My teenage years in school were spent in Mexico, so when the time came for hormones to do their thing in my body, I had the Spanish-language performers to sort through to choose my first teenage crushes.
Though, in all honesty, my first crush was really a junior high school teacher. He was a very cultured man, and taught us History, Biology and even P.E. I still remember his full name: Arturo de la Torre Ochoa. We just called him by his paternal surname of De la Torre. He was tall, skinny, and he dressed with elegance and distinction. He was very handsome. He was a lawyer and yes, married. You can imagine, I was not the only one “in love” with De la Torre. Most every girl in my school fantasized about losing “it” to him. In all honesty again, I really didn’t know I had an “it” to lose, but if De la Torre wanted me to lose something, I was willing to lose everything up to and including my bus fare.
Of course, we didn’t know how to handle the intense emotions we were experiencing over boys, especially over De la Torre. One of my friends in junior high, Rosa, pushed him into the pool a Saturday he took us to a rec center during our P.E. class. He was dressed all in sporty whites, skinny, tall and masculine, walking by the pool, with his family sitting under a shady tree, when there goes Rosa and shoves him into the pool. He took it all in stride and Rosa didn’t even get in trouble.
And then there was the day he said something really nice to me. I use to belong to a small group of girlfriends: Rosa who already worked as a nurse’s aide, the sadly neurotic Socorro and Rosa Catalina Felícitas (yeah, she had three names aside from her two surnames of Myers Flores). I called her Catalina, everybody else went with the not so pretty and very old-fashioned name of Felícitas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any one as physically beautiful as Catalina. She was tall and slender, gazelle-like, her hair fell in tight natural curls to the middle of her back Afro style, her eyes were large and almond shaped and colored, she had the perfect upturned nose, and a sensual mouth. Think Amber stones, think Bambi. And to top it all she was no show-off.
I don’t remember who was being the prankster that day, but it really wasn’t any of us. Still, De la Torre approached the four of us giggling silly girls. He asked if we were the culprits and we all dissolved in “It wasn’t me, Maestro, It wasn’t me.” Then he looked at me (true to myself I was tomato-red) and said, “You Margarita, you hush, because you speak with your eyes.”
It truly felt that he had singled me out. I wanted to convince myself that he had declared his love to me then and there. Teenagers, they’re all fools! I was no exception.
Sometime later somehow I ended up with his phone number. Well, from a public phone I called him once and trying to sound all Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, I asked him if he was married and hung up on him.
Next day came. When he walked into the classroom in the most serious voice I had ever heard him talk, he said. “To whomever called me, you need to stop now. I don’t need to know who you are, I just need you to stop. You all know I’m a happily married man, so please no more calls.” He said this little speech in all his classes.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted earth to open and swallow me whole. So as the good girl I was, I talked to Lupita, the lady whose charge I was during the school year,and told her about what I had done. Lupita was one of three gray-haired unmarried siblings who lived with their eighty-something mother in our house. Devoutly Catholic, Lupita heard me and in all her kindness instructed me too confess and apologize to De la Torre.
Devoutly Catholic myself because of her influence in my life, during a break in school, I looked for De la Torre; when I found him, we walked to a corner of the courtyard and I started babbling and apologizing about me being the prank caller. Then three other girls approached him and started flirting with him. “Ay, maestro, what are you doing?” He answered authoritatively, “Here, speaking with the young lady.” (Trust me, everything acquires a romantic tinge when said in Spanish.) His words clearly told them to walk away, which they did. Me, I just fell “in love” all over again. He made me feel so validated, so real. Then he told me to not worry so much, to forget about it and to never do it again. And being the good girl I still am, I obeyed.
Wasn’t he the greatest?
I got to thinking about this because my daughter Valentina has just gone into her crush mode completely over The Biebs, about which I will blog next week. Hopefully.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Post #7 My books: The Power of Now
I just finished reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle on my Christmas gift, my nifty NookColor.
I know I’m late given all the bru-ha created by this author and his books, especially after Winfrey had Tolle’s A New Earth as one of her reading club’s selection.
Anyhoo, I read it. I declare myself too limited to fully comprehend the mystery behind his words. As a writer he is really repetitive and he is so into his message and so detached from the “form world” that I guess it’s below him to connect to us “form beings” in our “pain bodies.” It was hard for me to elevate myself away from my worldly life, which seems an apparent requirement to reach his level.
Having said that, there are some nuggets that I found valuable for me in my current "life situation." Life does sound “nicer” as he describes it, but there is sooo much to do. But if life will be nicer maybe it would be worth a try…
-The idea of surrender. Not that you give up or that you say you’re defeated in the battle and so you’re a loser. You surrender, you do not resist the “What Is.” Things are crummy, yes, but you either decide to change your crummy things, remove yourself from your crummy environment or you accept it. I like these options. Figure out if something can be done to fix your mess, decide if you want to fix it or not, go away or leave it be. If you think you must let it be, then don’t harbor any resentment, hatred or other type of negative reaction. Surrender to it. It’s “What Is.”
--The idea of forgiveness. Before starting the book, I was already in a mode of forgiving those who have hurt me, as I declare it in my daily prayers. At least I declare my desire or intent to forgive. I don’t know if I’m yet there. Usually my resentments never boil over, they just simmer. But saying I want to be free of resentment, is pretty liberating.
--Living in the Now. This one is hard, since I am attached to my past in a pretty hard way, in terms not necessarily of the things that happened to me, but in the people who helped define who I am, good and bad, treasures I received from them, or their messy crap as they deposited in my lap. I also like the idea of the future. My future is always beautiful. As of now in my future I have full bodily functions restored and I have no money problems. And I have a little piece of this beautiful planet where I can walk on the beach. But being in the Now, as I understood Tolle is being okay this exact moment. Doing what I do. Accepting who I am. Able to detach myself from my life experiences and their emotional baggage, to surrender to the grace of this moment. Content with just Being me, as I am in the Now.
So for real, I forgive red-headed Mark, Cathy, Jeff and Mary Lekus. I forgive you, guys, and wish you peace and a full grasp of the Now.
Books I’m reading now: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan; Faust by Goethe; Siddhartha by Hesse.
I know I’m late given all the bru-ha created by this author and his books, especially after Winfrey had Tolle’s A New Earth as one of her reading club’s selection.
Anyhoo, I read it. I declare myself too limited to fully comprehend the mystery behind his words. As a writer he is really repetitive and he is so into his message and so detached from the “form world” that I guess it’s below him to connect to us “form beings” in our “pain bodies.” It was hard for me to elevate myself away from my worldly life, which seems an apparent requirement to reach his level.
Having said that, there are some nuggets that I found valuable for me in my current "life situation." Life does sound “nicer” as he describes it, but there is sooo much to do. But if life will be nicer maybe it would be worth a try…
-The idea of surrender. Not that you give up or that you say you’re defeated in the battle and so you’re a loser. You surrender, you do not resist the “What Is.” Things are crummy, yes, but you either decide to change your crummy things, remove yourself from your crummy environment or you accept it. I like these options. Figure out if something can be done to fix your mess, decide if you want to fix it or not, go away or leave it be. If you think you must let it be, then don’t harbor any resentment, hatred or other type of negative reaction. Surrender to it. It’s “What Is.”
--The idea of forgiveness. Before starting the book, I was already in a mode of forgiving those who have hurt me, as I declare it in my daily prayers. At least I declare my desire or intent to forgive. I don’t know if I’m yet there. Usually my resentments never boil over, they just simmer. But saying I want to be free of resentment, is pretty liberating.
--Living in the Now. This one is hard, since I am attached to my past in a pretty hard way, in terms not necessarily of the things that happened to me, but in the people who helped define who I am, good and bad, treasures I received from them, or their messy crap as they deposited in my lap. I also like the idea of the future. My future is always beautiful. As of now in my future I have full bodily functions restored and I have no money problems. And I have a little piece of this beautiful planet where I can walk on the beach. But being in the Now, as I understood Tolle is being okay this exact moment. Doing what I do. Accepting who I am. Able to detach myself from my life experiences and their emotional baggage, to surrender to the grace of this moment. Content with just Being me, as I am in the Now.
So for real, I forgive red-headed Mark, Cathy, Jeff and Mary Lekus. I forgive you, guys, and wish you peace and a full grasp of the Now.
Books I’m reading now: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan; Faust by Goethe; Siddhartha by Hesse.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Post #6 Hey Mago or The Healing Touch
Mago is a nickname for Margarita in Spanish, as Jim is for James and Liz for Elizabeth in English. But my name has many possible nicknames, and I think I’ve been called all of them at one point or another: Mago, Maga, Marga, Margot, Márgara and even Margarota since the “ita” ending in Spanish is a diminutive. But for my family I’m just Tita. Back in my school years, if you phoned my house and asked for me, you would surely have gotten my mother (I’m named after her). Since her entire life my Mom has been Marga, my papi decided from the beginning of my life that I would simply be Tita. Many of my relatives believe that it’s my legal name and would never dare call me Margarita.
You would think that I’m about to ‘fess up to having multiple personalities, but no. Actually, it’s a rather sad memory of when I was twelve years old. How to begin? It has to do with discrimination and the healing effect of the human touch.
During my elementary school years in California, I was a sad kid, I had no friends, nor did I know how to go about making some. So there you have me: quiet, obedient, wanting only to please, chubby and Mexican. As kids would be (I know now), they would pick on me precisely because of these characteristics: I tended to get good grades, I was chubby and Mexican. I guess it’s understandable, something you can explain now, but if you’re seven or eleven and lonely, with no skills to take care of yourself, and you’re being followed everyday by a red-headed, freckled-face, chubby boy named Mark, calling you names that have to do with your nationality and your food, you immediately start wondering what can be wrong with you, until you decide that there definitely has to be something wrong with you. There just has to; otherwise, why would Mark bother to walk by your side every day calling you names while still sitting on his bike, and you keep walking home, head stubbornly down, face burning red, pretending he’s not there?
Of course, I know I can’t and I must not tell my parents. Why create confusion? At home I’m the silly one, the one that makes others laugh. The lovable home clown. So I learn to separate my family life from my school life. And my beloved parents cannot even fathom the reality that I was living at school.
Like the visible upset of my fith grade homeroom teacher because I had the number one spot in her multiplication tables contest. Like the kids behind me at the water fountain saying “yuck” and running off because they could not bring themselves to drink from where I had drank. Like Cathy and Jeff getting mad at me and bringing up my nationality because I said no to taking a puff from their cigarette. Like not being able to make friends with Ruth Sandoval, based exclusively on the facts that we both were Mexican and spoke Spanish, in spite of what good-intentioned teachers might have wanted the outcome to be.
Then, after several years, I’m sent back to Mexico for sixth grade. I was enrolled in the Catholic parochial school “San Agustin de la Rosa,” just a few blocks from home.
There I discovered friendship and the wonderful warmth that comes with the acquired sense of belonging without really having to do anything special except be yourself. I make my first best friend, Baudelia. I hang out with the girls in my class. And forgotten is my sadness. I’m still too young to analyze or make comparisons. This is simply the way it’s here, different from how it is over there.
One sunny day, I’m just standing there when a classmate, Sergio Hernandez, whom we all called “El Negro” (literally “The Black One” because his skin was noticeably darker than the majority of brown skinned kids). But calling him El Negro to his face was not a criticism, but an endearment, something that said that though he looked different than the rest of us, he was completely included and accepted. As a matter of fact, El Negro was an extremely popular kid in my grade. The same happened at home, I call my sister La Flaca (the skinny one, though she's not, unless you compare her to me); she calls me La Gorda; we have an extremely tall uncle, and every one calls him El Pequeno (the small one). All these nicknames happen within the circle of family and friendship.
Anyway, I’m standing there, I see El Negro running towards me. He stops right in front of me and touches my forearm saying “Oye, Mago…” (Listen, Mago). Whatever followed is totally erased from my memory. This is all I have left from this brief encounter with a classmate with whom I was not even close friends.
And honestly, this is all that matters. I remember looking at his dark hand on my arm, and then he is gone. I’m left staring at my arm with one repetitive thought going round and round in my mind. “I’m touchable. I’m touchable. I’m touchable.”
Told you that it was about the healing effect of the human touch.
You would think that I’m about to ‘fess up to having multiple personalities, but no. Actually, it’s a rather sad memory of when I was twelve years old. How to begin? It has to do with discrimination and the healing effect of the human touch.
During my elementary school years in California, I was a sad kid, I had no friends, nor did I know how to go about making some. So there you have me: quiet, obedient, wanting only to please, chubby and Mexican. As kids would be (I know now), they would pick on me precisely because of these characteristics: I tended to get good grades, I was chubby and Mexican. I guess it’s understandable, something you can explain now, but if you’re seven or eleven and lonely, with no skills to take care of yourself, and you’re being followed everyday by a red-headed, freckled-face, chubby boy named Mark, calling you names that have to do with your nationality and your food, you immediately start wondering what can be wrong with you, until you decide that there definitely has to be something wrong with you. There just has to; otherwise, why would Mark bother to walk by your side every day calling you names while still sitting on his bike, and you keep walking home, head stubbornly down, face burning red, pretending he’s not there?
Of course, I know I can’t and I must not tell my parents. Why create confusion? At home I’m the silly one, the one that makes others laugh. The lovable home clown. So I learn to separate my family life from my school life. And my beloved parents cannot even fathom the reality that I was living at school.
Like the visible upset of my fith grade homeroom teacher because I had the number one spot in her multiplication tables contest. Like the kids behind me at the water fountain saying “yuck” and running off because they could not bring themselves to drink from where I had drank. Like Cathy and Jeff getting mad at me and bringing up my nationality because I said no to taking a puff from their cigarette. Like not being able to make friends with Ruth Sandoval, based exclusively on the facts that we both were Mexican and spoke Spanish, in spite of what good-intentioned teachers might have wanted the outcome to be.
Then, after several years, I’m sent back to Mexico for sixth grade. I was enrolled in the Catholic parochial school “San Agustin de la Rosa,” just a few blocks from home.
There I discovered friendship and the wonderful warmth that comes with the acquired sense of belonging without really having to do anything special except be yourself. I make my first best friend, Baudelia. I hang out with the girls in my class. And forgotten is my sadness. I’m still too young to analyze or make comparisons. This is simply the way it’s here, different from how it is over there.
One sunny day, I’m just standing there when a classmate, Sergio Hernandez, whom we all called “El Negro” (literally “The Black One” because his skin was noticeably darker than the majority of brown skinned kids). But calling him El Negro to his face was not a criticism, but an endearment, something that said that though he looked different than the rest of us, he was completely included and accepted. As a matter of fact, El Negro was an extremely popular kid in my grade. The same happened at home, I call my sister La Flaca (the skinny one, though she's not, unless you compare her to me); she calls me La Gorda; we have an extremely tall uncle, and every one calls him El Pequeno (the small one). All these nicknames happen within the circle of family and friendship.
Anyway, I’m standing there, I see El Negro running towards me. He stops right in front of me and touches my forearm saying “Oye, Mago…” (Listen, Mago). Whatever followed is totally erased from my memory. This is all I have left from this brief encounter with a classmate with whom I was not even close friends.
And honestly, this is all that matters. I remember looking at his dark hand on my arm, and then he is gone. I’m left staring at my arm with one repetitive thought going round and round in my mind. “I’m touchable. I’m touchable. I’m touchable.”
Told you that it was about the healing effect of the human touch.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Post #5 Baby, Close Your Eyes
This weekend my brain is a tad slow. I will blame the four day forced captivity after the Dallas area was hit with a true winter storm, ice, snow, freezing cold and all, making it impossible for us native and adoptive Texans to venture out into the world. So schools closed and fortunately the lovely company for which I work shut operations for three of these past four days.
So my daughter, dog Lola and I stayed put at home not going out once, pretending it was cool to stay home in our jammies and, yes, I confess, we skipped a day and didn't shower. I wish I was, but I'm not that type of creative mother that can improvise ways to make time pass quickly by. I avidly read about other mothers who bake, cook, sing, dance and play with their kids. But, I repeat, I am not. What I did do was break down and allowed my seventh grader to watch The Social Network on demand with me, just making her turn around and close her eyes during the inappropriate scenes for a twelve year old.
That's what my parents used to do with my little sister Irma and me when we were my Valentina's age. Back in Yuba City where we were raised there was one movie theater that featured movies in Spanish (Tower Theater) in the neighboring town of Marysville. I don't think that in the early and mid-seventies there was a rating system for Spanish-language movies that were brought into the States, so the adults were in charge of deciding to bring their children or not.
My parents opted to take us. But as soonn as the hero started kissing the heroine on the neck, and things got too steamy, papi and mami would give Irma and me money and ordered us to go buy popcorn, candy and soda, which we happily did. We had not an inkling about what was going on the big screen, nor were we curious about finding out either, but we would giggle and go have our fill of sweets.
You would hope that as a better educated individual, my husband and I would have figured out a better system, but here I am almost four decades later doing the same thing my parents did. Although uncomfortable as my daughter feels with inappropriate scenes she beats me to the punch and excuses herself to go to the restroom. Pity, if she would wait a couple of seconds more, I'd give her my debit card.
So my daughter, dog Lola and I stayed put at home not going out once, pretending it was cool to stay home in our jammies and, yes, I confess, we skipped a day and didn't shower. I wish I was, but I'm not that type of creative mother that can improvise ways to make time pass quickly by. I avidly read about other mothers who bake, cook, sing, dance and play with their kids. But, I repeat, I am not. What I did do was break down and allowed my seventh grader to watch The Social Network on demand with me, just making her turn around and close her eyes during the inappropriate scenes for a twelve year old.
That's what my parents used to do with my little sister Irma and me when we were my Valentina's age. Back in Yuba City where we were raised there was one movie theater that featured movies in Spanish (Tower Theater) in the neighboring town of Marysville. I don't think that in the early and mid-seventies there was a rating system for Spanish-language movies that were brought into the States, so the adults were in charge of deciding to bring their children or not.
My parents opted to take us. But as soonn as the hero started kissing the heroine on the neck, and things got too steamy, papi and mami would give Irma and me money and ordered us to go buy popcorn, candy and soda, which we happily did. We had not an inkling about what was going on the big screen, nor were we curious about finding out either, but we would giggle and go have our fill of sweets.
You would hope that as a better educated individual, my husband and I would have figured out a better system, but here I am almost four decades later doing the same thing my parents did. Although uncomfortable as my daughter feels with inappropriate scenes she beats me to the punch and excuses herself to go to the restroom. Pity, if she would wait a couple of seconds more, I'd give her my debit card.
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