#41 - My Heartfelt Fiesta at Fiesta Supermarket

Last Sunday I found myself in the "ethnic" supermarket of Fiesta. My mother asked me to take her because she’s not very pleased with the fact that I buy cans of beans to fry instead of cooking them from scratch.

The place was packed. Old timey upbeat mariachi music was flowing from the audio system, music probably from the forties and fifties; songs that many of the shoppers would recognize but probably couldn’t place in time or name. Of course, I could as I found myself singing along, since I was a faithful listener and buyer of this Mexican music in my early years. (I even thought that if my two legs were working legs, I would start to zapatear then and there).

Then I saw guavas from Mexico for sale and I made a beeline for them. As I was touching them to gauge their ripeness, I saw this Indian woman looking in my direction and all of the sudden I fel a deep sense of ownership about “my” Mexican guavas and I felt that I was not willing to share their sunny color with her. As she walked toward me, I got in my “Defend the Guavas” stance and then the Indian woman dressed in the traditional attire from her country, smiled ever so sweetly at me, stretched her arm and picked a pomegranate from the bin next to my guavas. I began breathing again, and even smiled back at her. Got to say the pomegranates were indeed tempting, enormous and a steal at $1.69 each.

I realized how petty I was becoming so I stepped back to observe my surroundings. I saw my elderly mother some steps away busy filling a bag with happy red tomatoes, lost in her own delight at finding herself surrounded by so much color, abundance and the fact that we could pay for basically whatever she fancied. As I stood there I saw the employees at the meat counter cheerfully bantering as if they were happy to be there on a Sunday, working. Shoppers were of all colors, even white folks were there, enjoying the plethora of color and smell, looking a bit, but not much, out of place (finally we all look for good deals, no matter our color). But most of us were definitely of the Latino/Hispanic persuasion.

I felt a surge of nostalgia starting in my gut and expanding to my chest, filling me with joy, a sweet sadness, and pride too. Here were people from so many different backgrounds, and I could see the corn shucks for the tamales, I could see guavas, pomegranates, papayas, mangoes, chayotes (a pear- almost heart-shaped green veggie especially delicious in chicken and beef soups), tunas (cacti pear), the tomatillos, a complete aisle dedicated to tortillas and tostadas, the sour cream from El Salvador and from Mexico, the chili powder for our fruity pico de gallo. And I thought yes, this is the produce I would find in the street markets back home, I would walk with my bags among my people (very much like the ones here at Fiesta) and I would barter away with the merchants trying to agree on a better price for me for the kilo of tomatoes and potatoes and Serrano peppers. And I realized that none of this is now weird or awkward (maybe the bartering) to any of the white people there under the same roof with me. As I felt the tears of homesickness come, I filled a small bag with guavas and hurriedly walked over to my mother. After all, I was only there because of her. Me, assimilated me, shops at Target.

#40 – Idle Thoughts

During my week something happens, I finish my book, I go to the movies and I decide to write my post about that, since what else could be liked by my one and only blog reader (me! :) ). Turns out this week I have not much to talk about. I started reading Madame Bovary (after a couple of decades of reading the first time). I also went to the movies with my husband which in itself is unusual. We saw the new Almodóvar flick, The Skin I Live In. And though interesting and worth the movie ticket price, I fell asleep. I almost started snoring, except Raúl woke me up.

By the way this is what living with a poet is like, if said poet loves you. Say you fall asleep watching TV next to him. You wake up a bit startled and embarrassed. You turn to him, he smiles sweetly at you and you ask, “Did I snore?” This is my husband’s response, “Love, you don’t snore, you sing in your sleep.”

I know the crisis is hard and most everyone I know is hurting from it. Most especially us. After a hot water pipe burst in our home a couple of weeks ago, we're stressed out by the damage and our deductible. So on top of the crisis, that. I imagine that all businesses are frantically looking into ways of moving their inventory, promoting sales and the such. But I’m having a bit of identity crisis now that Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened and we’re already starting to be bombarded by images of Santa, Christmas trees and music. To be honest with you, I’m a bit upset about it. In my mind Christmas season officially starts on Black Friday, when many of us plan to bring out our artificial tree. But thinking about Christmas now, before Turkey Day is bit too much for me, even if what businesses most need and want from me right now is my money even if I don’t have any to give them.

After my stroke I’ve been desperately looking for freelance translation opportunities, sending my freelancer resume left and right with very little luck. My freelance work has always been a source of blessings. But I refuse give up on that, no matter how nice it is to have my evenings and weekends to myself and my family. I am convinced soon a door will open where I will be allowed to earn the extra income I need to face this storm with a hopeful smile on my face, and, if slowly and not paralyzed by the current economic situation, get out of debt.

#39 -- My Movies: Take Shelter

I went to the movies this past weekend. I wanted a dose of Kevin Spacey so I went to see Margin Call. But before that I went to see Take Shelter. I was intrigued by the previews, but also by the title. There is something almost intimate and oh so inviting to me when you say or read “take shelter.” I almost imagine someone telling me “take shelter, my love, protect yourself.”

I was blown away by the movie. Specifically I was blown away by Michael Shannon’s portrayal of Curtis LaForche. Michael’s work is intense and brooding and self-contained like the small Ohio town where he and his family live. From the outside, like his friend Dewart says, Curtis has a good life, but things start unraveling and feeling uncomfortable when he begins having terrible nightmares that he can’t shake off. They persist and haunt him in his waking hours like the pain he feels when in one of them he is viciously bitten by his dog.

But Curtis is also a practical man moved by the self-imposed drive that he will never leave his family. Never. His mom had a psychotic break in her mid thirties (Curtis’s age now) and left him alone when he was ten. He has promised himself he will never expose his own family to that pain.

He decides to face his nightmares with effort and purpose. He checks books about mental illness from his public library and makes an attempt at self-diagnosis. But the dread and the threat of imminent danger he sees in the sky above do not really subside. He begins to presage a storm like no other and decides to improve the tornado shelter in his backyard incurring into a debt that the family cannot afford.

His wife Samantha and his daughter Hannah are strong presences in the movies. Hannah is a six year deaf child whose parents are looking into a cochlear implant that is only possible through Curtis’s medical insurance from work. This procedure is not a sure thing, especially when Curtis is fired from his job.

The movie captivated me. I kept waiting for something supernatural to happen or some aliens to start showing up (my husband’s perspective). But the story insists in keeping it real and to be something utterly possible. Curtis knows he is not right in the head and looks for assistance, but his fears permeate his every act.

The final scene is especially powerful. Following medical advice, the family gets away from the storm shelter for some days and goes to the beach. Little Hannah sees it first. She tells her dad it’s a storm. He looks out to sea. We can’t see what he sees, yet you know it’s something huge. When he finally catches his wife Sam’s eyes, you can see them holding a silent conversation from afar, like married couples do, asking her if what he is seeing is true or a product of his weakened mind, since we all know he can’t be trusted. She nods at him, validating whatever it is he’s seeing. He picks up his daughter and goes to her. Then you see what they’re seeing and it ends with Samantha saying “Okay.”

When I think about this movie and then think about Margin Call, I can’t really help but ask is Curtis really that crazy? I mean we do live in a crazy world; we can’t deny that or hide from that. Here you have a hard-working guy, loving and devoted to his family that has to make do with counselors because he cannot afford to see the medical staff who might be professionally trained to help him, a guy who loses his job and with it the possibility of affording the medical care his little girl truly needs.

Then you have the arrogant characters of Margin Call who flippantly talk about making anywhere from $250,000 to $2 million plus a year in Wall Street. The movie tries to explain the 2008 housing bubble burst. Now if the average salary for regular folks is what? 4OK, maybe 60K a year, isn’t it crazy that a 23 year old kid makes 250K, and we see little kids like Hannah or ill people like Curtis go unattended. I really don’t know if Curtis’s paranoia might be totally unwarranted.

Anyway, as I said before, I am no movie critic, but in my mind Mr. Shannon has become a heavyweight Oscar contender and shown me what acting at its best looks like.

#38 -- I was seven…

We were six and seven when my younger sister and I got our green cards in 1967. As a favor, a friend of my mother’s, La Viuda or The Widow, made the long bus ride with us from Guadalajara to Tijuana so we could reunite with our parents.

At school children didn’t like me; they laughed at me and called me names. Children would stop drinking from water fountains after I used it making faces of how gross it would be to drink from the same water fountain as the Mexican kid.

The last thing I want is pity, because I realize we all have issues. In my case, mine have to do with abandonment, loss, bewilderment and a sense of not belonging and of unworthiness, and I do believe there is a direct correlation between them and my condition as an immigrant, being left behind and brought unprepared to a new country and all this implies. My defense mechanism has been detachment and forgetfulness. I just do not associate the natural pain with the traumatic events, and then I forget the events altogether.

But I do remember my first English word upon entering first grade:

There’s a white teacher in front a me. She holds a large whiteboard card in her hands. There is a red square drawn on the card and three letters under it. R-E-D. The teacher points to the red square and I understand I’m supposed to name the color, so I say “rojo.” She shakes her head vigorously and it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong. She points again, and again I say “rojo.” And she says no and insists on “red” pronouncing the word slowly and purposefully. I say “rojo” in the same manner. I don’t know how long we do this, until I guess I begin doubting everything I held for certain up to that moment, and my “rojos” quaver and quiet down and I timidly try my first “red.”

Instead of denying my “rojo,” I wonder if had my teacher reaffirmed it with my new “red,” would I have been a less scared and scarred little girl? Because through words we name our world and ourselves and if you already have a language by which you can say who you are, but then at some point, unexplainably, you’re taught or made to give it up, I think it’s fair to assume that you’ll question your worth and your value.

Now I know better. But it’s been a long and weary road the one I’ve walked to be at this point where I can say that I know I’m fortunate to know two languages, to belong to two cultures. I believe multilingualism and multiculturalism make you a more tolerant, understanding, forgiving and universal human being. We are able to relate better to human beings in all latitudes, and realize and accept that we are rather small in the greatness of our planet and our universe, and finally, that we are not the center of it all.

#37 - Divided

With immigration back in the headlines, especially in Alabama, I thought about what being an assimilated immigrant means, especially when you maintain healthy roots to your homeland.

I’d like to explain what I unoriginally call The Change, and it’s not menopause (though I probably could talk about that one too). My Change happens when I go from one country to another, and it’s automatic, natural…basically instinctive. Let me explain.

Here in the States I’m bothered by cigarette smoke, trash in the streets and smog. It angers me that I agree to meet with a friend for coffee at 6 and she waltzes in 20 minutes late. I’m certain that a good chunk of my day I think only in English. I celebrate wholeheartedly the customs and holidays of this country. I love the freeways, the efficiency and logic of most every social process. I anticipate the hurried pace, the distances, the lack of time. The occasional homeless people I see surprise me precisely because it’s so rare to see them. In other words, I adapt and thrive in the urban landscape of living in Dallas, right smack in the middle of the First World.

Then I go to my homeland, to Mexico.

I share the table with six people and I’m the only non-smoker. I’m hit by the unpleasant smell of cigarettes, smoke getting in my eyes, and I don’t even bat an eye. People arrive late and I happily greet them with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. In cars it feels like I’m on horseback, jumping around in the backseat with no seatbelt while other cars flash by furiously and dangerously fast, a couple of inches from us, and still I’m able to smile like a kid. Downtown children literally play with fire for a couple of coins, as do clowns, jugglers and musicians with their marimbas, and Indian women sit with outstretched hands. Though saddened by the blatant sight of their poverty, I know them to be an integral part of my city. While there, English doesn’t come to mind. Someone suggests taking me to a Starbucks and I react offended. Don’t get me wrong, sadly I’m one of those people that keep Starbucks in business in spite of their overpriced coffee and coffee paraphernalia. But over there it’s the last place I see myself. So I insist on those small coffee shops that are unique to the city where my friends and I make that last of cup of java last for hours in delicious conversation.

As you can see, in my homeland I am another person. I’m the One From There, the one that lives with smog, smokers, poverty, chaos and social tardiness. And there I know myself to be also in my element.

As I said, what’s amazing is the ability of going through The Change. It’s like turning a switch. Click, and I’m the One From Here. Click, and I’m the One From There. One denies the other.

How can we explain, say chemically or physiologically these two consciousness, these two ways of being? Does a specific area in my brain become active while another has to totally shut down?

This is what being bicultural and bilingual is all about—being divided. I’m divided in two: I understand, love and belong to two countries, two languages; I have two pasts and two loyalties.

And this is how I go through life…divided.

#36 -- My Encounter With El arado

This is one of my Cotidianas that was published in July 2005. Because we’re saying goodbye to September, I want to remember Víctor and El arado and the people that go to work every day, without ever complaining about how hard it is. M.

As long as we sing his songs, as long as his courage can inspire us to greater courage, Víctor Jara will never die. – Pete Seeger

In my childhood home, the music was exclusively ranchera. From Lucha Villa to the duo Las Jilguerillas. In these songs women’s eyes were always black, they were proud and pretty and they made men beg. On their part, men found comfort in their tequila, they spoke about their horse, their guns and of that love they couldn’t reach.

In my childhood home, people were the salt of the earth; they are peasants with very little formal instruction. Their culture is hard work; they just do it and like to be noticed by the excellent way in which they execute it. Theirs is an attitude of never complaining and to feel pride about having work, no matter how hard, as long as it’s honest work, and of not having to go to anybody for assistance to satisfy their basic needs.

So, in my home there was music, cheerfulness and a lot of work. Everything was very humble, but nothing essential was amiss. My dad planted tomatoes and hot peppers in his backyard; inside, my mom’s plants blossomed and went green in almost hallucinating splendor. That was everyday life in my childhood.

When I was in high school, I recall a study circle (more like a book club) I attended in the Reforma sector of Guadalajara. Once a week a group of students would get together with the intent of reading and understanding philosophy classics. One day, before the discussion began, a boy, Enrique, took his guitar and started to sing. The song was definitely not ranchera, the ones that were played at my house but neither was it a modern or commercial song from the radio: it was not Julio Iglesias, Emmanuel, Juan Gabriel or Raphael. I had never heard this song. I was transfixed by its lyrics. The words were a revelation to me, I was deeply moved to listen how the song spoke about my people, with such sweetness and profound understanding.

The simple guitar strumming held the words up lofty and airy, those words that I felt were mine alone: I tighten my hold/ to plunge the plow in the soil./ I’ve been here so many years/ how can I not be tired?/ Butterflies fly, crickets sing,/ my skin gets black/ and the sun shines, shines, shines./ Sweat flows in rows/ like the rows I make on the earth/ nonstop.

This was the first Víctor Jara song I heard. Since then, Victor became part of all the icons, symbols and experiences that come together to shape my North: all that guides and defines me.

Víctor was born in Lonquén, Chile (less than 50 miles outside of Santiago) in September 1932 and was assassinated a few days before turning 41 in September 1973 in his country’s capital. Before dying he was tortured for several days; the military broke his hands so he couldn’t play the guitar again and then shot him to death with 44 bullets.

Víctor was a sympathizer of President Salvador Allende and when the coup d’état happened, among all the dead was Víctor.

Víctor lived his poverty with dignity and never forgot it. As a matter of fact, he dedicated his work to celebrate and ennoble the most humble laborers, the most humble people, the people whose sun-worn hands continue to hold our world with their everyday work.

#35 -- The Thing About Mary

So today I want to write about a delicate issue. Not for me because in my head and in my heart things are clear to me. But I know the topic can be touchy for most Catholics.

I want to talk about Mary.

This is my understanding. Mary was a virgin when God selected her to give birth to Jesus. She was engaged to Joseph who accepted to marry her because in a dream God spoke to him.

The virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus. After a bit more than three decades later, came the death of her son on the cross and then we had her assumption into heaven.

In my teenage and early adult years I was baffled by her life and Joseph’s. So I read the New Testament and found reference to Jesus’ brothers, so in my mind it was settled that Mary had children after she had Jesus, the Bible said so.

Then Catholics that know more than me put me in my place and insisted that Mary died a virgin and Christ was her only son. That she never had sex, which led me to believe that, yes, Margarita, sex is bad and Mary never did anything bad.

See, I have a hard time processing this. I believe that sex through love, commitment and responsibility is not only beautiful but smiled upon by our Creator. I don’t think he expected his favorite daughter, Mary, on to whose womb he trusted his son to acquire his human form, and her saintly fiancé, Joseph, to go through life without this deeply needed and deeply satisfying aspect of our humanity.

So I ask myself this, if Mary had sex with her husband, how did this diminish her role and her position in our Christian narrative? In my mind in no way whatsoever. I imagined she led a life obeying the precepts of her faith and that she dedicated it to God, her husband and her children. How could she be more saintly if she didn’t have sex (unless sex is really something bad to be avoided like the plague)? I just don’t know. And anyway, what business is it of ours to wonder and decide she had to die a virgin? I think that conclusion really drives the idea that sex is a taboo, something to hide and hold as a measure of ethic and moral value, instead of making sure we hold it as the wonderful thing it is and learn to approach it and practice it with reverence and responsibility. I think Mary and Joseph did that and that God smiled on that relationship.

This line of thought took me think about Jesus and all the controversy about him and Magdalene. If I accept he is the Son of God and our Redeemer, how would he having a relationship with this woman make him less divine? He still fulfilled his ministry and his destiny, pleasing his Father with the way in which he lived and died. And, ultimately I don’t care what he did in his private life. He still is who he is.

His divine nature remains untarnished in my heart and soul.