#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.