Since I turned 14 I’ve been traveling alone between the States and Mexico, either because it was summer and I had to go join my parents in the field work or it was time to start another school year in Guadalajara. I remember the first time I traveled by myself. At fourteen, I was going back to Guadalajara to start another middle school year. My parents decided I was old enough to take the family’s monies earned in the fields and orchards that year, so my mami improvised with a remnant of fabric and sewed me a little sac to hang from my neck and hide it in my bra with whatever amount they had been able to save that season(I imagine any amount between three and six thousand dollars). Once I got home I went to the bank, deposited the money and withdrew from there for my every day expenses when needed.
This past Wednesday, after two days of feeling sick to my stomach and having missed half a day at work, I decided to go to lunch. I chose to go eat sushi at my favorite sushi place in Dallas. I didn’t feel like having anything from the cafeteria at the building where I work, so off I went on my own, having not been able to find anyone with the whom to go. This is often the case with me, since I do not have an excess of “lunch” buddies. But I’m used to eating on my own. It’s the same thing with the movies. Most of the time I go alone, a tradition I also started in my teenage years.
I’m not a “normal” woman. I favor going to the public restrooms by myself in spite of knowing that most women go in packs. Being a lonely teenager, I had to face all this by myself. It was “dare on my own” or pee in public.
So there I was eating my Alaska Roll and soda and practicing my favorite activity when out in public spaces: people-watching. I love that. I love our diversity. Our beauty, our strength. So I watch how people eat, how they dress, how they interact. Anything and everything that occupies us, I love to observe. After all, my personal motto is “All things human.”
A table nearby was occupied with six adults finishing off their meal and I noticed a baby infant being passed between them. I assume it was a baby girl, since she was dressed in pink. All white and rosy, tiny, I guessed she was about two months old.
At some point the baby seemed about ready to start wailing and she ended with her mommy, who gave her a tender kiss on her forehead. The baby wiggled and after some seconds “somehow” calmed down and found her nook at her mother’s neck.
I imagined that I was sharing my lunch with my boss Laura (since she had been unable to join me) and telling her, “I know what that baby is thinking.” I imagined her asking me with that wit that characterizes her, “The baby is thinking, Margarita?”, so I corrected my comment, “If that baby could express herself in words I think I know what she would say. Something like this…
“People, please return me to that woman you call my Mommy. Remember that I just came out of a very safe and protected world of darkness and warmth, all my needs met. You are strangers to me and I don’t appreciate all this commotion. I want Mommy now. (She finally makes it “home”) Okay, here’s her heartbeat and her warmth, her laughter and her voice. And most of all, here’s her smell. Now if I could only find my way to her skin. Wait, let me follow her voice, okay, I think it’s that way. Bunk! I just found her. Yay! All better now.”
And then I remembered that it’s been twelve years since I held my Valentina like that, happy in the knowledge that I was hers and she was mine, that it was my nearness, and my smell she craved and needed. And I almost let myself go into my DM (Depression Mode), one of which I’m just pulling myself out after feeling ick. With my stroke-affected body (weakened left limbs) I do not know when or if I will be able to hold a baby again, since I can’t use my left arm to cradle an infant. “What if,” I asked myself, “What if it never comes to be that I will heal enough to feel that a baby will be safe in my arms? What if I die and it’s something that I will never be able to do, the humbling honor of holding a human infant?" This is a big one for me. Babies make me happy as few things do.
I admit I do envy women able to carry their lunch bags in their left hand; lug two or three bags on their left shoulder; pass me by in quick strides just like I used to almost three years ago, but I usually just make my prayers stronger and higher. Dear God, Dear God…
So I paid for my meal, grabbed my purple-flowered cane and limped my way to my car and DROVE myself (LOOK PA, ONE HAND!) back to work having convinced myself that I will definitely heal, and in this manner comforted myself with by my own hope-full thoughts.
Oh, may your life be blessed, beautiful baby girl I saw at The Blue Fish this past Wednesday.
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