#23 - Yeah, It’s Not Easy to Be a Mother!

It’s hard to be the mother of a 14 year old girl. The demands, the expectations. Most of the time we do fine. But when we fight, finding out that she and I share certain traits is not the most useful or comforting of discoveries. Like the stubbornness and the pride; the immediate silence into which we each take refuge.

I do not mind being her chauffeur, the role to which I’ve been reduced these days, that and the expectation to spit out money as she requires it and the provider of as many yeses as she needs to go about to the mall or the movies or wherever with her  friends.

I don’t mind the tedious waiting for her. I have my smartphone, my music and my e-reader to keep me entertained in my car while she takes her tap class or her hip hop or whatever interest she’s pursuing.

I want her to have fun and to enjoy the relationships she’s creating with other girls. I want her to have that sense of belonging and being with and like them, no matter how fleeting all these relationships will end up being.

Her insistence in being and doing like others is a strange phase, I think. I do not know when she will leave that behind in order to assert who she truly is. To acknowledge that the more unique you are, the better, quirks and all.

But the two things that bother me the most are these: to catch her in a lie, no matter how innocent, turns me inside out. I can’t tolerate that she thinks she has to hide the truth from me.

I also find that I can’t handle her intellectual laziness, and her lack of self-awareness about the privileged position she is in. The skill to read in three languages is not something we all have. When she asks me when she will stop taking her French lessons, I respond, “When I see you reading French books with no other purpose than enjoyment!” Her silence is her response. Lately, she even has stopped reading any of her English-language books.

The other day I was about to ground her by taking her phone away for a week. After many tears and end of the world drama, we finally agreed she would read a book in Spanish over the summer. She was so happy to have her lifeline back in her grubby hand! Now the task at hand for her is pretty daunting. I will admit to that. I had hoped we could do it together in the course of a year because it’s a fat book. She has committed herself to reading on her own and in Spanish, before the new school starts, the book to which I introduced myself to world literature: Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.

I wish upon her a mind overflowing with unending questions and curiosity. Yeah, maybe it’s too early for her to wonder about the universe and our social past and to know the importance of questioning everything. But I can’t stand the idea that she will have no intellectual hunger, and that she won’t always have her nose in a book.

#22 - Unbreakable

I have not always been a good daughter to my mother. Now I’m as best as I can be. I’m probably not as affectionate as she’d like. I shy away from too much physical contact with her. But I can’t help that. I try very hard to be respectful of the biblical precept of honoring her. I have a bedroom just for her in my house. As much as I can I am generous to her. I probably could provide a bit more, but it would be a hardship on our household.

All in all she is doing fine in spite of the eight decades she’s walked this earth. She’s feisty and always keeps her spirits up. She can still walk on her own. She still comes and goes between Mexico, Texas and California.

What else? She’s a chronic smoker. Her diet consists basically of corn tortillas, Monterrey Jack cheese, wieners, Habanero peppers and Cokes.

Mind you, she’s diabetic, hypertensive and has glaucoma. But healthy eating has never been a concern of people from her generation and her peasant background.

When I give in and drive her to buy her cigarettes, I make it a point to ask her, “You know that this is what’s going to kill you, right?” She admits to it. “Well, as long as you know what you’re doing…”

She still scolds me as if I were a little girl and not this middle aged lady that I am. And it doesn’t help that I remind her of my age (as if she didn’t know). She will still tell me I spend too much, I never save enough, my tastes are too expensive, I buy too much stuff and I should curtail my preference for chocolate.

My mother is now hospitalized and I’ve been an extreme cry-baby, with bouts of prayers and tears that worry not only my husband, but me too.

I overanalyze everything, trying to find the possible reasons as to why I’m so emotional. Of course I worry about her leg wound and her pneumonia. But I know that these bursts of tearfulness have to do more with my story than with hers.

It might also have to do with the fact that since my stroke in 2008, I hadn’t been in a hospital and this just stirred all the painful experiences I had to go through. It might just be that.

But I then think of the shared history between my mother and I. I was born five years into her marriage and a miscarriage later. She was overprotective and probably overdid the “loving me to death” thing (I describe her love as a “sticky” love).

She now says she had no idea what she was doing; she was young and uneducated, with no one to guide her as she walked into the tangled grounds of motherhood. And I was not easy to handle. I’m told I cried all night and slept all day. As I came into toddlehood, I went into my Tantrums Phase no holds barred. A fellow merchant told her to spank me every time I through myself to the floor kicking and screaming. She obliged.

It seems I was also a witness to another of her four miscarriages. She was on her own with two little girls and no idea what was happening to her. It seems I asked about the blood and she didn’t know how to respond to my curiosity.

Then my sister and I had to go through our “Abandonment Issue.” Of course, we were not abandoned by our parents. We were left with relatives for some months while we waited for the green cards to come to the States and reunite with them. But what kid can process that information? All we knew is that Mami had left us, abandoned us.

And this is only the beginning of a complex relationship between two women, mother and daughter, both strong, tough and proud (me probably too much). A scarlet thread binds us irreparably. This wiry unbreakable material is made up of her “sticky love,” my deep need of her, her blood, my wails, the hardship she suffered and my joy of finally being able to acknowledge that I love her too.

#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!

#19 - Big Questions and a Small Comfort

I am an avid NPR listener. When I moved a lot, the first thing I looked for on the radio was for an all-jazz and classical music radio stations. So when I moved to Dallas I immediately found 88.1 and 101.1.

And then at work a woman whose intelligence, wit and humor I admired, Joyce, mentioned 90.1. Since then, I’ve made of NPR my constant driving companion. I cannot say I know about politics or politicians, but I’m guessing NPR tends to be more of a liberal then a conservative radio station. So be it, I thoroughly enjoy their reporting and the human slant they give to their stories and their tendency to be inclusive of all peoples.

So, lately I hear a lot about the imminent “sequestering” and the immigration reform. The other day I heard that this sequestering deal will impact “everything,” even things like the Head Start program whose vision is “to be the untiring voice that will not be quiet until every vulnerable child is served with the Head Start model of support for the whole child, the family and the community.”
This is something that for always will baffle me about this great country and its generous people. I’d like to know how is it that the most powerful country on the planet still has these basic questions and indecisions about how to care and provide for our children, who in my mind should be our top priority? And let’s add our elders to that mix, can we?
I know economic problems and issues, inflation and crises will always come and go. Debates will always tend to divide us instead of uniting us. But in my silly mind, our children and our seniors should be a topic we should have solved a long time ago. At least that is my thinking (perhaps of no value).
I guess I’m thinking as a mother and as a daughter. Since I became a mother, everything I do is oriented towards providing for my daughter to the best of my abilities. Most of the monies I make are thought in relationship to her needs and wants.
My mother was a widow shortly after turning 49 and never remarried. From my father’s Social Security fund she began receiving less than five hundred dollars a month as soon as she qualified to claim those benefits. She is now 80 and that is all she gets. I think she is amazing in her mastery to make do with that.
As her daughter I feel an obligation to help her. But it’s an unmet obligation, given that I do not have any monies assigned to her from my monthly income. I feel I should, but my own commitments make it hard to do so.
I believe being born in a Latin American country has to do with this feeling of commitment toward her. In my culture you are taught that somehow you are indebted to the two people that gave life to you. I seem to take that seriously and since I can’t really fulfill that debt, it’s a source of guilt.
I find comfort in having a bedroom that is my mother’s, with lamps, a night stand, a dresser and a mirror, a nice walk-in closet, and that there’s no doubt whatsoever that if anyone stays the night there, they’re sleeping in Marga’s bedroom instead of a fully furnished guest bedroom. And that atlong as she is in my house, she’s in her house and that I will cover her needs in the best manner I can, no questions asked.
This is a source of a small comfort for me.
But as a nation, where do we find comfort when so much is at stake by this new word, sequester, being thrown around in the political realm?
So that is why I wonder how this powerful country still rethinks on how to care for its children and seniors. Shouldn’t at some point all that power serve minimally for this purpose?

#18 - My Second Mother

In fifth grade in California, my English and home teacher was Mrs. Debbie Moore. This grade was when I became an unrepentant reader and a devoted music lover, and Mrs. Moore played an important role in my life. So in that regard, I am indebted to her. Thank you, Mrs. Moore.

My first books that I bought for me with my father’s money through a book catalog provided by Mrs. Moore were Harriet the Spy and Sara Crewe. That is all it took for me to be forever smitten by the written word.

Music. Mrs. Moore decided to play some songs on her record player giving us the lyrics to those songs and asking us to underline the components of sentences, like verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. Two songs stand high and clear in my memory from that class. The first one is The Sounds of Silence with Simon and Garfunkel. Oh, it was beautiful, poetic, poignant and I loved it. The other one was You’re so Vain with Carly Simon. I just fell in love with Carly, the song was witty, sassy and plain cool.

Pretty soon I was investing one hundred percent of my allowances in books and music. That is how I discovered jazz all on my own, specifically Louis Armstrong, as well as classical music via a two-record collection that had a bunch of pieces by different composers. That collection helped me know how beautiful this music is, no matter that I do not listen to it that often.

Curiously, I would buy some records recommended to me by my mother. Like very old Mexican folk songs by the Dueto Amanecer or the Hermanas Padilla that I still treasure and some were my daughter’s lullabies as a baby.

From "Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits” long play, I claimed one song as my personal anthem in English, I am a Rock. I felt that everything about that song defined who I became as a sullen and lonely teenager. “I have my books and my poetry to protect me. I am shielded in my armor…I am a rock, I am an island, and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries.” There, all said.

Carly was another thing. I would religiously buy as I could any of her albums. I told myself that I was practicing my English and perfecting my pronunciation, improving my immigrant accent (yes, by then I was a young adult).

My mother was never really inclined to identify with any phase I would be living through in my teenage years, but I felt Carly understood everything there was to understand about me and the depths of my feelings, my conflicts and my needs. I like to think and say that I was nursed by Carly, that she somehow became a second mom to me, my true confidante.

I still get excited when I hear anything about Carly, I know she is a grandmother. I know the names of her two kids, Sally and Ben. I hope they’re a lot like their mother. I imagine they had a great and privileged childhood.

Sometimes I imagine writing a letter to Carly where I tell her how much her music means to me; how much she and it helped me when I was my most neurotic. That sometimes I imagine the child I was, and that as “a bunch of flowers” “I set her moving to her sweetest song.” Ay, Carly, that odd little girl sure loves you!

#17- Then and Now: La Gurmia

For La Flaca

Today I think about my sister María Irma, younger than me by almost a year. Along with my mother, Irma is one of the most hard-working women I know. Old-age is beginning to impose itself on my mother, but in her most mature and productive years, she was like Irma is today--totally dedicated to the cleanliness and comfort of her home.

My mother still calls her La Niña, being that she is her youngest child. My dad would call her La Gurmia or La Garrapata (The Tick) because in the orchards she would practically attach herself to him with her bucket picking peaches from the ground and asking him to rattle the branches so she could fill her bucket with the fallen fruits, something she would do, fast and furious to everyone’s admiration.

To me she is La Flaca, not because she is really skinny, but –let me explain- because any regular size woman next to me can be considered skinny.

Anyway…

La Flaca has a magical and child-like soul, a soul she keeps alive and luminous, and with whose imagination my sister transforms reality into a much nicer and gentler place, a resource that I have never been able to call mine. I surely have shown myself to be way more neurotic than her.

I think I have mentioned it before: As little girls my sister liked to play what in Spanish we call “comadritas” (“pretend”), game that apparently was beneath my mutism and emotional indolence. To compensate the lack of a playmate, from her kitchen my mom would become her Niña’s “comadre.” My sister would make ample use of the pecan tree in the front yard. As she would climb it, in her imagination and magical thinking, the first branches would become the rooms of her house, the kitchen, the living room and the bedrooms would be those higher branches up there (I still scratch my head).

When la Gurmia (maybe eight years old) would tire of living and interacting with her imaginary family, she would go visit her “comadre.” Sometimes she would go into the kitchen, seemingly crying and saying: “Ay, comadre, comadre, your compadre has left me and gone to Hawaii with his secretary. Pour me a glass of wine?” Surprised, my mother would respond with a barely-veiled seriousness and the anecdote would later be the reason for much laughter between her and our dad.

Another more remote image comes to mind: Irma and I are smaller still and we are playing with our uncle Ezequiel in Guadalajara. I think our uncle is trying to take a nap. My sister decides she is a nurse and the man in bed is very ill. She’s come to give him his shot. Without anybody realizing it, she sticks a real needle to the bottom of the poor “sick” man, who quickly straightened up and carried out the scene with us, asking me, his wife, to pay the nurse.

Such is my sister. My sister, now in her fifties too, lives in California with her sick husband. Two of her three kids are now married, one of whom has given her two beautiful grandkids. And my sister continues to be such a hard-working woman who never stops. She has two income-producing activities. The main one, as I understand is in a retirement and rehabilitation community. Irma is a supervisor there and responsible of making sure that the residents have a dignified, humane and kind experience in the center.

I say that my sister keeps her soul child-like and magical because last time she was here, Marga (our mother) told me that one day a lady resident, Molly in her 90s, was very upset and about to throw a tantrum because she was not allowed to smoke in the community’s dining room. When my sister became aware of the situation, she invited the old lady to go out with her to the patio. As they sat together, my sister pulled out an imaginary “carton of cigarettes”  and started “smoking,” asking the lady to go ahead and take one, telling her that nothing beats a smoke after dinner. With her face lit up, the old lady smiled and took one partaking of the game and expressing her gratitude to my sister.

With a woman like my sister near, who wouldn’t?

#16 - My Parents

For Valentina Perla Luisa

 

To speak about them I need to distance myself from all things learned and read; from my feminism and my pseudoleftism; from all things known and apprehended, even my uncertain feminine condition and to see myself as a child once more.

To speak about Marga and my papi, I need to get up close to certain hazy images which the infinite sands of time have been eating away.

One

Let’s begin with Marga’s embrace, suffocated by the heat, red from the heat, sweating in the heat; crying and hugging my sister and I, seven and six, after long months of separation, she in “Gringoland,” us left behind in Guadalajara while we waited for the “green card” that legitimized our residency in this country.

Two

Now an auditory memory: my papi’s laughter in the orchards and fields, the never ending fields; his happy laughter in spite of his clothes drenched in his sweat.

The songs my papi would whistle as if he never tired, atop skinny and long ladders all named by him with a woman’s name (I remember a Martha); ladders that would take him high into the tops of peach, apple, pear, cherry, olive trees and from which he hurriedly would climb down with sacks filled with the fruits from this noble planet.

Three

I see my parents squatting, mounted on buckets, crawling or with hoe in hand among rows of tomato, watermelon, beets, strawberry; or under almond or pecan trees; both of them picking, always picking; Marga, tenacious and indefatigable, determined to give a little more; my papi happy, always, happy; laughing, always laughing.

Four

My parents’ house was a house of open doors and windows. Long was the list of relatives who paraded through my parents home. Many work seasons my parents’ home was a boarding house for peasants from Michoacan who would send their meager earnings back home, earnings that in Mexico would became a fortune for wives and children, whom everyday would fold their sadness as a handkerchief and who would let pride and hope fly high as kites, for the absent husband and father, far away in el Norte, but that in some small way alleviated the chronic poverty that afflicts my people even today.

Five

Marga would always get up earlier than anybody because, of course, all those adult mouths had to be fed. The still-young woman would invest herself making the flour tortillas for the tacos that would be eaten later for breakfast and lunch in the field and which we all ate voraciously. Then Marga would gather with all these cabrones to demonstrate that a woman with strong ovaries tends to work harder than anybody who claims to be a total macho. That’s just how she rolls.

Six

My papi always seemed very proud of his woman. And to reciprocate he would never say no to a pan or to the mop, and how he loved to spend his evenings in the back yard tending his tomato and pepper plants.

Seven

The image that absolutely never fades is my papi speaking to us in formal Spanish when he scolded us; my papi instilling in me a blind passion for the education that he never knew.

#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.