gave my best effort, but it was a lot of sweaty work. Meanwhile Raúl was drawing a heart on the sand with a message for me in its center: “I love you” (te amo). Awww!

#41 - My Heartfelt Fiesta at Fiesta Supermarket

Last Sunday I found myself in the "ethnic" supermarket of Fiesta. My mother asked me to take her because she’s not very pleased with the fact that I buy cans of beans to fry instead of cooking them from scratch.

The place was packed. Old timey upbeat mariachi music was flowing from the audio system, music probably from the forties and fifties; songs that many of the shoppers would recognize but probably couldn’t place in time or name. Of course, I could as I found myself singing along, since I was a faithful listener and buyer of this Mexican music in my early years. (I even thought that if my two legs were working legs, I would start to zapatear then and there).

Then I saw guavas from Mexico for sale and I made a beeline for them. As I was touching them to gauge their ripeness, I saw this Indian woman looking in my direction and all of the sudden I fel a deep sense of ownership about “my” Mexican guavas and I felt that I was not willing to share their sunny color with her. As she walked toward me, I got in my “Defend the Guavas” stance and then the Indian woman dressed in the traditional attire from her country, smiled ever so sweetly at me, stretched her arm and picked a pomegranate from the bin next to my guavas. I began breathing again, and even smiled back at her. Got to say the pomegranates were indeed tempting, enormous and a steal at $1.69 each.

I realized how petty I was becoming so I stepped back to observe my surroundings. I saw my elderly mother some steps away busy filling a bag with happy red tomatoes, lost in her own delight at finding herself surrounded by so much color, abundance and the fact that we could pay for basically whatever she fancied. As I stood there I saw the employees at the meat counter cheerfully bantering as if they were happy to be there on a Sunday, working. Shoppers were of all colors, even white folks were there, enjoying the plethora of color and smell, looking a bit, but not much, out of place (finally we all look for good deals, no matter our color). But most of us were definitely of the Latino/Hispanic persuasion.

I felt a surge of nostalgia starting in my gut and expanding to my chest, filling me with joy, a sweet sadness, and pride too. Here were people from so many different backgrounds, and I could see the corn shucks for the tamales, I could see guavas, pomegranates, papayas, mangoes, chayotes (a pear- almost heart-shaped green veggie especially delicious in chicken and beef soups), tunas (cacti pear), the tomatillos, a complete aisle dedicated to tortillas and tostadas, the sour cream from El Salvador and from Mexico, the chili powder for our fruity pico de gallo. And I thought yes, this is the produce I would find in the street markets back home, I would walk with my bags among my people (very much like the ones here at Fiesta) and I would barter away with the merchants trying to agree on a better price for me for the kilo of tomatoes and potatoes and Serrano peppers. And I realized that none of this is now weird or awkward (maybe the bartering) to any of the white people there under the same roof with me. As I felt the tears of homesickness come, I filled a small bag with guavas and hurriedly walked over to my mother. After all, I was only there because of her. Me, assimilated me, shops at Target.

#40 – Idle Thoughts

During my week something happens, I finish my book, I go to the movies and I decide to write my post about that, since what else could be liked by my one and only blog reader (me! :) ). Turns out this week I have not much to talk about. I started reading Madame Bovary (after a couple of decades of reading the first time). I also went to the movies with my husband which in itself is unusual. We saw the new Almodóvar flick, The Skin I Live In. And though interesting and worth the movie ticket price, I fell asleep. I almost started snoring, except Raúl woke me up.

By the way this is what living with a poet is like, if said poet loves you. Say you fall asleep watching TV next to him. You wake up a bit startled and embarrassed. You turn to him, he smiles sweetly at you and you ask, “Did I snore?” This is my husband’s response, “Love, you don’t snore, you sing in your sleep.”

I know the crisis is hard and most everyone I know is hurting from it. Most especially us. After a hot water pipe burst in our home a couple of weeks ago, we're stressed out by the damage and our deductible. So on top of the crisis, that. I imagine that all businesses are frantically looking into ways of moving their inventory, promoting sales and the such. But I’m having a bit of identity crisis now that Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened and we’re already starting to be bombarded by images of Santa, Christmas trees and music. To be honest with you, I’m a bit upset about it. In my mind Christmas season officially starts on Black Friday, when many of us plan to bring out our artificial tree. But thinking about Christmas now, before Turkey Day is bit too much for me, even if what businesses most need and want from me right now is my money even if I don’t have any to give them.

After my stroke I’ve been desperately looking for freelance translation opportunities, sending my freelancer resume left and right with very little luck. My freelance work has always been a source of blessings. But I refuse give up on that, no matter how nice it is to have my evenings and weekends to myself and my family. I am convinced soon a door will open where I will be allowed to earn the extra income I need to face this storm with a hopeful smile on my face, and, if slowly and not paralyzed by the current economic situation, get out of debt.

#39 -- My Movies: Take Shelter

I went to the movies this past weekend. I wanted a dose of Kevin Spacey so I went to see Margin Call. But before that I went to see Take Shelter. I was intrigued by the previews, but also by the title. There is something almost intimate and oh so inviting to me when you say or read “take shelter.” I almost imagine someone telling me “take shelter, my love, protect yourself.”

I was blown away by the movie. Specifically I was blown away by Michael Shannon’s portrayal of Curtis LaForche. Michael’s work is intense and brooding and self-contained like the small Ohio town where he and his family live. From the outside, like his friend Dewart says, Curtis has a good life, but things start unraveling and feeling uncomfortable when he begins having terrible nightmares that he can’t shake off. They persist and haunt him in his waking hours like the pain he feels when in one of them he is viciously bitten by his dog.

But Curtis is also a practical man moved by the self-imposed drive that he will never leave his family. Never. His mom had a psychotic break in her mid thirties (Curtis’s age now) and left him alone when he was ten. He has promised himself he will never expose his own family to that pain.

He decides to face his nightmares with effort and purpose. He checks books about mental illness from his public library and makes an attempt at self-diagnosis. But the dread and the threat of imminent danger he sees in the sky above do not really subside. He begins to presage a storm like no other and decides to improve the tornado shelter in his backyard incurring into a debt that the family cannot afford.

His wife Samantha and his daughter Hannah are strong presences in the movies. Hannah is a six year deaf child whose parents are looking into a cochlear implant that is only possible through Curtis’s medical insurance from work. This procedure is not a sure thing, especially when Curtis is fired from his job.

The movie captivated me. I kept waiting for something supernatural to happen or some aliens to start showing up (my husband’s perspective). But the story insists in keeping it real and to be something utterly possible. Curtis knows he is not right in the head and looks for assistance, but his fears permeate his every act.

The final scene is especially powerful. Following medical advice, the family gets away from the storm shelter for some days and goes to the beach. Little Hannah sees it first. She tells her dad it’s a storm. He looks out to sea. We can’t see what he sees, yet you know it’s something huge. When he finally catches his wife Sam’s eyes, you can see them holding a silent conversation from afar, like married couples do, asking her if what he is seeing is true or a product of his weakened mind, since we all know he can’t be trusted. She nods at him, validating whatever it is he’s seeing. He picks up his daughter and goes to her. Then you see what they’re seeing and it ends with Samantha saying “Okay.”

When I think about this movie and then think about Margin Call, I can’t really help but ask is Curtis really that crazy? I mean we do live in a crazy world; we can’t deny that or hide from that. Here you have a hard-working guy, loving and devoted to his family that has to make do with counselors because he cannot afford to see the medical staff who might be professionally trained to help him, a guy who loses his job and with it the possibility of affording the medical care his little girl truly needs.

Then you have the arrogant characters of Margin Call who flippantly talk about making anywhere from $250,000 to $2 million plus a year in Wall Street. The movie tries to explain the 2008 housing bubble burst. Now if the average salary for regular folks is what? 4OK, maybe 60K a year, isn’t it crazy that a 23 year old kid makes 250K, and we see little kids like Hannah or ill people like Curtis go unattended. I really don’t know if Curtis’s paranoia might be totally unwarranted.

Anyway, as I said before, I am no movie critic, but in my mind Mr. Shannon has become a heavyweight Oscar contender and shown me what acting at its best looks like.

#38 -- I was seven…

We were six and seven when my younger sister and I got our green cards in 1967. As a favor, a friend of my mother’s, La Viuda or The Widow, made the long bus ride with us from Guadalajara to Tijuana so we could reunite with our parents.

At school children didn’t like me; they laughed at me and called me names. Children would stop drinking from water fountains after I used it making faces of how gross it would be to drink from the same water fountain as the Mexican kid.

The last thing I want is pity, because I realize we all have issues. In my case, mine have to do with abandonment, loss, bewilderment and a sense of not belonging and of unworthiness, and I do believe there is a direct correlation between them and my condition as an immigrant, being left behind and brought unprepared to a new country and all this implies. My defense mechanism has been detachment and forgetfulness. I just do not associate the natural pain with the traumatic events, and then I forget the events altogether.

But I do remember my first English word upon entering first grade:

There’s a white teacher in front a me. She holds a large whiteboard card in her hands. There is a red square drawn on the card and three letters under it. R-E-D. The teacher points to the red square and I understand I’m supposed to name the color, so I say “rojo.” She shakes her head vigorously and it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong. She points again, and again I say “rojo.” And she says no and insists on “red” pronouncing the word slowly and purposefully. I say “rojo” in the same manner. I don’t know how long we do this, until I guess I begin doubting everything I held for certain up to that moment, and my “rojos” quaver and quiet down and I timidly try my first “red.”

Instead of denying my “rojo,” I wonder if had my teacher reaffirmed it with my new “red,” would I have been a less scared and scarred little girl? Because through words we name our world and ourselves and if you already have a language by which you can say who you are, but then at some point, unexplainably, you’re taught or made to give it up, I think it’s fair to assume that you’ll question your worth and your value.

Now I know better. But it’s been a long and weary road the one I’ve walked to be at this point where I can say that I know I’m fortunate to know two languages, to belong to two cultures. I believe multilingualism and multiculturalism make you a more tolerant, understanding, forgiving and universal human being. We are able to relate better to human beings in all latitudes, and realize and accept that we are rather small in the greatness of our planet and our universe, and finally, that we are not the center of it all.

#37 - Divided

With immigration back in the headlines, especially in Alabama, I thought about what being an assimilated immigrant means, especially when you maintain healthy roots to your homeland.

I’d like to explain what I unoriginally call The Change, and it’s not menopause (though I probably could talk about that one too). My Change happens when I go from one country to another, and it’s automatic, natural…basically instinctive. Let me explain.

Here in the States I’m bothered by cigarette smoke, trash in the streets and smog. It angers me that I agree to meet with a friend for coffee at 6 and she waltzes in 20 minutes late. I’m certain that a good chunk of my day I think only in English. I celebrate wholeheartedly the customs and holidays of this country. I love the freeways, the efficiency and logic of most every social process. I anticipate the hurried pace, the distances, the lack of time. The occasional homeless people I see surprise me precisely because it’s so rare to see them. In other words, I adapt and thrive in the urban landscape of living in Dallas, right smack in the middle of the First World.

Then I go to my homeland, to Mexico.

I share the table with six people and I’m the only non-smoker. I’m hit by the unpleasant smell of cigarettes, smoke getting in my eyes, and I don’t even bat an eye. People arrive late and I happily greet them with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. In cars it feels like I’m on horseback, jumping around in the backseat with no seatbelt while other cars flash by furiously and dangerously fast, a couple of inches from us, and still I’m able to smile like a kid. Downtown children literally play with fire for a couple of coins, as do clowns, jugglers and musicians with their marimbas, and Indian women sit with outstretched hands. Though saddened by the blatant sight of their poverty, I know them to be an integral part of my city. While there, English doesn’t come to mind. Someone suggests taking me to a Starbucks and I react offended. Don’t get me wrong, sadly I’m one of those people that keep Starbucks in business in spite of their overpriced coffee and coffee paraphernalia. But over there it’s the last place I see myself. So I insist on those small coffee shops that are unique to the city where my friends and I make that last of cup of java last for hours in delicious conversation.

As you can see, in my homeland I am another person. I’m the One From There, the one that lives with smog, smokers, poverty, chaos and social tardiness. And there I know myself to be also in my element.

As I said, what’s amazing is the ability of going through The Change. It’s like turning a switch. Click, and I’m the One From Here. Click, and I’m the One From There. One denies the other.

How can we explain, say chemically or physiologically these two consciousness, these two ways of being? Does a specific area in my brain become active while another has to totally shut down?

This is what being bicultural and bilingual is all about—being divided. I’m divided in two: I understand, love and belong to two countries, two languages; I have two pasts and two loyalties.

And this is how I go through life…divided.

#36 -- My Encounter With El arado

This is one of my Cotidianas that was published in July 2005. Because we’re saying goodbye to September, I want to remember Víctor and El arado and the people that go to work every day, without ever complaining about how hard it is. M.

As long as we sing his songs, as long as his courage can inspire us to greater courage, Víctor Jara will never die. – Pete Seeger

In my childhood home, the music was exclusively ranchera. From Lucha Villa to the duo Las Jilguerillas. In these songs women’s eyes were always black, they were proud and pretty and they made men beg. On their part, men found comfort in their tequila, they spoke about their horse, their guns and of that love they couldn’t reach.

In my childhood home, people were the salt of the earth; they are peasants with very little formal instruction. Their culture is hard work; they just do it and like to be noticed by the excellent way in which they execute it. Theirs is an attitude of never complaining and to feel pride about having work, no matter how hard, as long as it’s honest work, and of not having to go to anybody for assistance to satisfy their basic needs.

So, in my home there was music, cheerfulness and a lot of work. Everything was very humble, but nothing essential was amiss. My dad planted tomatoes and hot peppers in his backyard; inside, my mom’s plants blossomed and went green in almost hallucinating splendor. That was everyday life in my childhood.

When I was in high school, I recall a study circle (more like a book club) I attended in the Reforma sector of Guadalajara. Once a week a group of students would get together with the intent of reading and understanding philosophy classics. One day, before the discussion began, a boy, Enrique, took his guitar and started to sing. The song was definitely not ranchera, the ones that were played at my house but neither was it a modern or commercial song from the radio: it was not Julio Iglesias, Emmanuel, Juan Gabriel or Raphael. I had never heard this song. I was transfixed by its lyrics. The words were a revelation to me, I was deeply moved to listen how the song spoke about my people, with such sweetness and profound understanding.

The simple guitar strumming held the words up lofty and airy, those words that I felt were mine alone: I tighten my hold/ to plunge the plow in the soil./ I’ve been here so many years/ how can I not be tired?/ Butterflies fly, crickets sing,/ my skin gets black/ and the sun shines, shines, shines./ Sweat flows in rows/ like the rows I make on the earth/ nonstop.

This was the first Víctor Jara song I heard. Since then, Victor became part of all the icons, symbols and experiences that come together to shape my North: all that guides and defines me.

Víctor was born in Lonquén, Chile (less than 50 miles outside of Santiago) in September 1932 and was assassinated a few days before turning 41 in September 1973 in his country’s capital. Before dying he was tortured for several days; the military broke his hands so he couldn’t play the guitar again and then shot him to death with 44 bullets.

Víctor was a sympathizer of President Salvador Allende and when the coup d’état happened, among all the dead was Víctor.

Víctor lived his poverty with dignity and never forgot it. As a matter of fact, he dedicated his work to celebrate and ennoble the most humble laborers, the most humble people, the people whose sun-worn hands continue to hold our world with their everyday work.

#35 -- The Thing About Mary

So today I want to write about a delicate issue. Not for me because in my head and in my heart things are clear to me. But I know the topic can be touchy for most Catholics.

I want to talk about Mary.

This is my understanding. Mary was a virgin when God selected her to give birth to Jesus. She was engaged to Joseph who accepted to marry her because in a dream God spoke to him.

The virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus. After a bit more than three decades later, came the death of her son on the cross and then we had her assumption into heaven.

In my teenage and early adult years I was baffled by her life and Joseph’s. So I read the New Testament and found reference to Jesus’ brothers, so in my mind it was settled that Mary had children after she had Jesus, the Bible said so.

Then Catholics that know more than me put me in my place and insisted that Mary died a virgin and Christ was her only son. That she never had sex, which led me to believe that, yes, Margarita, sex is bad and Mary never did anything bad.

See, I have a hard time processing this. I believe that sex through love, commitment and responsibility is not only beautiful but smiled upon by our Creator. I don’t think he expected his favorite daughter, Mary, on to whose womb he trusted his son to acquire his human form, and her saintly fiancé, Joseph, to go through life without this deeply needed and deeply satisfying aspect of our humanity.

So I ask myself this, if Mary had sex with her husband, how did this diminish her role and her position in our Christian narrative? In my mind in no way whatsoever. I imagined she led a life obeying the precepts of her faith and that she dedicated it to God, her husband and her children. How could she be more saintly if she didn’t have sex (unless sex is really something bad to be avoided like the plague)? I just don’t know. And anyway, what business is it of ours to wonder and decide she had to die a virgin? I think that conclusion really drives the idea that sex is a taboo, something to hide and hold as a measure of ethic and moral value, instead of making sure we hold it as the wonderful thing it is and learn to approach it and practice it with reverence and responsibility. I think Mary and Joseph did that and that God smiled on that relationship.

This line of thought took me think about Jesus and all the controversy about him and Magdalene. If I accept he is the Son of God and our Redeemer, how would he having a relationship with this woman make him less divine? He still fulfilled his ministry and his destiny, pleasing his Father with the way in which he lived and died. And, ultimately I don’t care what he did in his private life. He still is who he is.

His divine nature remains untarnished in my heart and soul.

#34 -- Let me tell You About…My Books and my Movies

The last three books that have had me lost in my Nook are by Elizabeth Strout. I hadn’t heard about her before, but I read she won the Pulitzer in 2009 with her novel Olive Kitteridge. So I started with that one. She has two others, Amy and Isabelle and Abide With Me that I read immediately after.

Elizabeth is from new England, Maine to be precise. The term “New England” is one that awakens magical images in my mind, mostly of Mother Nature. I love the idea of the fall aflame in color, and the idea of long snowfalls and prolonged quiet, lonely walks bundled in winter wear. I know, most people that actually know the area say that winters can be miserable, but somehow I cannot associate the words New England with misery. Go figure.

Anyway, I read Strout’s three novels and I was captivated. She is a woman who takes her time with her characters and their lives. I read somewhere that she is a realist and I agree. She makes them real in their interactions and in the things that happen to them. Still more, what I find oddly perturbing but captivating at the same time
(because I can be a nosy body), is how intimately she portrays them. To be truthful, I sometimes felt that she had me in a room way too close to a character and that I was learning things that were too intimate and too private and that I didn’t have a right to be like the proverbial fly on the wall. When she deals with all the sordid details of excess or perversion, it’s with respect and objectivity, like she is saying, “Hey, I know, this is horrible, but it is part of our humanity and it explains this character better, so let’s deal with it and move on. No need for your judgment.”

Last week I went to the movies. I saw Higher Ground exquisitely acted and directed by Vera Farmiga (remember her from Up in the Air, as Clooney’s lover). The movie is a subdued but intense drama of one woman’s journey through her spiritual and religious life. Corinne is the main character who in her teen years becomes a radical and fundamental Christian along with her husband. She gives her youth and a good chunk of her adult years to her religious beliefs.

At some point, Corinne begins to struggle with her faith and you can see how she starts to feel unsettled by what she has held to be true in life: God and Christ. Her beliefs begin to crumble, as well as her marriage of many years, one that gave her three children.

The movie is based on the memoir This Dark World by Carolyn S. Briggs that now has been renamed Higher Ground: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost. So moved was I by the movie that I read this book in three days.

When I saw Corinne battling to hold on to her faith, I cried, I so identified myself with that odd feeling of emptiness and of uselessness when you feel you must release something that has anchored you to the world since you are aware of your existence. It took me to those first months when I began to define myself as an atheist.

After the movie and after reading the book I wrote in my journal: Dear Father, I am done doubting and questioning You. You are. Period. And I love You. No more atheism for me, even if I’m wrong, You are and I love You. Your daughter, Tita.

#33- Homesickness in Cardboard Boxes

When my mother, almost eighty, returns from Mexico, she usually arrives with a suitcase and two cardboard boxes. These boxes could very well have the logo of the Mexican detergent Ariel. She expertly ties these boxes with vinyl yellow rope, a typical sign that one must be Mexican (or maybe we could generalize and say Latin American).

I remember one particular trip. She arrived on a bus from Jiquilpan, a town near her native village in the state of Michoacan, to the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff with a four-hour delay and swollen feet but, surprisingly, happy and strong.

After the vicissitudes that delays of this nature cause, we got home around midnight and brought in her cardboard boxes while she explains the delay and we call friends and relatives to inform them that she’s made it safe to Dallas.

As I help her with her boxes, time is somehow momentarily suspended. When she opens her boxes, yawns and tiredness magically disappear. She pulls out a lot of round cheeses, about 10, and jars of cajeta, a creamy caramel, and other sweets from her village, everything homemade, along with a very large plastic bag about to burst with dried red peppers. All this comes from Michoacán. Then come the bolillos or baguettes from Guadalajara and mugs for my new kitchen. She tells me sheepishly, “I wanted to bring you an entire set but one cost 1,800 pesos and another about 2,000 (roughly between 180 and 200 dollars). Can you believe it? So I just brought you these two mugs. They’re from Tonalá.”

It’s always like this when my aging mother returns from Mexico. Whether I like it or not, her boxes open the door to Mexico and my childhood: I can see the small village where my parents were born, the tile floor of my house, the streets of my barrio; I can smell the characteristic smog of my city, I can hear the deafening sound of the buses; I can peek at the steaming taco stand on the street corner. I remember some of the blurry faces of my many relatives.

With every cheese that I rinse for my mom (“to get rid of the excess drippings,” she tells me), I recover I-don’t-know-what essence that has become dusty and almost forgotten in my hectic everyday life in Dallas.

But the apex of my nostalgia, of its marvelous significance that is beyond words, occurs this time when she tells me that a woman reached her in Sahuayo to give her a pair of wings that my daughter had asked for as a birthday gift. I laugh when I explain to my husband that la Abuela could have made things easy on herself and just asked me to order them from the catalog where my daughter got the idea, instead of having to choose between bumblebee wings, or yellow, pink or white butterfly wings as she boards a bus, and then carry them tirelessly in her lap during the entire 27-hour trip that became longer because of two bus breakdowns in the middle of nowhere.

So that year my daughter got those Third World pink butterfly wings for her birthday.

From Mexico.

It seems to me that that is how it was meant to be.

#32 - My Aunt Olivia

It’s early morning, the cows have been milked, and beds have been made. Now, rosy-cheeked, my Aunt Olivia reigns from her small, dark, windowless kitchen. My cousin Cuca has returned from the mill where she took the corn or nixtamal to be made into masa, dough for the corn tortillas her mother will now make.

In the mud oven or fogón the firewood heats the round griddle, and it’s ready to receive the thin discs of uncooked masa where they will become tortillas, round and light, like magical globes lifted by hot air. Silently, one of my six cousins feeds the firewood so his mother can begin. The wood tortilla-press is big and heavy. From behind the metate, her grinding stone, Tía Olivia, expertly throws the hot tortillas into a basket lined by an impeccable white napkin, impeccably embroidered by her or her daughter. It’s from this old woven basket that we take the tortillas and we spread on them the milk’s skin just recently boiled and we sprinkle it with salt. If it’s not with milk’s skin, we eat the tortillas with cheese or cottage cheese, or a spicy salsa just made in the rock mortar or molcajete.

My sister Irma loves her ranitas. A ranita is a tortilla freshly pulled from the griddle and onto which Tía Olivia throws a few grains of coarse salt and drops of water. She rolls the tortilla with damp hands and squeezes it a couple of times. Hungrily, hurriedly, Irma takes the damp and steaming ranita and bites into it with obvious pleasure.

It’s a delicious ceremony. Tía Olivia smiles and watches us eat the tortillas that bloom from her busy hands. There is not much talking. And sometimes, when she takes a break to puff at her cigarette, she watches us from behind the smoke she exhales with an intense, quiet look that we’re too young to understand or appreciate fully. Still—though at an unconscious, wordless level—we know ourselves to be before some type of archetypal goddess, a goddess of inexhaustible resources and strength. We witness the exact moment of her mystery—her ability to transform matter into nurturing food. Dressed in black, always wrapped in her shawl, in that dark room with dirt floor and mud walls, where she is illuminated by the fire, we watch her, mother and aunt, perform this sacred daily ritual.

Beyond the narrow door the day expands always blue and luminous. Somewhere in the distance dogs bark, the radio plays Mexican folk music and children laugh, calling us to play. But we choose to stay here, to pay her tribute. We choose to grow strong and healthy by the apparent simplicity of her everyday miracle.

#31- Letter to My Friend S.

S.,

When I was a brought to this country, one of the first things I experienced outside the realm of my loving home was discrimination by the other children at school. At first I couldn't understand if they were even talking to me. There was this red-headed boy, Mark, chubby and freckled, who would follow me on his bike on my walk back home who would call me names associated with my culture: "hey taco," "hey enchilada" and silly things like that. But I knew that what I was feeling was true and not silly, a burning shame for being singled out. I was the only "browned-skin" (in spite of tending to be more light- than dark-skinned) person in my class. Maybe now I would laugh about it but I was not more than 10 then.

I had no information about discrimination or bigotry. I couldn't name what was happening to me. So I kept quiet. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't tell my teachers. I was absolutely alone. So my two worlds sort of broke off. At home I was vivacious, funny, cute and very much loved. At school I was silent, withdrawn, friendless and alone.

And so I became a person who could pretend she was fine alone, that she actually preferred it so. She was independent and self-sufficient. She would never admit to being sad, scared or in need of some sort of validation and acceptance.

During my schooling in Mexico, I discovered friendship and so I came out of my little shell. And my sense of humor came alive. It was the time when the kid at school came close to becoming the same kid I was at home. But then the shaming came with my body being overweight. And the cruel jokes and name-calling started again. So I retracted into my broken shell and there I have stayed. At its door. Ready to recoil and hide again. But definitely able to step away from it when I feel safe and included.

As a fifty-one-year old woman this seems to me to be pretty immature, but what can I say?

You say, "Sometimes I try to figure out what I see in your eyes (when I catch your glance). I wonder if you remember our talks. The insecurity I often felt. It's there." I can relate because I know people have a hard time understanding that at my core, I'm a shy, quiet little girl who makes herself responsible for making others talk about themselves; for making them feel at ease; that I relax when I make them laugh. And yes, that resource was fragmented two years ago, but it's coming back together. When I make a joke about anything, I catch myself apologizing, in case someone might think it inappropriate. But I cannot stop being who I am.

And, S., when I see you , when I catch your glance, all I see is beauty, elegance and grace, so I cannot fathom the source of your insecurity, but through my broken heart, I do not doubt your words. It must be there.

In spite of all this, I defend my right to optimism and hope, faith and happiness and when I feel I'm losing my grip on them, I hold on through prayers and with teeth and claws. I must. There really is no alternative.

Let me finish my letter to you with John Lennon's words, "Every day, in every way, it's getting better and better."

Love,
M.

#30 - My Talk About Cars

My papi really wanted to raise me to be self-sufficient and independent. So I was about eight years old when I was put in the driver’s seat of our family car. I remember he had to put a pillow under me so I could see out the windshield and I had to pull myself up as close as possible to the steering wheel in order to reach the pedals.

Naturally, he was not expecting me to drive. I think he probably hoped that I would begin to feel comfortable thinking of myself as a driver. So he would make me drive up and down the gravel road of the where we lived in California giving me advice and warnings about what it means to be in charge of a car.

As soon as I turned sixteen (or was it eighteen?) he took me to take my driving test. I remember how happy he was that I passed the written and practice tests on my first try. He was so proud.

In spite of being a legal driver, my sister and cousin Cuca were no fans of mine. Once on our way to work they made me stop the car so they could walk across a small wooden bridge instead of staying in the car with me while I drove it over two skinny wood planks that was the space allotted for vehicles. They didn’t trust me to do it right. But I did it, though I was pretty scared myself, fear that I’m sure had to do more with their mistrust than any possible inability of mine to drive over what seemed a flaky bridge.

Many, many years had to pass before I drove a car again: my papi’s death, my college studies, my first marriage and then ending up in Texas. Since we didn't have a car, a friend let me borrow his so I could take the driver’s test. I was a bit surprised to pass it on the first try again and to have unconsciously remembered so much from my papi’s teachings during the written test.

In the early nineties I bought my first used car for $500. It was probably from the seventies. It was big as a boat and brown in color so I named it El Cucaracho (as a friendly wink to the Spanglish spoken in San Antonio; they call cockroaches, “cucarachos,” though in Spanish as far as I know, the noun is correct only in its feminine form, “cucarachas”).

El Cucaracho had a short life with us. And it wasn’t until December 1993 that I bought my first new car. An acquaintance made the deal for us over the phone, because I was a nervous wreck. We showed up at a Nissan dealership with the confirmation letter of my fabulous new job that I was to start in mid-January 1994 and that was enough for a friend of my husband’s to drive us out of the dealership in a brand new 1994 Nissan Sentra. I did not believe I could drive this new car. We had never owned a new car in my family. I only knew three cars in my family: El Amapolo, El Palomo and El Cafetal, my papi’s pride and joy, used cars that he cared for with utmost reverence.

I promised myself I would drive my new car on that first day to my new job at Mary Kay. So La Nubecita (Little Cloud, it was a light gray color) stayed parked for those two weeks at our apartment complex.

I still worked at a radio station, so a coworker would come pick me up; she would park her car, and she would drive us to work in my new little car. I remember that in trying to be encouraginge, she told me that my car resembled a small Lexus. I didn’t know what the word Lexus meant or implied.

Such was my fear that I promised myself that I would never drive on any freeways. So I started driving from Irving to Dallas on the side streets. We loved our little Nubecita. She was reliable and trustworthy, she never broke down. But I promised myself that I would never buy another Nissan vehicle because of how I was treated when my car needed some bodywork done at the dealership. I remember I was so unhappy with their service that I wrote to several Nissan people, the CEO included. I never received a reply. And I kept my promise. We’ve been Honda customers since then.

After the Nubecita, came La Tortola, an Accord I drove until 2005, and then La Bluesera (a Honda Odyssey). I loved this car, it was ample and so comfortable inside, most especially after my stroke. I felt that it was like my little house on the road. And it had so many luxuries that we had not planned for: a DVD player for my daughter, a six-CD player and it even warmed our seats in cold weather.

Alas, La Bluesera started acting up this year, first the AC (unforgivable in the Texas heat), so we went ahead and got a new car. Another Odyssey. This one is a white one so I call it La Paloma in honor of my papi’s Palomo.

Buying a car is a long, long, strenuous process. About four hours if not more. At least for us. Since money is tight I remember praying, “Oh God, let me be humble and get only a car I need." So I considered another Accord, but it was very difficult for me and my cane to get in and out, as with the Civic; the Element and the Pilot were too high. Though I’m no Goldilocks, the van was just right for me. So I ended with that one again. And of course I love it. Now this one does not come with a DVD player (we really didn’t use it much), but it does come with a navigation system, Amelia we call the woman’s voice that seems to know how to direct us everywhere we need to be.

I wasn’t able to be humble and careful in the matters of money. I regret that. But maybe as a stroke survivor I should drive a car that helps me be safe and as comfortable as possible. Maybe its not a luxury but a necessity. May God agree.

#29 - A Statement-cum-Prayer

I really do not feel like writing a new post, but this damn sense of duty has here me uni-hand typing trying to think about what to write.

Curiously, in my emotional ups and downs, I’ve never questioned that my body will heal completely from the effects of that 2008 stroke. I don't know how, I don't know when, but I refuse to believe that I will die in these circumstances. It’s something I’m still unwilling to accept.

My body has always been strong and in spite of all that I have done to not take care of it, it has been strong and able to carry my weight about with unexpected flexibility and ability.

Now that it’s not what it used to be, I miss every little thing about its past. I promise myself that I will not torment it anymore for not being that desired size 8, 10 or 12. I will honor it and respect it as it is, I won’t dwell in the damaging “what ifs” of my life.

I know what I want, really. Yes, now that I’m 50, almost 51, I really know what I want. I want to fully inhabit my body. As simple as that. I want to claim it proudly mine and mine alone. Through honoring my body I want to honor and love God’s grace upon me. I want to walk long distances on the beach in total communion with Mother Nature. I want to recognize my identity in bodies of water. I want to travel and know rivers and creeks, lakes and ponds and the immeasurable ocean. I want to fall on my knees facing the sea and soulfully weep the joy of my human finiteness and the power and fragility of this my human body.

I want to walk in the rain like when I was a teenager so long ago, raise my face to the raindrops and let them do with me what they must, drench me in the sky’s holy waters.

And when this is not possible because, well, I live in Texas, I want to go home and walk on my treadmill simply because both my legs are strong again and I can hold on tightly to the machine’s bars. And my mind will go silly while I watch a sitcom or a cop show, while my legs do what they were created to do. Walk.

I want to do my dishes, I want to do my laundry, I want to explore cooking. I want to dedicate my time to beautifying my home. I want to spoon regularly while in bed with my husband and fall asleep with his arms keeping all scary shadows at bay.

I will not accept that these simple things will never be possible again. If we do not fully understand the workings and potential of our brains, I’m here to tell you that it has an incredible ability to self-heal and even now, just as I am right this minute, cane and all, non-functioning left hand and all, I’m a wonderful example of that.

But just you wait…

#28 - My Books: Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

My personal interests can be resumed in this phrase: All Things Human. It is us, little human beings on this big planet, that fascinate me. I love the many questions we ask, and the ease with which we seem to be happy with our simple answers.

I just finished reading LaPlante’s novel Turn of Mind, and it too was fascinating to me from the perspective that it deals with the process of insanity that befalls a brilliant and intellectual orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. Dr. Jennifer White is in her mid sixties, widowed, with two children, a 29 year old son who seems to be having issues with addiction and a 24 old year girl who is in academia. Even though her husband is dead, it turns out that he will end up playing an important role towards the end of the novel.

Dr. White seems to realize she will need to “retire” from her job because she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In spite of her experience and her professional brilliance, the disease interferes more and more with her everyday life to the point that she needs to be constantly supervised by a caregiver to assure her safety.

The book is narrated by Jennifer: cool, aloof, withdrawn, rational and very intellectual Jennifer. We learn from her during moments of lucidity how she feels about love, sex, and motherhood and she gives us no sentimental bullshit. She’s hard, stubborn, meticulous, rational and highly intelligent.

The novel becomes a bit dark, well, because it’s never easy to talk about madness, especially when it hits so close to home. Except for Jennifer herself, the characters seem imprecise and blurry being that we get to know them through the eyes of a woman who is steadily declinining into her disease.

The plot thickens and becomes more complex when we find out that Jennifer’s best "frenemy," Amanda, who lives three doors down, is found murdered in her home with four of her fingers surgically removed. (Yes, Jennifer’s area of expertise is hand surgery.) Jennifer does not have any recollection of Amanda’s demise, but this is how she becomes a ”person of interest.”

So if learning a possible manner in which a person might deal with Alzheimer’s was not enough, now you must continue reading avidly because you must also learn if Jennifer killed Amanda and if she did, why.

I liked the pace of the book. Not too slow, not too fast. It’s hard not sympathize with Jennifer as she watches her wonderful mind unravel and she discovers what she is capable of even in her dementia.

Bottom line: I just talked myself into re-reading this book soon.

#27 - My Books: The Gap Year by Sarah Bird

I just finished reading The Gap Year that roped me in when I found out that it was about a mother-daughter relationship. Being the mother of one preteen girl, I’m obsessed about how other women might handle this relationship and to see if there is anything different about how mothers from other cultural and racial backgrounds feel about their daughters.

I liked the book’s format. The novel is organized by dated entries: one by Cam (no, she isn’t a Cameron), the mom, and a year earlier by Aubrey her teenage daughter , so you are privy to their thoughts and points of view. They read as authentic people, as opposed to “created characters.”

We find this single mom raising her daughter since the age of two after Martin, her husband just up and leaves for what he believes is his religious true calling, and just right after Cam bets on life in the 'burbs outside the city because of its better school system. Wanting what all parents want, to be in a position to offer Aubrey a better education, Cam is not a happy camper in her chosen suburb. But as the time to go to college approaches, Cam painfully discovers that Aubrey is not so much into the plan of getting a college education any more. She is totally captivated by high school football hero Ty-Mo, who in turn, is having serious doubts about his own college education based on a sport he doesn’t enjoy anymore.

Complicated? Wait until you find out that Martin, Aubrey’s dad, decides to “friend” her through Facebook during this time and sees he has to face a still very resentful Cam.

I liked this book because like Cam, my thirteen (counting the year of my pregnancy) mother years have been all about providing the best educational opportunities that my financial situation has allowed me to offer my little girl. In my mind college is not an option it is a “must.” Period. So I can sympathize with Cam absolutely. I am disappointed by the fact that Aubrey does not see the importance of those four years at a university. And as all parents do, this is what I tell myself: "My daughter will be different."

But then I can also remember somewhat what it’s like to be seventeen or eighteen years of age, when you feel and think that you are capable of believing yourself smarter than your parents, and you are so clear about life. When the truth is, down the road, a couple of decades later you will realize you really had no idea about anything.

So reading Aubrey’s entries was the surprising part to me, a nice reminder that more than knowing and understanding what Cam is going through, it’s also about the many paths (not just college) that open up to a young person at this age and how everything acquires a life-or-death intensity for them. Tolerance, flexibility, acceptance and gut-love are the virtues that we parents have to struggle to maintain and refresh constantly. Bottom line: Stay ready, the hard part is not over once we're done potty training them.

#26 - My Movies: Oh, The Worth of A Better Life!

I’m no film critic by any stretch of the imagination that I know. As I know also when and why I like or dislike a movie. For example, I went to see Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz and I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where I couldn’t find one single redeeming feature. This one in my mind offers the viewer nothing, not in terms of plot, hilarity, morals, aesthetics (unless you count Cameron washing a car in very small clothes a redeeming feature, then this is your movie).
Then I saw Horrible Bosses and with its crude and adult humor, I was able to enjoy more. Nowadays you expect every actor to have some talent and chops and the ones in Horrible Bosses do not disappoint.
Of course you have movies like A Better Life and if you go see it you more or less have an idea of what to expect: a story about disenfranchised and marginalized people that can’t seem to find a place where they can be allowed to have a better life (not even their country).
So we start with an undocumented Mexican, Carlos Galindo who works in an underground economy doing yard work. His wife left him with a small son, Luis, because she wasn’t satisfied with what he could provide for her.
Now Luis is 14 and moody as a bona fide teenager, and it seemed to me when I saw his eyes dart around, that he was posing those eternal and unanswerable questions of “Who am I?” “Why am I here”, “Is there any meaning to my life?” School is just a way of passing time and being exposed to the reality of gang activity in the hood. There are a couple of instances when you know Luis has to weigh this possibility for his own life, and you silently cheer him on to say no, unlike his friend who we lose as he goes through some form of violent gang initiation.
The plot revolves around a truck Carlos buys from the guy who employs him to do yard work. This used pickup truck is considered by Carlos as a way out of the painful small and inadequate home he shares with his son, the dangerous school Luis attends and their neighborhood.
After the truck is stolen by a pathetic man whose situation seems to be far worse, father and son are stopped by the police.
Yes, I cried but it’s hard not to when the story toys with the things you value the most: common decency, family, tradition, culture, education and the desire to work.
Luis is at the door of manhood. He was born in California, but his life seems pretty much decided for him: a gang or, as his friend tells him, end up doing yards like his dad.
As an American, Luis seems to have a disdain for the Spanish language, the Mexican culture and all things that are not of the white world, but his dad keeps pulling him into the intimacy of his love, reminding him of his origin and his beginning.
It’s this that I think offers a door of redemption for the teenager: somehow in his genes he carries the values of his dad. He has observed the quiet man day in and day out as he toils with his tools, as he takes care of his small yard, of how beaten up he is by life and how he never desists to keep his courage and his hope. Luis carries this knowledge in his blood and when it comes time to decide his path, there will be no gang strong enough to make him give that identity up.
Well, at least that is my take and my prayer for when life starts getting tough on my daughter.
Demián Bichir is an actor I didn’t know. I loved how he created the hard-working, decent Carlos Galindo and the moral choices he unknowingly teaches his son in the process of interacting with the youth: like paying a guy because “he kept his word, I’ll keep mine,” of paying it forward and hiring a guy because he had shared his food with him. Finally when the father breaks down and tells Luis that he had him to love him and to worry about him, and to make sure he made something with his life. He tells him what I imagine is what we all parents think at some point in our life: That that is when we will feel worthy.

#25 - Thirty Years

I’m feeling happy. Nothing unusual really. I would say my tendency is to be a happy camper, in spite of all going on. And still in thinking about this time of the year I have to take into account that July 10, 2011 marks the 30th anniversary of my father’s death.

On remembering this date last year I wrote the following in Spanish. I try to translate it into English below:

Twenty-nine years ago we found ourselves devastated without you.

Your absence was brand new and overwhelming.

Your heart very suddenly gave up on life.

As it took your body into its nightly sleep it said: “Check you later”

And it stopped beating as if nothing would happen.

It left you with your mouth agape and an expression of pain (or so I thought when I saw you as a corpse: dry, cold and stern),

Your eyes surprised by the sudden quietness

of the vital muscle.

I found myself hollow without my papi.

I blindly obeyed the order to go find a priest.

On my return I saw your Marga on the sidewalk

Crying in bursts of laughter

Telling me I didn’t get a chance to see you.

Your Gurmia, I can’t remember where she hid with our newly shared orphanhood.

Those first months I didn’t cry for you, papi;

after all I was your daughter

and I had learned your lesson well:

The strong, we don’t cry.

Months later my mother found me teary-eyed

leafing through a photo album

and surprised she said to me:

“Oh, m‘ija, so you did love him.”

But it wasn’t until about five years later

by myself at home watching On Golden Pond

when Henry Fonda suffers his heart attack

that I was shaken by a stormn of tears

contained for so long.

I imagined your head in my lap and I rocked you in my arms

While I bawled like I had never bawled before

A river of tears, of “I love yous” and “I miss yous”

I kissed you with the love and tenderness of your spoiled little girl.

Twenty-nine years, papi, and it still pains me to not have you.

Papi: Luis Hernández Villa

I want to believe and I believe

That your spirit is at my side

That every now and then you take a peek into my life

And you’re happy with what I have done with it

Especially with that autumn day when I made you a grandfather

And you felt proud knowing that one of her names is Luisa in your honor.

I carry you here, papi, intimate and close;

But I want you free and happy

In spirit and in memory.

#24 - My Money Dreams and Woes

I’ve always been quite naïve and I still am. I tend to keep myself hopeful, optimistic, and grateful. I’m always expecting miraculous things to happen to me, and I think they will happen quite unexpectedly and unexplainably.

Throughout the years:

-When I get home after work every afternoon, I always open my mailbox expectantly. I always hope to find an envelope waiting for me with something wonderful: a letter from a dear person from far away, money from a benefactor (anonymous or not). After email came to be an everyday thing, this dream has been harder to keep, but nonetheless I keep looking for that something wonderful amidst my junk mail and bills, every day. And yes, I'm briefly dissapointed, but next day my hope flares high. I promised myself that I would stop looking inside the mailbox waiting for something wonderful. And I just can’t.

-I’ve convinced myself that I will win the lottery. I know the mathematical improbability of this and I know most people will reasonably think of me as foolish. But I hold on to my absurd logic, which is: If it’s true that one in 16 to 20 million people will win the Lotto, I ask myself, “What am I, if not but one in that immense number?" I’m convinced it will happen. Yeah, I’ll keep you posted.

I don’t see how I will ever be a person without debt, mi high dream. My mortgage is big, my debts are big. And since I don’t hold but one job, no matter how fair and lovely it might be, it will never be enough to get me out of the hole. But, then I think, “Wait one freaking moment! Just how much is too much?”

Unfortunately, from my personal point of view, $400,000 doesn’t seem to me to be such an excessive amount of money. And yet we (Husband and I) will need a lifetime (30 years in the case of our mortgage) to pay this amount which I would say safely encompasses all that we owe as a family. There are thousands, millions surely, that have that and more to dispose of. There’s Oprah, kids Mark Z., Justin and Selena, Spielberg and Cruise, to name but a few. If they saw one of their accounts diminish by less than half a mill, to them this amount would be but a rose petal slap on their fair cheeks. Would you agree?

So, why do I have to be in the group that wonders why it’s so expensive to eat, say, at PF Chang’s. The other weekend we spent $85 on a nice lunch for the three of us, and grateful as I am that were able to pay it with our debit card and not use a credit card, I couldn’t help but worry and worry, that for struggling people like us, that was a nice little chunk of change that we shouldn’t have spent on eating out. But we did. And as my dear daddy would say often enough, “The only reason we work so hard, my daughter, is to have enough to eat, damn it!”


I'm aware that money does not buy you happiness or peace of mind (I'm actually reading a psychology book that talks about this). The most valuable things in life like oxygen and family, you don't get to buy. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my husband silly and goofy when he is doing well in health and emotions, and to see my daughter ecstatic as when we told her she could go to a clogging convention in Waco this month. But I tell you, without wanting to seem materialistic, little can be accomplished without those green papers we call money.

So there you have it, friends, my most intimate thoughts about money. I’m not regular, but I do buy a Texas Two Step Lotto ticket, and I will also buy tickets for the Texas Lotto and the Mega Millions every now and then. With the first one I’m shooting for that magical 400,000K to know what it is to be debt free. With the other two tickets, I’m shooting to retire and live life like wealthy folk do in the First World. Here's me to the Law of Attraction: Universe, bring it! And to you all: Let's live in faith, expecting miracles on a daily basis.

#23 -- By Strokes of Grace

Three years ago this past June 15 was a Sunday. My husband (Raúl) and I had company over for dinner. I cooked the only thing I basically know to do when I cook for others. It’s my “fancy plate.” Pasta and shrimp.

So Tomás and Yolanda came over and I remember having a nice time and enjoying my share of the two bottles of red wine. After a couple of hours I made a strong pot of espresso coffee to cut any undesirable effects of the yummy wine. So I drank several small cups of sweet and strong coffee.

Close to midnight when Yolanda and Tomás left, I went to my bedroom to put on my pajamas. A few minutes later when Raúl came in I remember feeling confused, and as it turns out I was noticeably “different,” I just didn’t know how. Raúl kept asking me if I was okay and I kept answering that I was fine, just feeling a bit confused. All of the sudden the carpet seemed truly welcoming and I remember letting myself slide to the floor. I was amazed that the coffee had not done its usual magic, since the only explanation I could muster was that the table wine had hit me harder than I expected, though I was too lucid to be drunk.

Raúl asked me if I needed to go the hospital and I couldn’t think of a good reason to go. So I just asked for my nightly pills which he gave to me and I asked him to just let me rest for a little while and that I would be fine.

Next thing I know he was calling his son Eros, the doctor, in Mexico telling him how I was acting. Eros told him to ask me to say the word ferrocarril. I felt so smart, catching on that he wanted to hear if I could roll my Rs. I thought I answered perfectly (Raúl later told me I did not). Then I was in an ambulance assisted by firemen that came to my house after my husband dialed 911, a ride of which I have no recollection whatsoever.

I don’t remember any pain, any discomfort or any one thing that should have alerted me. If anything I felt embarrassed for what I assumed was my loss of control. I thought, “Here I go behaving like a cheap bum, good thing Valentina is asleep.” I thought once I took my pills and slept, even if it was on the floor, I would be back to my happy normal self.

It turns out June 15, 2008, was the night I had my basal ganglia stroke. I don’t remember when I woke up. I barely remember snippets of images and conversations. I remember asking someone from work if she had finished translating page 13 of Applause magazine and if my suggestions had helped. I was happy that I could still remember the immediacy of my life and the people around me.

I couldn’t imagine what I still had to acknowledge of the person I was to become. To me there was no danger or risk in sight. I would get out of that bed and go home. I didn’t worry one bit, even when they asked me to move my toes and fingers and it was observed that my left side was not responding, even after I couldn’t stop drooling or even while talking, I would frequently go into a deep snoring sleep as if somebody had flipped a switch. I don’t remember all the kind faces that came to see me those five weeks I spent in the hospital.

When I started working with physical and occupational therapists, I really thought it was part of the routine I had to go through in order to go home. I didn’t think I really needed any of that. I would think things like, “Look people, I come from hoeing the fields, I come from picking the fruits from the trees. This person in front of you doesn’t give up. My body is like that battery bunny, it just keeps going and going. As soon as you let me, you’ll see. My body will walk me out of here, useful as usual.”

My thoughts were to no avail. In long and intense sessions I had to learn to accept help to get out of bed, to go to the potty, to use a walker and canes. I didn’t know the devastation that comes with a stroke. When they released me to another facility, in my mind I determined that by month three all this was going to be but a memory. Definitely.

Instead, in these three years I’ve learned the virtues of patience and tolerance. I’ve learned to ask and expect help as an example of the kindness that most human beings have in their hearts when they see a diminished individual. I have had brutal moments of depression and even the thought of death has surprised me as a viable option if this is the way I’m meant to live the remainder of my days.

But then I try and put every ounce of my spirit to lift myself up and I ask for forgiveness for my defeatist thoughts. And I remind myself that I come from hoeing the fields, and picking fruits from the trees and climbing ladders in the most inclement of California weathers and that people like me, we have bodies that no matter what, just don’t give up. Just look at my mother in her aging 79-year-old-body and then there is my sister, the strongest breast cancer survivor ever. Besides, there are absolutely so many wonderful things I still have to do. To appreciate my husband fully and grow old with him. To watch my daughter blossom. To get to know as much of this lovely planet I have the privilege to inhabit with you (views with water hold such power over me).

I make myself walk no matter what, even when my left foot threatens to fold and collapse I walk and I walk. I feel the tug of my hand when I imagine it (as some phantom limb) moving and stretching. I loathe and I love my purple-flowered cane.

On June 15, alone in my house, I got on my knees for the first time in these three years to pray my gratitude for this time of precious life, and I forced myself to stand back up on my own, instead of waiting for my husband. Maybe it was too demanding for my body, but I did it anyway. I guess this is the person I am--a body that just will not give up. Amen.

#22 -- No to Bilingualism?

It’s not that I’m obsessive. Well, maybe just a tad. As any other parent out there with my heart and soul I desire to provide my daughter the very best that I can.

I know firsthand the spiritual and emotional riches of being bilingual. Not only that, it is my ability to live in both worlds—the English-speaking world, where I’m already assimilated into its culture, history and customs; and the Spanish-speaking world with its beauty in language, traditions and history—that I am able to make a decent living as a bilingual communicator and translator.

When my daughter was born I was determined to have her not just be bilingual, in my mind that was a given, since her dad’s English is limited and my mother doesn’t speak the language. I wanted Valentina to speak more than just English and Spanish. I wanted her to be minimally trilingual. So Google and I became fast friends. At some point I remember landing at the website of a school in Dallas that said that by first grade the child’s education would be 85% in French, but the first three years of Pre-K would be 50% in English and 50% in French with one day dedicated to Spanish. Call me corny, but when I read that I wept. Had somebody asked me how I planned to raise a trilingual kid, I might have ended with a plan somewhat like that.

Now in terms of language I was not about to get picky. I would have gone with German, Italian or Japanese, but in my heart of hearts I so wanted French.

At that point in 2001 financially I was doing nicely. My little freelance translation gigs were steady and generous. So vey happily I enrolled Valentina at the Dallas International School. My only concern was that we were not completely potty trained, a requirement to start at DIS, since she was four months shy of turning three. Fortunately, as I recall, she only had a couple of “accidents” in those first weeks.

O, how I loved that navy blue jumper, white shirt and red necktie my little girl had to wear every day. I remember I bought her navy blue patent shoes and braided her pigtails that first day. Off she went sucking her thumb and carrying her humongous and empty hot pink backpack she selected at Grapevine Mills.

By second grade Valentina’s class made a field trip to Montreal for a French immersion week in March. I followed her along with two other mothers. We rented a chalet nearby. I wanted to know myself nearby in case something would happen that made mommy necessary. Fortunately, the trip went smoothly and Valentina had her experience in the winter cold of Canada.

By fifth grade, the trip was for two weeks to Paris. My husband and I traveled with her. The forty-eight contiguous United States and the Atlantic seemed too vast a distance between us and our darling girl. So for the first time, my stroke-broken body and I traveled with the kindest husband ever just so we could feel close to our daughter, and yes, I fell in love with Paris.

When middle school came around, my freelance activities had basically faded into nothing and the tuition, much more expensive now, became unsustainable. So we had to opt into our public school in the Lewisville Independent School District where she continues to thrive and has been very happy.

We have not given up on her being trilingual. After DIS she has been tutored by a Parisian law student. In my mind, this language has to stay. We had eight long and costly years invested in this, I just hope she will learn to appreciate and take advantage of her trilingual skills. I feel the world will be more welcoming to her. Who knows how many French-speaking and English-speaking countries are out there (I know the Spanish-speaking are about 22). Imagine what this could potentially offer any young adult able to communicate in either of these three languages...

You know, I use to read a lot about individuals who speak more than one language. It seems that in our first year our brain is wired to learn any language in the world and that our little and marvelous cerebral mass is totally plastic those first years of life to learn more than one. I honestly think it’s a disservice to our children that we don’t educate them to be bilingual at least, being especially that we still live in the most powerful nation on this Blue Planet of ours. Geographically and historically it seems to make sense our kids could grow up speaking English and Spanish, especially down here in the south,but it can also be English and Mandarin or English and Japanese. Whatever, dudes. It’s time we consider options aside from English. Hey wait a minute, me personally, I need for us to keep our status of English only. What would happen to little ole translators like "meself" if this should change? So, let’s say no to all languages.

#21 – Miscellany

So I didn’t meet my commitment with self of posting every weekend, but hey, I was consistent for practically five months. And I’m back. In these two weeks I went to a family wedding in California, which brings me to my first point…

You know, I’ve always wondered about the “cultural differences” that mainstream USA talks about when referring to us Hispanics or Latinos (however you call us). I always tend to minimize that aspect. I ask what differences are they talking about. I know we work hard, and we work for family, our children’s education, not having debt, etc. I don’t know how different that is from Mainstream USA. But in California two weeks ago, I walked into a family gathering and I was taken aback momentarily, my eyes and my heart making the necessary adjustments to recognize myself with the people gathered in a family celebration after the wedding. What was going on? Nothing really. Music was blaring from speakers in the nice patio overflowing with potted plants and trees, men were looking over the meat being cooked in a humongous copper pan, some women (my dear sister among them) were serving plates piled high with meat, tortillas and salsa. Yet I know that it was different from the “white” social gathering I go to in Texas even with my Hispanic friends already assimilated to the main culture. So I’m here to finally tell you that those “cultural differences” do exist. I just would have a hard time defining them for you and me. This observation took me a couple of minutes and it wasn’t long before I felt I was in my parents’ village in Michoacán. Very soon I felt totally at home among strangers and far away from my Texas lair.

MY MOVIES – Once back in the Metroplex, my husband and I went to the movies. We went to see a movie I practically had no information about except that it was in French. So off we went to the Angelika in Plano. The movie is actually in French and Arabic. It’s a long movie, even slow, but it’s tragic and it’s beautiful. If you’re the sensitive type it can make you cry (my husband is very sensitive) because it deals with some area in the Middle East torn by war. The movie shows us the turns of fate that can occur during violent unrest.

The movie tells the story of one young woman in love and pregnant who is saved from a sure death in hands of her brothers for bringing dishonor to the family by being pregnant. She has a son who she gives up to an orphanage. Later, after committing an act of violence during the war she ends as a prisoner where she is tortured and raped, and ends pregnant by her torturer. She gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and moves to Canada.

The movie starts with her death and the young adult twins receiving as part of their mother’s will two letters: one for their father that the girl needs to find; while her brother gets a letter that he needs to deliver to their brother of whom they don’t know about.

The girl travels to the other side of the world in search of their father, her brother’s heart is not into satisfying their mother’s last request, so he stays behind, until at last he unites with his sister.

They find out they didn’t really knew their mother, what she had been capable of enduring and all that she lived through. I won’t tell you the rest in case you want to find out the rest of the story. It’s worth seeing it, although emotionally hard to watch. The actors are superb, the story doesn’t let you go. The name of the movie is Incendies (Scorched), based on a play by Lebanon-born Wajdi Mouawad. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. With Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette and Rémy Girard.

MY BOOKS – I’ll be brief. I just finished reading Father of the Rain by Lily King. It’s the story of a girl and her relationship with her father. The first part puts us when the eleven-year-old Daley has to live through their parents’ divorce and how events mark us while we are in the midst of childhood. The second part, all grown up at 29, Daley feels she must go back to her father in New England because she’s hopeful she can help her old man recover from his addiction and in doing so, Daley changes her life forever as she gives up her just-secured great job as a professor at Stanford, and she’s brought to the brink of losing the man with whom she’s deeply in love.

In the last part, Daley, mother of two now, comes back home to face her dying father and give us closure. This was a great read for me, so much so that I just started The English Teacher also by Lily King.

#20 -- Letter From California

To my niece and two nephews...

I'm writing this entry from Pomona in the Los Angeles area. My daughter and I are here to attend the wedding of my only niece Isabel.

My sister, Irma, grew up to be the mother of one girl and two boys.

How can it be easy to write about the emotional nerves that hold up your heart?

My father died in July 1981 and my sister got married later that same year. By 1982 Isabel was born. She came into the lives of a widow and two fatherless girls. And there she is: this little bundle of humanity whose light fills our hearts with joy and hope. We attach ourselves to her with the desperation of the drowning. And she reciprocates with her hugs, kisses and the devotion that children save for their adults.

Irma and her husband Lalo make two more babies: Luis Eulalio and Julio Cesar, both as perfect and as cherished.

These children are now young adults and I continue looking into their eyes in search of their promise and potential. I see the beauty and the grace of their bodies bursting with youth. Down the road, many years from now they will realize that they never were as strong, as beautiful, as able and as purposeful as they are now.

Whatever life holds for them in the years to come, I want them to know that my fifty year old heart loves them deeply; that my love for them is as close to a mother's love as it can be, since they've come from my dearest sister's womb, and that alone merits this unquestionable love with which they can do whatever they want.

I wish that I could tell them that it's true. That they will be forever young. That their convictions wil never change, that those truths they hold as beliefs will be unbreakable. But through the suffering they've already gone through they've learned quickly and painfully that life shifts without any notice to never be what it use to be.

I wish I could offer them nuggets of wisdom to take and carry with them; whatever knowledge I've gathered through my life's experiences: for example, the importance of family and unity with those closest to you; how key it is to find your path and to stick close to your dreams; to respect and honor your old ones in spite of their many flaws; and because I am my father's daughter, the vital importance to get an education no matter what. And to not underestimate the little things, like money and to not forget that we all know that we never know when we will die, and still we have a future to live for and, as they say, they should live like there is no tomorrow, but plan for forever, because that "fifty" or "sixty year forever", they just might get to live it.

#19 Faster Than an Old Man

I remember the big wooden bins we would fill when we picked peaches during the hot and steamy California summers.

The bins, as I remember them, were large wooden crates, maybe (a big maybe) measuring 4 feet across and three feet tall. If you had to move a bin, you would roll it on its sides turning one side at a time and usually placing it in the middle of four trees. We carried a large sack that hung from our shoulders to the front of our chest and which we would fill with the fruit to then empty in the bin. We also carried a three-foot ladder that could go from 14 to 16 rungs (my papi always named his ladders, he’d give them a woman’s name).

Every year we worked for a Japanese farmer. Mr. Kay Shimizu was his name. It was a family deal for them. The parents of El Kay, were always checking the bin for fruit that was either too small, too green or rotten. They carried a yellow ring that looked like a plastic bracelet. If the peach passed through that ring it was not acceptable and had to be thrown out. We were always on the lookout for them. Since they and us were immigrants and though they were our employers, they were really friendly to us, treating us almost like family. I imagine it was our humility and our dedication and willingness to work hard and fast.

Anyway, as I grew and got taller, the senior Kay brought me a small ladder that only had twelve rungs that I could maneuver on my own, and told me I could use it to help my parents. Up to that point, I was in charge of what we called the barba (the beard), I would pick all the lower branches and fill my sack with the peaches that I could reach from the ground. My little sister carried a bucket and would pick the ripe peaches that fell to the ground. When my father saw that no one was around he would give hard shakes to the tall branches and Irma would scramble to pick them up and empty her little bucket into the bin, feeling so useful and proud. She was extremely quick and fearless. So small and eager to please her papi. At times, she would encourage papi with “Otra, otra” (another one).

I was the slow one, but I made them laugh and I sang a lot. Sometimes my papi would tell me to sing songs with a fast rhythm because it seemed that I picked peaches based on the rhythm of the songs I sang. He hoped that my hands would move faster if my songs were more upbeat.

Remember when you’re close to becoming a teenager and you think things like death, illness and weakness do not concern you at all because you’re invincible? Well, one day my daddy told me to go ahead and find a new row of trees and to start on the barba since he and mami were finishing up the last trees of our current row.

So off I go with my little ladder, and it coincided that so did my paternal grandfather Luis who worked the same orchards we did, since he lived with us.

He had white silver hair and looked so old, that I immediately felt a competitive drive moving me. I rolled my bin and set it in the middle of my first four trees and told myself that I surely could be faster than that old man I called Abuelito Luis. And I decided to prove it and make my parents very proud of me.

First things first. I started with the barba. Gone was the urge to sing. All I wanted was to be faster than the old man working next to my set of trees. My grandpa would whistle and wanted to chat me up, but I was too busy trying to show everyone, including myself, that of course I was faster than an old man. Could you not see the speed with which I stretched to get all the fruit I could from the ground? And my trees were good, too, branches heavy with the golden fruits. When I was done with the barba of my four trees, I got my ladder and started positioning it strategically where I could fill my sack without needing to move it more than once.

I was so confident, my triumph too obvious. When my parents and sister caught up with me, they were dutifully impressed. I had filled that bin halfway, all by myself. Trying to be nonchalant as hell, I scooted over to my grandpa to check out his bin. I was so, so crestfallen when I saw that he was about three quarters done with his bin. I couldn’t explain how he had done it. In my mind it was impossible to move as fast as I had moved; to fill that sack quicker than I had. It was a hard blow to my sense of invincibility. And that is how I started the long trek of moving through the remnants of my childhood’s egocentrism.

#18 -- My Other Family

In loving memory of Paula Sánchez Vda. de Muñoz and her children

I’ve been remembering my house in Mexico, where once my sister Irma and I lived with four kind souls that supported my parents’ efforts of working in the United States while we went to school in Guadalajara.

Some time before I was to start sixth grade, the family that rented our house while we were in California, later would become family to us. The renters were three siblings, gray-haired and single, who lived with their mother Paula, an elderly woman who everybody called Ita, a contraction of Abuelita (Grandmother). For some years, Lupita, the eldest of the three siblings, would be responsible for my sister and me. Lupita, along with her siblings Esther and David and Ita, were our Mexico family during the school year.

Lupita was a solid woman, tall and white, with silvery short hair who wore glasses. Without making any distinction, she would call anyone younger than her Prieta or Prieto (Dark Skinned One). It was her endearment. She was the one that enrolled us in the parochial school in our neighborhood, and through which my sister and I first became familiar with the educational system in Mexico.

The family was Catholic, devoutly so and Cristera (sympathetic to a political religious movement of Mexico from the 1920s). It was Lupita who instilled in me our faith and the Catholic practices in a disciplined way. In one of those old wooden wardrobes of which you don’t see much anymore she kept a generous collection of magazines called Vidas Ejemplares (Exemplary Lives) about saints. Already a voracious reader, I remember I would sit on the floor by the wardrobe and devour each story, promising myself that I would be like those saints and virgins that gave up the world to dedicate their life to God. My favorite saint was an Italian 12-year-old girl, Maria Goretti, who was murdered by the man who tried to rape her. So saintly was this Maria that she protected her virtue to the very end, and if I remember well, she then forgave her attacker before dying.

Lupita taught us manners and corrected our peasant speech. She was very patient and now I think that through us she lived a dull, borrowed motherhood. Day in, day out, Lupita would dress all in black. She introduced us to the traditional Mexican comida corrida (a three course meal) of soup, entrée and dessert instead of just one dish with meat and rice and beans. The three course meal consisted of a soup made of spaghetti-like pasta in a tasty tomato sauce (sopita de fideos), the main dish and then dessert. Lupita also instilled in us the duty of going to confession on a regular basis, of the communion every Sunday at mass and also helped me when I was chosen to read one of the two readings before the priest read the Gospel at mass. And with Lupita I first was exposed to the incomparable music of poetry.

On Sundays, on our way to church, I became my Ita’s cane who always wore a long dark skirt that billowed around her ankles, a black sweater that clung taut and tight around her back because of her pronounced hump. My Ita’s face was made of parchment paper, creased and pale. Time had erased any definition her eyes ever had. Her child-like eyes and toothless mouth were a magnificent expression of sweetness and tenderness. She would use my arm to support herself and with the small and tentative slow steps of her eighty plus years we would walk the four blocks to the Holy Spirit Church.

When I would have one of my She’s Still a Little Girl tantrums, it was my Ita the only one who could calm me down with her kind and sibilant words about anger and sin. I also remember that after my bath I would sit in front of her on the floor and she would untangle my long hair with her old stiff fingers and then, while my hair was still damp, she’d grab it in handfuls and scrunch it, as she would tell me, to reinforce whatever natural curl it had.

By the time I was well in my teenage years, the family moved to their own house, the one Esther bought and we lost contact with them, something that still saddens me. The two families just stopped talking as if we’d had some sort of disagreement. I’ve always felt like an ingrate. They’ve passed a long time ago, but I still beg their spirits to forgive my coldness and abandonment.

In one of my photo albums, in the center of a white page I have a solitary black and white small square picture: it’s my Ita sitting in a chair in the center of my home’s courtyard; her face is a study in age, light and peace; her bony hands rest in her lap and in them she holds the lost innocence of these years of my childhood.

(My translation into English of one of my articles for my column “Cotidianas,” published in 2006 in Fort Worth’s La Estrella newspaper.)

#17 -- My Books: One Hundred Words for Love

A friend sent me the link to an interview with her about her new book thinking I would enjoy it, since the author writes about her experience with her husband, prolific writer Paul West as he suffers and struggles to recover from a severe stroke.

I saw a couple of videos on YouTube with Diane Ackerman and was so intrigued that I bought the electronic format of One Hundred Words for Love for my NookColor.

Yes, the book deals with pain and illness, with loss and the aloneness we all must sooner or later realize in our lives. First we hear about Paul’s tragedy through the sensitivity of the novelist, poet and naturalist who loves him, and to whom he has been married since 1970 according to Wikipedia. And then your soul is caressed by Ackerman's poetic prose.

Ackerman knows about science and nature, and she speaks of them with knowledge and respect, knowing that the word “science” is yet but another word for nature.

I love the information Ackerman shares with me, her reader, about animals and plants. She speaks of these with due reverence for the natural world we forget we belong to or just simply take for granted. As a stroke survivor myself, I really loved the rich information she shares about the brain and its inrincate workings. It nourishes the hope I still keep of recovering from my own stroke.

If you should read this book, be ready to be amazed by the beauty of the English language and Ackermen's total mastery. I felt lucky to have in my Nook the feature of being able to look up the words I didn’t know though many of them were obscure enough that I frequently got a disappointing “Definition not found”.

I’m not done reading A Hundred Words for Love, but I’m confident that I will be able to continue summarizing my impression of this book with one solitary word: Exquisite!

Lastly, let me copy one of my highlighted texts and leave you with that, though I read it to myself in the first person and in the present: "Return was impossible, and there was one direction open; and so we kept our compass pointed forwerd..."

#16 -- Oh, My First Smoke

Both my parents were smokers. My dad smoked until he died; my 78-year-old mother still smokes and we both say that this is what will end up killing her. She’s well aware of the dangers of smoking but her addiction is so deeply ingrained that there is absolutely no way she can quit. I’ve seen her in tears, literally, broken and moody, when she’s out of cigarettes. It hurts my heart to see her so desperate for someone to drive her to the convenience store for her next fix. She’s tried many, many times to stop to no avail. She has lung problems and whatnot, all associated with her chronic smoking.

When I was growing up, I was grossed out by my parents smoking, especially my mother’s. I cannot explain why. But all the paraphernalia around the act of smoking caused me physical repulsion, be it the ashtray, the matches, the box that contained the cigarettes. I couldn’t contemplate the idea of touching any of these items, much less the actual cigarettes. Such was my repulsion, that when I was forced to bring to my mother any of these things, I could feel the reflex of gagging, alive and strong as I grabbed, say, the box of matches.

One day (I was about 20) some classmates and I, we decided to play hooky and go to a pool hall in downtown Guadalajara. Most of them were boys and smokers. I didn’t know one bit about playing pool, except that my papi really liked to play himself. At one point, I see myself standing with my cue in hand, lost in observing and feeling, liking, this dark smoky strange world: the music under the chatter and the laughter, the taste of ice-cold beer. I see my friends taking long drags at their cigarette. And to my naïve-girl eyes they looked so sophisticated, so worldly, so knowing, so cool, so hip, that the next thing I know I’m asking them to teach me how to smoke. Of course, they were happy to induct me into the hall of new smokers. I remember they argued about the brand to start me on. Finally someone pulled out a “soft” brand. Viceroy, they were called. And I tried my hardest to learn. I kept at it, until it was time to go home.

My bus stop was a block away from the pool hall. As I’m standing there in the smoggy afternoon of my hometown I began feeling sick to my stomach, convinced I was going to throw up within minutes if I didn’t get some fresh air fast. So sick was I that I had to take a cab home, sweating cold on the ride home, with the window down letting the air come in and cool me down.

The next day, I bought myself my first pack of Marlboros, the red ones, which was the brand most commonly smoked by my friends and I became a smoker. Not a good smoker. I never really felt the smoke settling deep into my lungs, but I hoped I borrowed some of that “hipness” I had witnessed in the pool hall.

I smoked for about two decades. I quit cold turkey the day I found I was pregnant on April 22nd or 23rd of 1998. It was something I--the strange abnormal woman I thought I was--could do for the person being formed in my uterus to help her be as healthy as possible; it was what I minimally could do to give her my best internal environment. Unlike my mother, it wasn’t hard for me to quit. My body was receptive and happy to let go.

Valentina was born in November. By New Year’s Eve 1998 we had a friend visiting from Guadalajara. After dinner and a couple of glasses of red wine, I asked him for a cigarette, wanting to recover the “cool look” of the black and white movie smoker. I took a puff and was totally surprised by the god-awful taste of the cigarette. I couldn’t believe the horrible taste it had and that I had endured it for almost two decades. I just gave the cigarette back after that first drag and haven’t touched one since.

Happily, my husband, once a heavy smoker himself, also quit cold turkey two or three years after I did, and our home has been smoke-free since then. When my mother stays with us, she knows she has to smoke outside. So, I’m glad we have a covered patio she can use for her vice.

I can’t deny that sometimes, especially in gloomy, gray, cloudy, cold, wet days, when I’m drinking my coffee, something in me stirs and then I crave for a cigarette. That’s the image that stays: a woman, pensive and quiet, be it reading or writing, with a cup of coffee in hand, looking out a window into a rainy cityscape, feeling the longing for a lover perhaps, the nostalgia of a youthful indiscretion, sighing, taking a sip of her java and a drag at her cigarette while her memories come alive and the rain continues outside…

Stop, Margarita, stop, right now, that the convenience store, you know, is conveniently nearby…