#15 - An Important Monologue

It’s been a long break, not that I really needed one, but since I didn’t keep my commitment of writing weekly, let’s say I did need it.

Finally, sweaters are on! Loving it!

On another note, my house is on the market. The lovely home where I thought I would retire with Husband while from my rocking chair, I would admire my beautiful daughter living a wonderful life, that home in on the market. Sigh.

Don’t get me wrong. Fortunately, bills are being paid and we are current. But, you know (well, maybe you don’t) that feeling of scarcity and poverty you have when you get an email from your bank telling you’ve got 49 dollars left in your checking account and you realize that there is still three days before payday? And then the next thing you know you're biting into your daughter’s college savings, those same savings you promised to never touch unless they were addressed to some fancy college 18 years from the day you opened that account in her name? Well, I hate that feeling. And we’re having to go through it more often than we ever thought we would. So, after painful deliberation, we made the decision to sell our home and downsize in order to enjoy life better with our not so terrible two incomes.

And let me tell you, for me it was really difficult, because I poured heart and soul into this house. In every decision we could make, I painstakingly researched and studied countless options, bought too many decorating magazines from where I tore out too many pages to show the builder because I loved the wall color, the backsplash, the tile, the fixture, the floor, the carpet, the wood finish, the granite, a specific appliance, the shelving (definitely), and a very long etc.

The result was worth it. I think. So this time around in order to let go I had to go through the same monologue as when we moved into our first home back in 1996. I already had the keys to the Riverside home. It too was brand new, though a spec home, so we had no say in the finish out. Oh, but how much pleasure it gave us with its arches, its ample spaces, though I recently found out it was just 1,978 square feet. This was before motherhood. So for two people it was more than plenty. It didn’t have a back yard, and to reach the tiny green patch in the back you had to walk practically the entire side of the house. So when our little girl arrived, I began thinking I wanted her to have a yard. So we moved to the Menard home where we lived for seven years before moving to this our Miami Dr home.

Oh, yeah, the monologue. In truthfulness, personally I did not think my husband and I would be homeowners. I don’t think that home ownership is something immigrants arrive with or plan for. But there we were, with keys to a brand new home. I was in sheer disbelief. One day, during my lunch break I drove to the still empty house to admire it quietly and alone from inside my car and to talk to God, telling him something like this, “I thank you for this house. I never thought I would be worthy or deserving of such a beautiful space, and yet here you have me. After all, I am just the simple daughter of peasants, and all I ever thought we could aspire to was a job to pay for the rent. Dear God, if some day you decide we shouldn’t be here, give me the strength and the humility to leave not in pain but in gratitude for the time you allowed me to live here. And to never forget that no matter how beautiful this house is, it ultimately is just a “thing,” and that I can be strong and brave enough to walk away from it, knowing in my heart that my home is where my loved ones are, and that I will leave it with no regrets, but with only gratitude to you.”

I said, more or less, the same thing when we moved into the Menard home and the Miami Dr home, all three times with tears in my eyes.

Now if a buyer would pop up! Or maybe just the Lotto…

#14 - There's a Country That Pains Me (Sunday, July 1, 2012)

I write this letter for the current government officials of Mexico and to its four presidential candidates. I don’t think I ever believed in the possibility of freedom of expression for me. What a privilege!

Many kids, probably millions, do not have happy days in the country that pains me. Many have to go out into the world, small and defenseless. Some do so ordered by their mothers; others, out of their own initiative. They climb into public buses hoping passengers will deposit coins into the palm of their dirty, scrawny dark brown hands. Others will sing for coins and others will sell gelatins, and still others improvise with whatever talent they might posses. When they get home they give their mom their meager, sad earnings and then watch their drunk father continue drinking and turn vicious and violent toward them and toward her. It’s from her, that they quickly learn that they must stay really really quiet until his storm passes. They don’t say an “ouch” but hot tears do embarrassingly push and drop from in between their tight eyelids.

Ay, the sorrow I feel for these children!

For old and young alike life is rarely kind in the country that pains me. People make a risible amount of money for a day’s work, money that people in the country I call home could not accept.

Life is so unfair that things one considers a given, precisely because of our human condition, do not come easily in this country that pains me; things like a bed; things like a day with three square meals; things like an eight-hour work day fairly paid; things like water and bread and a shower. Millions of inhabitants in this country that pains me do not live like me in this country I call home, with my cute little house, my nice little car, with all the utilities needed to live a dignified and decent life. But most of all, so many of the children in this country never feel loved or cared for. This so utterly pains me that I ask, How do we let this happen, especially to children? Are the people in this country’s government so heartless and inept that they so easily lose track or do not care how millions of their children live, without a proper education, physical and creative activities and nutritious meals to make them grow in beauty, talent, grace and health? How and why do they stop caring? Are these kids (let me call them ours), are our children not entitled to love and milk and diapers, to sleep deeply and grow healthy, do they not deserve to be cuddled and to be sung sweet lullabies in Spanish (a la rurru niño, a la rurru ya, duermete mi niño, duerméteme ya)?

The people in this country that pains me are sick and tired of being absolutely sick and tired of this unfair and long endured status quo. Now the masses are beginning to come together and are saying, “Enough, you idiots! We’re tired of you so blatantly lining your pockets with our hard work and contributions to this country, taxes you apparently think are yours for the taking. Enough! This being fed up cannot even be named, so just call us one-two-three or one-three-two, call us “We The People”. And stop thinking we’re just kids out here in the streets. It’s all of us, it’s everybody, we’re in foreign countries, many of us maybe feeling exiled and displaced by your inability to contain and satisfy our most legitimate needs. We’re quietly going to work and blogging in to that Nothing that is the Internet and the social networks, that Nothing where we nonetheless all converge to mock you, you governing fools! We are everywhere, we are here. I am here crying in anger and desperation, I am wishing upon you the wrath of God like I’ve never wished it upon anybody in my existence. I am wishing his wrath on you, but I am also imploring his grace on the cojonuda gente (like Benedetti calls us), asking him to save us from the continued likes of you. Stop eating up the country, sucking its wealth and riches for your personal benefit. Take the millions you have already stolen and go. Leave this country alone.”

Because in the country I want to remember and bring back to life the most real thing are its people. People that go to work or to school every day, just to make sure the country keeps running and to make sure it knows we know its noble purpose: the wellbeing of its people, all its people.

In this country I remember and I want back, many women stay home, I know, but of course, they are never idle. They stay behind to make the home floors shine and to keep their plants alive, lush and green, to wash (and wash by hand if needed) all their family’s laundry, and to iron too. Then they walk among the street market stands to buy their produce of reds and greens and whites so they can cook the midday meal and prepare dinner for their loved ones. These women’s hands, always damp and in flight, are busy and hard-working hands. It’s the hands of these women that lift the men of this country, its children, so they can produce and learn, so they can generate the richness they have a right to. Women are the grace of the soul that defines this country; among them I can see the hands of my sister and of my octogenarian mother.

In school, children try to sit quietly and show that they can obey their teachers. Most of them are captivated by their brains’ miraculous ability to learn and grasp things that are not readily available in their immediate reality, things like numbers, but that with the proper instruction from their teachers they can build this fantastical world in their minds. The same thing happens when the teachers talk to them honestly about the past. No, these things happened hundreds, maybe thousands! of years ago; they happened to people from whom they are told they come from but to whom they almost don’t even look like anymore. It’s magic I tell you! It’s hard to understand that if you want to understand the present sometimes you have to look far, far away into the past.

Still, the highlight of their school day is recess where all their pent-up energy of the morning bursts forth in silly games and gales of unstoppable laughter that make God smile in delight.

Don’t talk to me about your organized crime, your narcs and how you cannot offer your citizens a decent and safe living to the point that so many parents feel they must migrate north, risking their lives, forsaking their families. The list of your failures and ineptitudes grows and multiplies anyway you look at it. Don’t get me started on our beaches, forests and trees, our jungles and our weather and your reckless and irresponsible lack of environmental education. And don’t blame the people, please. People are busy trying to live on the nothing they make and to not die in the intent, how can they worry about our environment’s and generations’ future? For once, be accountable for your failures.

I don’t care what initials you go by, pri, pan, prd, panal, I don’t care. What I care and what I demand is that for once in your life you display a strict sense of moral, I demand it come July 1.And moving forward. It’s time for the heroes to stand. Theirs is the moment. If you can’t be one, clear the way, because they’re on your heels.

(This article was published online by Hispanically Speaking News on 6/29/12)

#13 - Loving Elsa

I had a teacher. A mechanical engineer, born in 1932 (like my mother). Taught Mathematics, Group Theory, Algebra, Trigonometry and Differential Calculus. Pretty impressive, huh? I always got high grades. Not because I understood abstract mathematical concepts, but because I could memorize. Algebraic formulas were easy for me to memorize; once I had that down applying it to a problem was as we say in Spanish “pan comido” (eaten bread). I so much liked these classes that I was very tempted and seriously considered Mathematics as a college major. But the question of how far I could go on memory alone, made me doubt myself and I stopped pondering that option.

Oh but that didn’t stop me from developing a crush on my teacher, forget that she was a woman. Elsa Moyado was her name. At my very first class with her I immediately felt I was in front of a homosexual woman. Why? Everything about her reminded me of Terry, a white character in an English-language novel I had read earlier who was a lesbian and fell in love with a talented pianist, a beautiful black woman, character whose name I can’t recall.

The title of my book was Loving Her. It was the first time ever that I heard about homosexualism, at least to the point that I became aware of human beings falling for people of their own gender. When I read on the backcover that a She was loving a Her, I thought it was a typo.

So Elsa reminded me of Terry. Elsa wasn’t blatantly masculine, but whatever femininity she had was a bit virile. She was not a vain person. Her hair was already silvery. Silver and wavy. Short. Her skin was pale and translucent. She wasn’t overweight nor was she thin, but somehow the word stocky comes to mind. Very simple in her way of dressing. Always in pants and tops. No high heels or makeup; very occasionally maybe a smudge of pink lipstick. There was an endearing gap between her two top teeth that gave her smile a mischievous expression.

We clicked, but I must admit that I worked harder than her at our friendship, after all she was the teacher. She read and photography was her biggest hobby. She still lived with her parents, had a younger brother whom I believe is a lawyer, Carlos. She absolutely loved traveling. She was a world traveler. In the course of her life she had found a friend with whom she traveled. I always thought she was in love with this woman.

Elsa was extremely private and quiet. It was not easy to hold a conversation with her. By the time she was no longer my teacher, every now and then I would visit her at her home.

When I got married the first time, she accepted to be one of my witnesses (we did not have a religious ceremony). She showed up in her regular simple attire (I loved her for that) and with her camera.

With the pictures she took of Alejandro and I, she made a photo album she gave to me (something I treasure and still have).

When I came back to the States, I would write to her and sometimes call her. When she found out that I had a postcard collection of antique dolls (a gift from my second husband), she started taking photos of the dolls she bought as souvenirs from her trips around the world. She would pose them on a bed with a white background and mail them to me. She sent me maybe six photos in all and I framed them as a set and today they’re hanging on the hall that goes to my bedroom.

She was not a constant pen pal. By the time I found out about her passing, a couple of years had already passed. I found a notice on a newspaper announcing her death.

I miss my teacher. I miss her dry wit and scientific, cool mind. She was a sensitive woman, born maybe too early given the intolerant, vicious and cruel race we still are. She had a sweet and respectful soul, and a noble heart. If she was a lesbian, she probably lived a life of quiet and dignified self-denial. I hope she had the secret audacity to find in her traveling mate some semblance of love and intimacy.

And if after death her rambling spirit lived on, I hope she made it to the pyramids in Egypt, one of the few places she had yet to visit.

She never traveled to the United States. I do not know if that was for political and social reasons, but I do know that is was very much on purpose.

#12 - A Why for Blogging

The first memory of my life is a spanking. My sister Irma and I were about three and four, respectively. My parents were in the same room with us playing checkers on what I remember as a big cardboard box that was serving them as a table. Irma and I were going crazy jumping up and down on the bed (I’m thinking theirs). The problem is that we were not barefoot. We were wearing my mother’s shoes, the one with spiky (needle-like) heels, fashionable around the mid sixties.

I think I somehow understood that what we were doing was very wrong, but I was confused by my parents' quietness and concentration (apparent indifference) on their game, which lead us to believe that the destruction we were creating was really not a big deal. Oh but it was, of course it was. By the time we had the mattress on the floor and were happily feeling the heels go into the mattress filling, we saw our daddy getting up from his chair and without saying a word, spank us with his belt.

I sometimes wonder how that first rather violent awareness of self predisposed me to being self-conscious and my worst judge, almost expecting the worst from the beginning (a trend I hope I have defeated).

I spite of my parents' poverty and limited resources, I can say I had a happy childhood. There were definitely no excesses, no abundance, but we were loved, cherished and taken care of by Luis and Marga as best as they were able.

The other memory that stands out in terms of what made me consider the possibility of me being worthy and valuable happened when I was 16 and in prepa (high school) in Mexico. Our Spanish teacher gave us a homework assignment where we were supposed to write an essay with the title “The Happiest Day of My Life.” By then my teenage ennui made me question if I could even say I had had a happy day in my life, miserable and depressed as I felt on an daily basis. But ever studious and obedient, after giving it some thought I decided to write about my father’s reaction the day we found out that I had been accepted into the University of Guadalajara’s educational system when I began my high school studies. My papi’s reaction was one of such sheer delight that it imprinted itself forever into the soul of that 16-year-old girl I was back then. I still can retrieve and dust that memory when I feel like it: the whiteness of his wide smile stretched across his dark face; the high shine of his black eyes; his shout of happiness and almost incredulity (“You’re in, m’ija, you’re in!”), my bafflement and inability to understand his intense excitement about my acceptance into that imposing Colonial building. Whatever it was, it was good, I reflected, my papi is happy (ergo, that has to be “the happiest day of my life”).

It wasn’t until my adult years that I fully understood. I  get it. I understand what this rather small achievement might have meant for a totally unschooled Mexican peasant like my father.

After having read my little essay in front of the class (I got an A), my teacher congratulated me and several of my classmates came to me to tell me that they really had liked my story.

I don’t remember thinking anything, rather I felt a sense of inclusion and acceptance, of achievement. I had done something that others had approved! Maybe a healthy sense of self started burgeoning then. A sense that made me believe, “Hey, I can do something; maybe this is what they call a talent”, a talent for writing about my personal experiences, experiences to which others can relate to no matter how different our lives.

I think this might be what I am looking for every time I post on my two little blogs.

#11 - Unlikely Genius or The Memory of My Bones

 



Julio and his cigarette.



I’m rereading two books, one in Spanish that I read in the early 80s, Rayuela by Julio Cortázar and one I read in the 90s, The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

I have to say, I am actually enjoying them much more this second time around. I’m not much into rereading books, as I’m not much into watching movies more than once. Usually for me the second time I find less pleasure. I remember rereading Exodus by Leon Uris, my “mostest” favorite book in my teenage years. My first reading was in Spanish and I remember it made me cry more than once. The second time I read it in English and I didn’t find it as touching. I also wept like a baby when I watched Benigni’s Life is beautiful for the first time, while the second time it was still heart-breaking but I didn’t cry. This is why I do not want to watch Crash again. I went to the movies on my own and I found myself sobbing loudly. To me my tears were almost a purifying experience. I don’t want to see it again and find myself indifferent to its beauty and storytelling.

Anyway, that Cortázar, man, was he brilliant! Sometimes I wish we lived life like Oliveira does, with his acid and sharp intelligence that makes you analyze everything in life and then allows you to converse with your friends in a way that has depth and meaning. Oh man, when they talk about jazz and literature it’s no surprise La Maga feels stupid, who wouldn’t? I often find myself going back a couple of pages to try to figure out what the hell they’re talking about, coming out still confused and questioning.

My husband’s heroes are Cortázar and the Peruvian Vallejo. I read Rayuela before Raúl came into my life, but 62/Modelo para armar and Historias de famas y de cronopios I read because of Raúl. It’s because of him that I know about the poetic charge of dying on a rainy Thursday in Paris. Raúl has read all of Cortázar’s books and I believe Vallejo’s too.

Still, you know, when I try to imagine a reality like the one lived by Oliveira and the rest of The Serpent Club, I can see how unreal it is. Who like Horacio decides to stay with a mediocre pianist who believes herself to be a genius to the point where she accuses him of sexually accosting her? Who like Horacio stays with a homeless woman, gets drunk with her until she tries to fellate him? Come on, it’s pretty crazy. How can someone like Horacio discover that an infant is dead cold on a bed and does nothing or asks for help? I think these things happen in literature so you can acctually ask more philosophical and existential stuff that I’m probably too stupid to think about, much less ask. But I do recognize Cortázar’s brilliance. Because of him and with him (very happily) I’ve walked blocks and blocks with Oliveira through the rainy Paris nights, while he questions the world with his intelligence that just goes on and on. I’ve felt as lonely and dumb as La Maga, and I’ve identified with her, while feeling totally in awe and at a disadvantage of Horacio and Ossip and Etienne the rest of those cultured bohemians and their surrealism, their stream of consciousness and all that merde.

Of course, The Color Purple is a sadder experience. It talks about another world, a world that sadly seems to me to be more immediate, real and more true than Oliveira’s. It’s a world I can relate to better. I feel that I am or can be an inhabitant of The Color Purple. I’m familiar with its characters and their flaws and their stories. It’s a world somehow known by me. Perhaps, it is my bones and my genes that remember a world like Celie’s.

I’m hoping my daughter will find an opportunity to read these masterpieces soon. That is how much they are worth it.

#10 - Dear Peggy: Your Cara, my Valentina

Dear Peggy: After seeing your Cara in her beautiful prom gown, I started thinking about my own little girl and the journey she will begin this fall when she enters high school.

I must admit everything about high school makes me feel confused and nervous. My schooling in the States is reduced to first through fifth and then some of seventh grade. That is it. After that I would spend the nine months of the school year (or less if my parents could arrange it) in Mexico.

That is why I was surprised to discover that the Drill Team could be considered as a pretty big deal. To be honest, I’m just becoming a bit familiar with terms like drill team, varsity and the such, having no prior direct experience or knowledge about them myself.

My years in the high school equivalent in Mexico, were a terrible ordeal (at the beginning) and a most wonderful experience (at the end) for me.

I remember big (non-academic) encounters in high school: smoking, beer and stronger alcoholic drinks, the “making out” with boys, the invitation to drugs and other unhealthy but seductive possibilities.

All in all, I was a subdued and good girl. I did try the cigarettes and alcohol, “made out” rather inadequately and timidly with the boy who became my first husband, but never tried the pot or its more dangerous and probable companions.

I wonder how it is nowadays in a U.S. high school, like the one my Valentina will be attending. I imagine and I tell her that she will have to make difficult choices and decisions for herself that I will not be there to make for her. I tell her she will be exposed to what we consider immoral and incorrect behaviors, and some that will be just right out illegal. She has my trust and love, because I think she has a good head on her shoulders and high moral standards for herself. I think she will have to turn away from some things, like the making out in public when this is a most private behavior not to be shared. She will see and hear of girls and boys doing totally inappropriate things that I hope she will walk away from.

Anyway, I know you probably have discussed with and heard of these things from your Cara who soon will be exiting this phase of her life to enter into her young adult phase. I was wondering if Cara would have any brief pointers for my soon-to-be freshman that could help her avoid the most obvious potholes and cultural obstacles at their soon-to-be shared high school.

#9 - My Books: Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

I admit I was distracted when I started reading this book. I bought it on impulse for my Nook. After reading the first 15-20 pages, I had to go back to the beginning and start over because I couldn't keep the characters and their relationships straight in my head. Once I got that settled, I really enjoyed this book.

The title has to do with simple arithmetic and addition, when you have to carry the one to the column on the left to proceed with the sum. In the case of the novel the one that need to be carried, is a pre-teen, Casey, who is killed on a country road, late at night, by a car full of drugged, drunk careless, young people. As is the case when you're young, there is really no realization or full awareness of how this tragedy will mark and be present in their lives.

The narrative centers especially around three siblings obviously smart: Carmen (the bride, a social activist, and then mother of Gabe, one of the minor characters), Alice (a painter whose works will gain her fame and fortune) and Nick
(a promising astrophysicist who lives prisoner of and succumbs to his addictions).

We follow the lives of these three people and their significant others through the course of 25 years and we see how they can't or won't forgive themselves for being in the car that killed Casey. They can't find redemption or self-forgiveness through their work, their achievements or the relationships they establish as they grow and mature. They are unable to identify and grasp the windows of grace as they appear in their lives. And they also have no sense of spiritual/religious faith that might aide them into letting go of guilt and give happiness a try (happiness, I sensed, was like an indecency, an offense, in light of the tragedy that binds them).

Anshaw writes clearly, precisely and with shrewd, compassionate humanity. I really appreciate how seamless she is able to weave into the story and with a non-judgmental voice topics that not everyone is comfortable with, say, homosexuality. Another topic discussed with matter-of-factness is drug abuse, the emptiness it creates, the lack of direction when you're holding on for dear life (or for the dear next fix, as might be the case).

And that little girl long dead, is a pervasive, constant element in our reading. Alice, the gifted artist, dedicates an excellent series of paintings to Casey as the subject, always dressed in the same clothes she was wearing the night she was killed, but in the paintings she appears to be growing and having a life. Nick visits Casey's family, almost like a pilgrimage, every year (at the end, Casey's mother is able to come to terms with him). Carmen dives head on into her causes and her social activism.

The person that sort of disappears early on is Olivia (Nick's then girlfriend), the car driver that ill-fated night to reappear again at the end to be part of one of the most touching scenes in the book for me that involves a dream and a slippery surface.

The book and its characters are a mess and they live messy lives. But do we, human beings, really have any other alternatives? 'Fraid not. 

#8 -- My Books: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Starting with the obvious, it turns out that Lionel is not a guy, but a woman, born in North carolina as a Margaret Ann who in her teenage years decided to become Lionel. She’s in her fifties, married to a musician, no children and living in London. Lionel or Margaret Ann as I sometimes think of her is an exceptionally gifted writer.

And yet her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin (winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005) is not a delightful, blissful read. Oh, au contraire. It’s hard and painful as nails.

I decided to read this novel because I was so intrigued by the previews of the upcoming movie based on Shriver’s book featuring Tilda Swinton (Eva), John C. Reilly (Franklin) and Ezra Miller (Kevin), directed by Lynne Ramsay. Well, even Lionel liked the film (I have the preconceived notion that she is very hard to please).

The book is about our psyche and our heart, dealing with those feelings which most of the time we shy away from and rather not name or discuss: the ones that we don’t socially accept, those difficult-to-name visceral reactions that we should not ignore no matter how disagreeable.

Eva gets pregnant with Kevin and their relationship is anything but what we know or acknowledge as the norm: there is no gushing adoration, no emotional attachment between the two. It actually seems like there is a mutual rejection between infant and mother, in spite of Eva wanting to and working so hard to reach the image of being good at being a  “good mother.” When alone with his mom baby Kevin will not stop crying, rejects his mother’s breast and milk, and is just plain difficult to appease and please. Eva is sheer ambivalence not only as a human being, but most especially as a mother. She knows what society expects her to feel and she sees she cannot call forth that persona as it relates to her son. Her husband Franklin tries to pretend all is normal, after all they’re talking about a defenseless baby ,he thinks, so he plays down his wife’s concerns and ambivalence.

As the years pass Eva realizes that that first impression, her intuition of being disliked by her son from the very beginning is true; throughout his childhood and now adolescence, he goes out of his way to make his mom’s life as miserable as he can, while leaving his dad under the impression that he is just your typical teenage boy. Franklin continues feeding on the image of a them being a “normal family,” whatever that might be. Of course, I do not know how things will pan out in the movie, but from my reading of the book, I felt that Franklin was just in a long-term act of self-deception, a dad unwilling to admit that his son is an “evil” human being, a really “bad seed.” After all evil does exist, remember Manson, Bundy, etc.? We do give life to human beings capable of doing so much damage and hurt without us really understanding the why? It seems to me that Eva has a hard time and assimiliates the belief that somehow, some way, she is responsible and played a role in her son becoming a mass murderer. Was it because of her undeniable maternal ambivalence from the get-go, never able to be your lovey-dovey mommy, your baby-talk mommy and whatever one might think makes a woman a good mother?

In my mind the valuable learning from this novel is precisely the possibility of accepting ambivalence in our feelings toward our offspring. They are not necessarily likeable all the time (we know sometimes they don’t like us, but they’re innocent right?, we are not.) We must love them absolutely and instinctively all the time. I guess in the long run, love will beat indifference, but like in Eva and Kevin’s case, it painfully is not the case in every single instance.

As a mother I know I sometimes need to be alone to remember who I am and what I like, to recover the essence of Me. And sometimes, my husband and maybe even my daughter do not understand that. But they do respect it, something I deeply appreciate. They don’t frown upon that I need to go to the movies on my own, or that I hide in a Barnes and Noble to read my books. I think they've learned that after these brief parentheses of alone time I can be the more tolerant and loving wife and mother they expect and deserve.

Maybe that was what was amiss in the Kevin novel. Eva didn’t find the support and validation from neither Franklin or Kevin to share her burden and open up to maybe consider her husband's and son's. Maybe Kevin, astute as he is, was able to perceive his mother’s extreme ambivalence and decided to ultimately pay her with murder and hatred, and with no one talking about it or addressing it, it might have felt for him that his parents just plain sucked, when all is that they were all too human.

My botttom line: This book is definitely in line for a second read and Shriver is an author worth reading. She has several novels. Right now I'm reading The Post-Birthday World.

#7 -- Finding More Paths Home

Once in psychotherapy I remember telling my shrink that sometimes I feel like there is a congress or conference going on in my head where several voices argue and discuss any topic that might be worrying me in life. Quite innocently I asked him, “Do you think there is more than one Me inside me?” His quick response was, “Well, we know that there is at least one of you.” No, he didn’t mean I was crazy and that I had multiple personalities. I went with the idea that we has underlining the numerous contradictions that define the neurotic that I am.

I bring this up because last weekend I went to the movies on my own. I went to the Angelika Plano to see the beautiful A Separation. As I was walking from my car to the theater, there they were…my voices. We were all talking at the same time, quite happy actually. In order to keep up with all that I had to be said, I saw that I needed to talk to myself with my outside voice. And though one of us kept telling me to lower my voice because I would get caught by the “normal” foks around me, I just couldn’t. All of us were really happy to be out and about again!

We were in a celebratory mode because I had just realized that lately my weak leg is feeling much, much stronger, so much so that I don’t feel I’m going to fall with every step I take. Sometimes I have the audacity to walk without my cane for extremely short distances, say to the vending machine at work (in spite of having no business there); or from the bathroom at home to my recliner-cum-bed. I quite flippantly and childishly tell my husband when he insists I take my cane, “I don’t need it!”, something I wholeheartedly desire to believe and am convinced and will come to be.

So my voices and I were congratulating me on how strong and quick I walk now; of course the slowness and limp are still very noticeable, but the improvement is something none of us are willing to ignore or deny.

Another day I took my daughter to her soon to be high school. It was sort of an Open House to meet with the clubs and become familiar with extracurricular activities she will be able to choose from. Because of my own experiences in U.S. schools, I was a little nervous, but I have to say I did fantastically well. I got very tired, but I was thrilled with myself.

The resurgence of these voices that to me seem to come from distinct individualities made me also realize that they had but disappeared since I had my stroke in June 2008. I commented to my husband that perhaps the part of my brain that died that June night was where these voices resided and now they have found new neuronal pathways back home.

I do hope so, because that means my brain is probably furiously, desperately working to regain its power over my left limbs.

May it be so.

#6 -- Letter to My California Home

Dear 411 Woodbridge Ave:

I just learned you were built in 1929 and that you offer 1225 square feet to your inhabitants. You’re a pretty humble home. My parents’ mortgage when you held us tight was only $65 dollars per month.

Let me tell you what you were in the seventies, when you were my home.

Because of their work in the orchards, our parents couldn’t pick us up at the airport that summer. So they told Irma and I to take a cab from the Sacramento airport to what we knew was our new home and of which knew absolutely nothing except this magical address written on a piece of paper to which we held on for dear life: 411 Woodbridge Ave. The drive to our town was an hour south of Sacramento.

Before you, we had lived in rental properties, all poor and probably undesirable for the majority of people, but to us they were the safest place ever, with mami and papi anchoring us strong and firm.

When we got out of the taxi and we saw the number 411 on a house that to our eyes looked like a mansion, we automatically walked down a small dirt road on your side that led to a place that to us seemed more appropriate (poorer) for us.

Finally we had to accept that the pretty house we saw initially was you, our home. We walked around you unbelieving and in awe. You had a fenced back yard and a side porch. I don’t know what my sister was seeing or thinking, but I remember I was unable to grasp that behind those creamy yellow, almost sheer curtains that covered the salient windows that framed the front of the house, was going to be where we would live. It seemed like a fairy tale home to the sisters who were not yet fifteen, and very probably developmentally much younger and innocent.

411 Woodbridge, you hold so much of my family’s history. Do you remember all the people that you housed, so many uncles and cousins for whom my parents open your doors wide and welcoming so they could work with us in the fields and orchards so they could send some money to their families back south? Do you remember my mother getting up at two or three in the morning so she could make flour tortillas for all those men? Do you remember her whitened hands, her sweaty face, and her roll pin as she turned the dough into flat round disks that bloomed with hot air, yummy and light on the griddle? Do you remember her plants, how, almost like green hallucinations, adorned your communal living spaces? Do you remember our friends the ones with whom we played cards until the morning came and they stayed to breakfast with us the “menudo” made by my mother?

How about my papi, 411 Woodbridge? Do you remember him, his laughter, his joking ways when he mopped your kitchen floor, his pepper and tomato plants in your back yard and that he watered in his silent peasant ways? Do you remember Sergio’s three children (Eva, Sergito and Adán) and how we cherished them?

Remember when finally one of your rooms became my bedroom? In that room I somehow had a desk and my room was uncluttered, everything in its place, beautified with the books I borrowed from the public library (I especially remember the poems written by a Hispanic New York cop turned poet).

You were filled to the brim, 411 Woodbridge, you were filled with the love that united us, the light that could not be contained by your yellow curtains; you were filled with our music, our laughter, our happiness, our birthdays, our language, our customs, our greenery, and my parents hunger to defeat the chronic and extreme poverty from whence they came. And through sheer hard work, dedication and devotion to their family they did. And, finally, you, 411 Woodbridge, made them homeowners in the United States.

Amidst the northern California scenery browned by hard working immigrants, like my mami and papi, oh 411 Woodbridge Ave, I’m so happy to know you’re still standing tall.

#5 - Let There Be Light!

 So on Tuesday our electricity was turned off by CoServ. It seems I skipped a couple of payments. I remember seeing the interruption notice, but I didn’t pay attention to my last date to pay 143 dollars. I felt so bad when I called Wednesday morning to figure out what was going out with my account since I pretty much thought I was up to date, and the employee told me that the power had already been turned off that morning. I almost cried. What does one do? One pays whatever they’re asking for because life without electricity is unthinkable? I had to tell my husband and I feared he would be mad. But he was not. Actually, he was very understanding with me and accepting especially when I told him our power would be back up the next day, Wednesday. Now I imagine many people have the routine of a nightly bath or shower, so they just get up, dress, have breakfast and go. Not us. Our family of three takes their shower as soon as we get out of bed. Otherwise the day seems a pretty dirty daunting task to face. Wednesday morning we woke to the news that we had no hot water. A big surprise for us. We figured since our gas bill was up to date, we could count on having hot water so we could shower and face the day. Somehow it’s not like that, something to do with the heater having electric ignition, as was explained to me by the ever nice folks at CoServ. That paralyzed us...to the point that my daughter and I stayed home from work and school, both of us having additional reasons as to why getting dressed and going out was not a realistic possibility. Raul and his boss are scheduled to put the newspaper to sleep on Wednesday so there was absolutely no way that he could not not go to work. And he feels much more strongly about the necessity of a morning shower for all human beings. He felt awful all day long. Now why did I decide to write my Trust Me about this? Because of the reactions we really don’t talk about that I can’t ignore. The idea of shame comes to the fore. My husband actually asked my daughter to not tell anyone at school why she missed school on Wednesday, that it was a family thing and private. At work, I just felt comfortable explaining to my boss why I felt I had to miss a day at work. I really think this reaction of shame has to do with the immigrant experience. In my country, at least in my immediate reality there, if someone had their power shut off, you would think that they were so poor that they couldn’t even pay for that most abasic of basic utilities. And you don’t want to ever be that poor. I argued with Raul, I said, “But we are poor.” Of course, not so poor that we couldn’t pay for this service. I can be embarrassed by my oversight but I know we could have paid this bill had I not been so careless and distracted with that notice from CoServ. In places like my immediate reality in the “old country” poverty is a culture, so not paying your power bill, puts you even lower than low middle class. And no one wants to admit the possibility of this reality. So I decided to talk about it, because I’m not in the “old country.” I’m here. I really don’t know what mainstream U.S. of A. would imply from knowing that my power was interrupted, but Some Thing tells me it wouldn’t be as shaming as it would be in the “old country.”

#4 -- He Never Lets Me Down

I tend to make assumptions that are surely mistakes. For example I believe that all human beings when exposed to them will love the Beatles. I first was exposed to them in my early twenties, surely late in life. I remember this experience perfectly, in spite of my memory not being what it should be.

Back then with my best friend Alejandro who later became my boyfriend and first husband I attended a reading circle that focused mainly on philosophy. We read folks like Engels, Hegel and Marx. Aside from my natural curiosity to learn, all I wanted was to be with Alejandro. All of us were college kids, idealistic and naïve. Maria and her husband were the ones who coordinated the reading circle and we admired them because they were really experienced and knowledgeable.

One day, instead of our usual weekly discussion we decided to have a party. In all sincerity, I felt I didn’t belong there. I was shy, I didn’t know how to socialize nor did I have the valuable social skill of small talk. The only person I felt comfortable with was Alejandro, who had a keen intelligence and was as honest as me. In the name of honesty we said things that now in my maturity I wouldn’t say to anyone; and in the long run probably hurt me more than him.

It was a big party, my only anchor was Alejandro and at some point I lost him in the midst of all those people drinking and laughing and, generally, having a blast. To calm myself down and not give myself away as a lonely, shy and friendless person, I stepped outside and I probably smoked a cigarette trying to make myself go back and join all the young people that had no emotional issues (whatever they were) like me. I was trying to convince myself that I belonged, that I had a right to be there. I finally went back hoping to find Alejandro. As I came into the main room the lights were out and the only light was the one filtering in through the windows. It was early evening, so there was still sunlight. I was surprised to see couples in embrace dancing to music that immediately captivated and struck me still: the song playing loud, was sweet and sad at the same time, it was a song I had never heard in my life. I was transfixed, I realized it was a song perfect for dancing with someone close to you. I wondered, “Who’s singing?” I just remembered a melodious “I'm in love for the first time/ Don't you know it's gonna last/ It's a love that lasts forever/ It's a love that had no past/ (and then the plea) Don’t let me down.”

Later I learned they were the Beatles. And so I made them mine. I discovered that John is my favorite Beatle.

So many years later, it turns out that my second husband Raul is a Beatle freak. The happy thing, at least for me, is that our daughter Valentina loves the Beatles, just like us. And as it should be.

John always touches my heart. Just this week I was listening to Beautiful Boy as he wrote it for his son Sean, and I thought of that boy’s loss and I remember feeling upset, like crying. And I got really resentful against that Chapman fellow. He not only took John’s life, he stole from all of us as he took from John his more productive and artistic years yet to come. Who knows what he had in store for us as he came into himself without the other three and as he was coming into the maturity of his years?

Ultimately, though, the Beatles never let me down.

#3 -- Oh Jane of My Teenage Heart!

My little sister Irma, is younger than me by little less than a year. I think it would be safe to assume that you could infer that we have a lot in common. And yet we don’t. My sister married when she was nineteen years old to her first and only sweetheart Lalo. I married the first time at 26 and the second time, well in my forties. She has three wonderful kids, two already married and she is the grandmother of two precious kids. I, miraculously, became a mother at 38.

My sister Irma is the hardest working woman I know, even now. She seems tireless and undefeatable. She is passionate about her husband and kids. She has survived breast cancer. Most of the time I’m in awe of her. She and my mother are the two toughest broads you’ll ever meet.

As a child, Irma was physical and a free spirit; my spirit was a timid spirit, practically voiceless. Irma fearlessly cycled on the dirt hills across the street from the house we rented in California. Her ambition was to have a ten-speed sports bike, which she got for her fifteenth birthday. I was quiet, had no friends and no interest in the outside world. I lived for my music and my books. My sister was playing “comadritas” with our mother and making her home on each branch of the big tree in our front yard. The higher branch was her kitchen, that one to the left, was the living room and so on. If I ever ventured outside I would quietly walk around the house. Seeing the tree as a tree I was incapable of the magical thinking so typical of children.

As we hit teenagehood, Irma discovered she liked to read too, but that didn’t bring as any closer. While I was captivated by Harriet the Spy and Sara Crewe, my sister discovered Nancy Drew. Later she was into Danielle Steele and everything Harlequin Romance.

I would sometimes borrow her Nancy Drew books or her romance novels. That is how I came upon a book titled Collision Course where Rosie and Luke fall in love, in spite of her initial hatred toward him. I was hooked by this story, so much so that I borrowed another one from Irma, which did nothing for me.

I quickly realized that it was the author who enamored me so. I became addicted to finding as many of her books as I could. Her name was Jane Donnelly. If Jane wasn’t the novelist, all of my sister’s romance novels became worthless for me.

Of course the plot is totally formulaic, ideal for a young girl to imagine and dream about love and the mate she wishes will discover her when she becomes an adult. I too wanted my Luke and my Adam (the hero from A Man Apart). Every story was the same: A cute girl with a kind heart and hard working has reached independence and is probably in a stable relationship that is aiming at marriage when in He comes. Mostly always an outsider, brilliant in his field (writer, archaeologist, etc.), untoppable really, almost a celebrity. A man whose intelligence has not blinded him to ultimately see the value of a girl like Rosie or Abby. There is always some miscommunication or a messy situation that distances them and seems to indicate that the relationship will not make it, but at the end, He can only love her and she was born to be the woman of a man whose intelligence, stature and self-sufficiency she cannot resist.

In my thirties when I moved to San Antonio, my now husband found out about my affinity to Jane Donnelly. Raúl made it a point to go to second–hand stores in San Anto to hunt down any and all of Jane’s titles he could find for me, to the point that I have several of those books from my teenage years. Every now and then, when I have a fit of nostalgia or a desire to remember (relive?) my youth, I will bring them down and read them all again, as voraciously as then.

Oh Jane, my Jane, you knew me well!

#2 - Why I Shut my Mouth

I’m in pain. It’s a pain in my weak left foot. It feels like somebody squeezing a nail into the most tender skin on the outer side of my left sole. It shoots from deep within with an intense and burning pain, making me almost crumble to the floor if I’m standing up. Walking is the most painful misery. If with my cane I’m a slow poke, I cannot describe myself with the nails that shoot from underneath my foot.

That made me think of the Jewish man who was crucified pitilessly with nails to his feet and hands. If I feel I’m about to quit life and cry my pain in high wails, I cannot fathom what it might mean to be victim of people purposefully inserting nails to your feet and hands and then standing around to see you die.

I try to comfort myself thinking of the pain he must have endured and I tell myself that what I’m feeling must be close to nothing compared with the damage that hammer made and the part it played in his death. And I try to make myself strong, but I can’t, I feel the drops of perspiration sliding down, dampening my hair, running down my neck and forehead and I feel like letting myself drop to the floor and weep like a baby.

A kind—hearted young woman helped me today. But I had to ask her for help. I find that to be extremely embarrassing, shaming. It might not be, but I cannot help that feeling. It’s in my genes. She brought me my desk chair with wheels to the hallway a few feet away from my desk, and helped me make it to my desk. A humble thank you, Liz!

Since I do not see how anyone can help me, I try to suffer this pain in my own silent, unobtrusive way, always answering that I’m fine, that it’s nothing. Then I find myself alone and I find myself complaining to God and asking him to help me. I know he knows what I’m feeling, and I know he loves me. Why must I wait for him so long? Then I remember that my time is not his time. And I shut my mouth.

#1 -- Our Worst Sin

My fist weekly post of 2012.

So it’s a new year and I imagine that you-just as me-are trying hard to keep up your optimism and faith in us, the human race.

It’s not always easy though, isn’t? I just heard about two terrible cases that do very little to prove our worth and value.

I’m talking about that two-year-old little girl in China who was run over by two vehicles and then left there bleeding on the street as 18 other persons walked, drove or pedaled right by her without stopping to help or to call for help.

The other tragedy occurred in Mexico city this week in a Bancomer bank. A 60 or 61 year old man is standing in line with many other customers, all impatient to make it to the cashier to take care of their business. The man suddenly takes his hands to his chest, steps out of line and dies on the floor of a heart attack. Not one single person in the bank, customer or employee, did anything to help this man. Apparently they were worried and did not want to lose their place in line.

How can we explain this? What does it say about us? Is it fear that stops us from acknowledging the pain and suffering in others? Is it selfishness?

Thursday night I was watching a movie with Helen Mirren as the philosopher and writer Ayn Rand. Well, if I trust Rand’s philosophy, it would have been okay to not express sadness or to act to help these two individuals. From what I understood, Rand supports selfishness and the pursuit of one’s personal happiness without really regarding others.

Then Friday morning I was listening to Don Cheto, the Spanish-language radio personality , who so entertains me. He was born in my parents’ home state of Michoacán, and listening to him takes me back to their village, populated by uneducated and hard-working people. I love Don Cheto’s wit, his sense of humor and his obvious intelligence. He perfectly understands the immigrant experience, which means he perfectly identifies with his listeners. His co-host Marlene Quinto is a young woman, who can be likened to probably any of his listeners--uneducated, sometimes coarse, ill-mannered and crude, sometimes very inappropriate when speaking about sexual things (but most Mexicans I know are like that, loving to speaking in innuendos, double entendres and their “albures). What I like about her is that she seems to have an air of innocence and inexperience about her, that makes her sound almost like a child. It appears she has knowledge about living in the most feared neighborhoods of the LA area and knows about the “cholo” life. The other guy’s name is Felix but they call him Boro, he is the “braniac” of the group, the educated one, the non-peasant- middle-class-guy. They have a good chemistry between the three. Obviously Don Cheto is the star, in my mind deservedly so.

Anyway, Friday morning on my way to work, Don Cheto commented on the China and Mexico tragedies. And then he said something that struck me as true and correct in describing us, society members, and our ability to ignore so much pain and loss. He said that our worst sin as human beings was our indifference. I don’t know about you, but it hit home with me.

I hope 2012 turns a corner and comes to be a better experience to us all, here in the United States, as well as our entire and beautiful planet, places like Greece, Italy , Spain and my wounded Mexico. On my part, for my family and myself, I will continue to explore and look for freelance opportunities to make better use of my communication skills in Spanish.

Let us pray.