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.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
#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.
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.
Friday, May 6, 2011
#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.)
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.)
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