#21 - I Just Can't See It!

Three married couples gathered around my kitchen table. By now, it’s an old table with cheery hand-painted sunflower tiles.

Initially, I thought I could offer some coffee and pastries and enjoy the camaraderie that we had been building the times we had gathered before this Sunday afternoon.

I should have known better. Soon enough, on the table there were two bottles of fine tequila, a pot of coffee for me that I should not consume alcohol and an assortment of foods, mostly leftovers from the week.

After that time flies. Some of the adults drink unrestrained; a couple of them wait or start spacing out the sips they take from their caballito glass.

There is much laughter and jokes. The youngest of the couples stand and dance to a nortena song and then to a couple of salsa tunes, without stepping out of the breakfast room. I so wish I could just “up and dance” but I sigh to myself grateful for the high pleasure of being alive.

In our minds there is the awareness that when morning comes we’ll need to be at work. One of them convinces himself to call in sick and raises his caballito to everybody. The other two males remember that for one reason or another they don’t work that Monday. The women, well, they’re women and know they can handle a bit of a hangover and function well on a just a few hours of sleep.

So the party continues happily for everybody. The two kids are entertained watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower in the movie room. My daughter’s sixth time!

Before calling it a night well after a midnight, the two bottles of tequila are practically gone. One of the women proposes we take turns singing what she calls “tequila songs,” which I understand are songs you request or sing when you’re drunk remembering a “love gone done you wrong”, you’re probably resentful, hurt, still have feelings for him or her; it’s that unforgettable love that you can admit to through the song. The only completely sober one, me, raises her hand eagerly and says, “I’ll start.”

At this point I YouTube every song chosen in turns while the “singer” is busy looking up the lyrics on a smart phone.

So the musical “soiree” starts with José Alfredo’s “Maldición ranchera” sung by Amalia Mendoza which I sing with no shyness and to my heart’s content with the good Amalia. We each sing four or five songs.

While I’m actively participating and singing with everybody, in the back of my mind I’m thinking of the tequila I’m not drinking and my coffee mug that I raise to clink against the five caballito glasses that are raised regularly.

In my country alcohol is deeply ingrained in all our customs. We become happy, outgoing and extroverted when we drink our liquor in the right measure. But we rarely know how to stay put in that right measure. When we pass that point we become stubborn, despondent and even aggressive, we cry for that lost love. We become pretty silly and pitiful.

So ingrained is alcohol in our culture that I’m sure any of us can mention dear ones lost to alcoholism. My mother’s three brothers are victims of alcoholism. My uncle Jorge died from that; my uncle Humberto had the same lifestyle (though he died of brain tumors). And my uncle Ezequiel is in his sixties and a drunk.

But we’re not like that, of course not!

So there we were happy and cheering each other with our selected songs. Sometimes the faces of people from work would pop into my mind and I would wonder, “Do white folks get drunk like us? Do they take turns around a kitchen table, YouTube a song (say by Patsy Cline of Johnny Cash) and sing their heart out loud and very off key? Somehow I just can’t see it!

#20 - My Daughter at the Piano: My Duty as a Mother

To my daughter again

Last week I was pleasantly surprised by listening to my daughter playing the piano. This was unexpected since given our schedules I really don’t get to listen to her. I even had to tell Husband to put the TV on Mute so I could listen to the sweet sounds.

My daughter takes piano lesson since she was four or five. I acknowledge this is more about me than her. I will explain:

On one of our trips to Washington state for the apple harvest, we ended living in a cute small mobile home close to the beautiful residence of our kind and affectionate employers. They, the Sorensens, were four like us. Their youngest, Kelly, a boy of about 10, would come to us when my mom made flour tortillas and he would eat them with butter and jelly (!). Oh he devoured them! That is until it occurred to us to have him eat one with hot and spicy salsa. Kelly’s eyes overflowed with tears but he never gave up. Mrs. Sorensen asked my mother to teach her how to make those tortillas.

Her daughter, about 14 and whose name I can’t remember, studied piano. One day she taught me how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on three keys on the lustrous black grand piano they had in their living room. I was 12 and captivated by the then unknown and strange instrument and I would drum that little song, surely even in my sleep.

Once walking around downtown Wenatchee I felt myself pulled inside a music store, interested as I was in repeating on one of the pianos the little song our employers’ daughter had taught me. A very nice man, who I know suppose was the owner, came to the piano, took those three keys and using practically the entire keyboard played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” again transforming it to my captive ears into a marvelous symphonic experience.

The piano became a secret and impossible dream to me.

Almost three decades later living in San Antonio, in the laundry room of our apartment complex I saw an ad about a piano teacher Nancy. When I called her and told her of my interest but that I didn’t have a piano, she suggested we start on an electric keyboard. So I bought myself a cheap one and started my classes with Nancy who kindly would come to our apartment to teach me my class.

From Nancy I heard about a Hispanic neighbor whose name I can’t recall either. His apartment was a bazaar. His reduced space was filled with exotic and exquisite things he had for sale, among them a dark and tall upright piano that, let’s say Francisco, sold to me in installments.  He sold it to me for $500 and accepted that I pay him $50 each month.

I expected him to tell me to take the piano as soon as we established the terms of our agreement. I had to wait the 10 long months.

The most symptomatically neurotic thing about me was the day MY piano was brought down from his second level apartment to ours (I don’t recall how it happened). When the piano found a wall to stand against, feeling I-don’t-know-but-feeling-it-most-deeply, I sat on the floor sheltering myself under its keyboard and I cried my little immigrant heart out, touching its wood as if it were the skin of the most desirable man on earth (let’s think Pedro Infante).

That piano is still with me. But I do not know how to play it. I took classes here in Dallas with a couple of teachers for three or four years (not much in the world of music). Reading music is extremely difficult for me. Visually, it’s very hard to give value to those dots on paper.

From one of the tuners, I know this about my piano: it’s made with Honduran mahogany, its keys are actually ebony and ivory, the strings are copper and it turned 100 years old in 1997. Its former owner was either a vegetarian or did not play it much; apparently the skin of carnivores emits some type of oils that stain the keys; this given the condition of my piano’s keys back then that were a nice pearly white. He also said that because of the extension of its strings, in order for a piano to sound like mine, we would need a grand piano (the strings are set diagonally). Another tuner valued in $2,500.

I have never considered selling it (not even during hard times). It will be for Valentina. And since she takes lessons she, more or less, has taken ownership.

Valentina takes lessons very reluctantly. And I know I shouldn’t expect her to fulfill my frustrated wishes so I can live them vicariously. But when I read that learning music helps kids to better assimilate and understand the hard sciences, I decided that she could expect me to find ways to help her understand math.

And it’s only because of this that she studies piano. It’s my motherly duty!