I remember the big wooden bins we would fill when we picked peaches during the hot and steamy California summers.
The bins, as I remember them, were large wooden crates, maybe (a big maybe) measuring 4 feet across and three feet tall. If you had to move a bin, you would roll it on its sides turning one side at a time and usually placing it in the middle of four trees. We carried a large sack that hung from our shoulders to the front of our chest and which we would fill with the fruit to then empty in the bin. We also carried a three-foot ladder that could go from 14 to 16 rungs (my papi always named his ladders, he’d give them a woman’s name).
Every year we worked for a Japanese farmer. Mr. Kay Shimizu was his name. It was a family deal for them. The parents of El Kay, were always checking the bin for fruit that was either too small, too green or rotten. They carried a yellow ring that looked like a plastic bracelet. If the peach passed through that ring it was not acceptable and had to be thrown out. We were always on the lookout for them. Since they and us were immigrants and though they were our employers, they were really friendly to us, treating us almost like family. I imagine it was our humility and our dedication and willingness to work hard and fast.
Anyway, as I grew and got taller, the senior Kay brought me a small ladder that only had twelve rungs that I could maneuver on my own, and told me I could use it to help my parents. Up to that point, I was in charge of what we called the barba (the beard), I would pick all the lower branches and fill my sack with the peaches that I could reach from the ground. My little sister carried a bucket and would pick the ripe peaches that fell to the ground. When my father saw that no one was around he would give hard shakes to the tall branches and Irma would scramble to pick them up and empty her little bucket into the bin, feeling so useful and proud. She was extremely quick and fearless. So small and eager to please her papi. At times, she would encourage papi with “Otra, otra” (another one).
I was the slow one, but I made them laugh and I sang a lot. Sometimes my papi would tell me to sing songs with a fast rhythm because it seemed that I picked peaches based on the rhythm of the songs I sang. He hoped that my hands would move faster if my songs were more upbeat.
Remember when you’re close to becoming a teenager and you think things like death, illness and weakness do not concern you at all because you’re invincible? Well, one day my daddy told me to go ahead and find a new row of trees and to start on the barba since he and mami were finishing up the last trees of our current row.
So off I go with my little ladder, and it coincided that so did my paternal grandfather Luis who worked the same orchards we did, since he lived with us.
He had white silver hair and looked so old, that I immediately felt a competitive drive moving me. I rolled my bin and set it in the middle of my first four trees and told myself that I surely could be faster than that old man I called Abuelito Luis. And I decided to prove it and make my parents very proud of me.
First things first. I started with the barba. Gone was the urge to sing. All I wanted was to be faster than the old man working next to my set of trees. My grandpa would whistle and wanted to chat me up, but I was too busy trying to show everyone, including myself, that of course I was faster than an old man. Could you not see the speed with which I stretched to get all the fruit I could from the ground? And my trees were good, too, branches heavy with the golden fruits. When I was done with the barba of my four trees, I got my ladder and started positioning it strategically where I could fill my sack without needing to move it more than once.
I was so confident, my triumph too obvious. When my parents and sister caught up with me, they were dutifully impressed. I had filled that bin halfway, all by myself. Trying to be nonchalant as hell, I scooted over to my grandpa to check out his bin. I was so, so crestfallen when I saw that he was about three quarters done with his bin. I couldn’t explain how he had done it. In my mind it was impossible to move as fast as I had moved; to fill that sack quicker than I had. It was a hard blow to my sense of invincibility. And that is how I started the long trek of moving through the remnants of my childhood’s egocentrism.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
#18 -- My Other Family
In loving memory of Paula Sánchez Vda. de Muñoz and her children
I’ve been remembering my house in Mexico, where once my sister Irma and I lived with four kind souls that supported my parents’ efforts of working in the United States while we went to school in Guadalajara.
Some time before I was to start sixth grade, the family that rented our house while we were in California, later would become family to us. The renters were three siblings, gray-haired and single, who lived with their mother Paula, an elderly woman who everybody called Ita, a contraction of Abuelita (Grandmother). For some years, Lupita, the eldest of the three siblings, would be responsible for my sister and me. Lupita, along with her siblings Esther and David and Ita, were our Mexico family during the school year.
Lupita was a solid woman, tall and white, with silvery short hair who wore glasses. Without making any distinction, she would call anyone younger than her Prieta or Prieto (Dark Skinned One). It was her endearment. She was the one that enrolled us in the parochial school in our neighborhood, and through which my sister and I first became familiar with the educational system in Mexico.
The family was Catholic, devoutly so and Cristera (sympathetic to a political religious movement of Mexico from the 1920s). It was Lupita who instilled in me our faith and the Catholic practices in a disciplined way. In one of those old wooden wardrobes of which you don’t see much anymore she kept a generous collection of magazines called Vidas Ejemplares (Exemplary Lives) about saints. Already a voracious reader, I remember I would sit on the floor by the wardrobe and devour each story, promising myself that I would be like those saints and virgins that gave up the world to dedicate their life to God. My favorite saint was an Italian 12-year-old girl, Maria Goretti, who was murdered by the man who tried to rape her. So saintly was this Maria that she protected her virtue to the very end, and if I remember well, she then forgave her attacker before dying.
Lupita taught us manners and corrected our peasant speech. She was very patient and now I think that through us she lived a dull, borrowed motherhood. Day in, day out, Lupita would dress all in black. She introduced us to the traditional Mexican comida corrida (a three course meal) of soup, entrée and dessert instead of just one dish with meat and rice and beans. The three course meal consisted of a soup made of spaghetti-like pasta in a tasty tomato sauce (sopita de fideos), the main dish and then dessert. Lupita also instilled in us the duty of going to confession on a regular basis, of the communion every Sunday at mass and also helped me when I was chosen to read one of the two readings before the priest read the Gospel at mass. And with Lupita I first was exposed to the incomparable music of poetry.
On Sundays, on our way to church, I became my Ita’s cane who always wore a long dark skirt that billowed around her ankles, a black sweater that clung taut and tight around her back because of her pronounced hump. My Ita’s face was made of parchment paper, creased and pale. Time had erased any definition her eyes ever had. Her child-like eyes and toothless mouth were a magnificent expression of sweetness and tenderness. She would use my arm to support herself and with the small and tentative slow steps of her eighty plus years we would walk the four blocks to the Holy Spirit Church.
When I would have one of my She’s Still a Little Girl tantrums, it was my Ita the only one who could calm me down with her kind and sibilant words about anger and sin. I also remember that after my bath I would sit in front of her on the floor and she would untangle my long hair with her old stiff fingers and then, while my hair was still damp, she’d grab it in handfuls and scrunch it, as she would tell me, to reinforce whatever natural curl it had.
By the time I was well in my teenage years, the family moved to their own house, the one Esther bought and we lost contact with them, something that still saddens me. The two families just stopped talking as if we’d had some sort of disagreement. I’ve always felt like an ingrate. They’ve passed a long time ago, but I still beg their spirits to forgive my coldness and abandonment.
In one of my photo albums, in the center of a white page I have a solitary black and white small square picture: it’s my Ita sitting in a chair in the center of my home’s courtyard; her face is a study in age, light and peace; her bony hands rest in her lap and in them she holds the lost innocence of these years of my childhood.
(My translation into English of one of my articles for my column “Cotidianas,” published in 2006 in Fort Worth’s La Estrella newspaper.)
I’ve been remembering my house in Mexico, where once my sister Irma and I lived with four kind souls that supported my parents’ efforts of working in the United States while we went to school in Guadalajara.
Some time before I was to start sixth grade, the family that rented our house while we were in California, later would become family to us. The renters were three siblings, gray-haired and single, who lived with their mother Paula, an elderly woman who everybody called Ita, a contraction of Abuelita (Grandmother). For some years, Lupita, the eldest of the three siblings, would be responsible for my sister and me. Lupita, along with her siblings Esther and David and Ita, were our Mexico family during the school year.
Lupita was a solid woman, tall and white, with silvery short hair who wore glasses. Without making any distinction, she would call anyone younger than her Prieta or Prieto (Dark Skinned One). It was her endearment. She was the one that enrolled us in the parochial school in our neighborhood, and through which my sister and I first became familiar with the educational system in Mexico.
The family was Catholic, devoutly so and Cristera (sympathetic to a political religious movement of Mexico from the 1920s). It was Lupita who instilled in me our faith and the Catholic practices in a disciplined way. In one of those old wooden wardrobes of which you don’t see much anymore she kept a generous collection of magazines called Vidas Ejemplares (Exemplary Lives) about saints. Already a voracious reader, I remember I would sit on the floor by the wardrobe and devour each story, promising myself that I would be like those saints and virgins that gave up the world to dedicate their life to God. My favorite saint was an Italian 12-year-old girl, Maria Goretti, who was murdered by the man who tried to rape her. So saintly was this Maria that she protected her virtue to the very end, and if I remember well, she then forgave her attacker before dying.
Lupita taught us manners and corrected our peasant speech. She was very patient and now I think that through us she lived a dull, borrowed motherhood. Day in, day out, Lupita would dress all in black. She introduced us to the traditional Mexican comida corrida (a three course meal) of soup, entrée and dessert instead of just one dish with meat and rice and beans. The three course meal consisted of a soup made of spaghetti-like pasta in a tasty tomato sauce (sopita de fideos), the main dish and then dessert. Lupita also instilled in us the duty of going to confession on a regular basis, of the communion every Sunday at mass and also helped me when I was chosen to read one of the two readings before the priest read the Gospel at mass. And with Lupita I first was exposed to the incomparable music of poetry.
On Sundays, on our way to church, I became my Ita’s cane who always wore a long dark skirt that billowed around her ankles, a black sweater that clung taut and tight around her back because of her pronounced hump. My Ita’s face was made of parchment paper, creased and pale. Time had erased any definition her eyes ever had. Her child-like eyes and toothless mouth were a magnificent expression of sweetness and tenderness. She would use my arm to support herself and with the small and tentative slow steps of her eighty plus years we would walk the four blocks to the Holy Spirit Church.
When I would have one of my She’s Still a Little Girl tantrums, it was my Ita the only one who could calm me down with her kind and sibilant words about anger and sin. I also remember that after my bath I would sit in front of her on the floor and she would untangle my long hair with her old stiff fingers and then, while my hair was still damp, she’d grab it in handfuls and scrunch it, as she would tell me, to reinforce whatever natural curl it had.
By the time I was well in my teenage years, the family moved to their own house, the one Esther bought and we lost contact with them, something that still saddens me. The two families just stopped talking as if we’d had some sort of disagreement. I’ve always felt like an ingrate. They’ve passed a long time ago, but I still beg their spirits to forgive my coldness and abandonment.
In one of my photo albums, in the center of a white page I have a solitary black and white small square picture: it’s my Ita sitting in a chair in the center of my home’s courtyard; her face is a study in age, light and peace; her bony hands rest in her lap and in them she holds the lost innocence of these years of my childhood.
(My translation into English of one of my articles for my column “Cotidianas,” published in 2006 in Fort Worth’s La Estrella newspaper.)
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
#17 -- My Books: One Hundred Words for Love
A friend sent me the link to an interview with her about her new book thinking I would enjoy it, since the author writes about her experience with her husband, prolific writer Paul West as he suffers and struggles to recover from a severe stroke.
I saw a couple of videos on YouTube with Diane Ackerman and was so intrigued that I bought the electronic format of One Hundred Words for Love for my NookColor.
Yes, the book deals with pain and illness, with loss and the aloneness we all must sooner or later realize in our lives. First we hear about Paul’s tragedy through the sensitivity of the novelist, poet and naturalist who loves him, and to whom he has been married since 1970 according to Wikipedia. And then your soul is caressed by Ackerman's poetic prose.
Ackerman knows about science and nature, and she speaks of them with knowledge and respect, knowing that the word “science” is yet but another word for nature.
I love the information Ackerman shares with me, her reader, about animals and plants. She speaks of these with due reverence for the natural world we forget we belong to or just simply take for granted. As a stroke survivor myself, I really loved the rich information she shares about the brain and its inrincate workings. It nourishes the hope I still keep of recovering from my own stroke.
If you should read this book, be ready to be amazed by the beauty of the English language and Ackermen's total mastery. I felt lucky to have in my Nook the feature of being able to look up the words I didn’t know though many of them were obscure enough that I frequently got a disappointing “Definition not found”.
I’m not done reading A Hundred Words for Love, but I’m confident that I will be able to continue summarizing my impression of this book with one solitary word: Exquisite!
Lastly, let me copy one of my highlighted texts and leave you with that, though I read it to myself in the first person and in the present: "Return was impossible, and there was one direction open; and so we kept our compass pointed forwerd..."
I saw a couple of videos on YouTube with Diane Ackerman and was so intrigued that I bought the electronic format of One Hundred Words for Love for my NookColor.
Yes, the book deals with pain and illness, with loss and the aloneness we all must sooner or later realize in our lives. First we hear about Paul’s tragedy through the sensitivity of the novelist, poet and naturalist who loves him, and to whom he has been married since 1970 according to Wikipedia. And then your soul is caressed by Ackerman's poetic prose.
Ackerman knows about science and nature, and she speaks of them with knowledge and respect, knowing that the word “science” is yet but another word for nature.
I love the information Ackerman shares with me, her reader, about animals and plants. She speaks of these with due reverence for the natural world we forget we belong to or just simply take for granted. As a stroke survivor myself, I really loved the rich information she shares about the brain and its inrincate workings. It nourishes the hope I still keep of recovering from my own stroke.
If you should read this book, be ready to be amazed by the beauty of the English language and Ackermen's total mastery. I felt lucky to have in my Nook the feature of being able to look up the words I didn’t know though many of them were obscure enough that I frequently got a disappointing “Definition not found”.
I’m not done reading A Hundred Words for Love, but I’m confident that I will be able to continue summarizing my impression of this book with one solitary word: Exquisite!
Lastly, let me copy one of my highlighted texts and leave you with that, though I read it to myself in the first person and in the present: "Return was impossible, and there was one direction open; and so we kept our compass pointed forwerd..."
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
#16 -- Oh, My First Smoke
Both my parents were smokers. My dad smoked until he died; my 78-year-old mother still smokes and we both say that this is what will end up killing her. She’s well aware of the dangers of smoking but her addiction is so deeply ingrained that there is absolutely no way she can quit. I’ve seen her in tears, literally, broken and moody, when she’s out of cigarettes. It hurts my heart to see her so desperate for someone to drive her to the convenience store for her next fix. She’s tried many, many times to stop to no avail. She has lung problems and whatnot, all associated with her chronic smoking.
When I was growing up, I was grossed out by my parents smoking, especially my mother’s. I cannot explain why. But all the paraphernalia around the act of smoking caused me physical repulsion, be it the ashtray, the matches, the box that contained the cigarettes. I couldn’t contemplate the idea of touching any of these items, much less the actual cigarettes. Such was my repulsion, that when I was forced to bring to my mother any of these things, I could feel the reflex of gagging, alive and strong as I grabbed, say, the box of matches.
One day (I was about 20) some classmates and I, we decided to play hooky and go to a pool hall in downtown Guadalajara. Most of them were boys and smokers. I didn’t know one bit about playing pool, except that my papi really liked to play himself. At one point, I see myself standing with my cue in hand, lost in observing and feeling, liking, this dark smoky strange world: the music under the chatter and the laughter, the taste of ice-cold beer. I see my friends taking long drags at their cigarette. And to my naïve-girl eyes they looked so sophisticated, so worldly, so knowing, so cool, so hip, that the next thing I know I’m asking them to teach me how to smoke. Of course, they were happy to induct me into the hall of new smokers. I remember they argued about the brand to start me on. Finally someone pulled out a “soft” brand. Viceroy, they were called. And I tried my hardest to learn. I kept at it, until it was time to go home.
My bus stop was a block away from the pool hall. As I’m standing there in the smoggy afternoon of my hometown I began feeling sick to my stomach, convinced I was going to throw up within minutes if I didn’t get some fresh air fast. So sick was I that I had to take a cab home, sweating cold on the ride home, with the window down letting the air come in and cool me down.
The next day, I bought myself my first pack of Marlboros, the red ones, which was the brand most commonly smoked by my friends and I became a smoker. Not a good smoker. I never really felt the smoke settling deep into my lungs, but I hoped I borrowed some of that “hipness” I had witnessed in the pool hall.
I smoked for about two decades. I quit cold turkey the day I found I was pregnant on April 22nd or 23rd of 1998. It was something I--the strange abnormal woman I thought I was--could do for the person being formed in my uterus to help her be as healthy as possible; it was what I minimally could do to give her my best internal environment. Unlike my mother, it wasn’t hard for me to quit. My body was receptive and happy to let go.
Valentina was born in November. By New Year’s Eve 1998 we had a friend visiting from Guadalajara. After dinner and a couple of glasses of red wine, I asked him for a cigarette, wanting to recover the “cool look” of the black and white movie smoker. I took a puff and was totally surprised by the god-awful taste of the cigarette. I couldn’t believe the horrible taste it had and that I had endured it for almost two decades. I just gave the cigarette back after that first drag and haven’t touched one since.
Happily, my husband, once a heavy smoker himself, also quit cold turkey two or three years after I did, and our home has been smoke-free since then. When my mother stays with us, she knows she has to smoke outside. So, I’m glad we have a covered patio she can use for her vice.
I can’t deny that sometimes, especially in gloomy, gray, cloudy, cold, wet days, when I’m drinking my coffee, something in me stirs and then I crave for a cigarette. That’s the image that stays: a woman, pensive and quiet, be it reading or writing, with a cup of coffee in hand, looking out a window into a rainy cityscape, feeling the longing for a lover perhaps, the nostalgia of a youthful indiscretion, sighing, taking a sip of her java and a drag at her cigarette while her memories come alive and the rain continues outside…
Stop, Margarita, stop, right now, that the convenience store, you know, is conveniently nearby…
When I was growing up, I was grossed out by my parents smoking, especially my mother’s. I cannot explain why. But all the paraphernalia around the act of smoking caused me physical repulsion, be it the ashtray, the matches, the box that contained the cigarettes. I couldn’t contemplate the idea of touching any of these items, much less the actual cigarettes. Such was my repulsion, that when I was forced to bring to my mother any of these things, I could feel the reflex of gagging, alive and strong as I grabbed, say, the box of matches.
One day (I was about 20) some classmates and I, we decided to play hooky and go to a pool hall in downtown Guadalajara. Most of them were boys and smokers. I didn’t know one bit about playing pool, except that my papi really liked to play himself. At one point, I see myself standing with my cue in hand, lost in observing and feeling, liking, this dark smoky strange world: the music under the chatter and the laughter, the taste of ice-cold beer. I see my friends taking long drags at their cigarette. And to my naïve-girl eyes they looked so sophisticated, so worldly, so knowing, so cool, so hip, that the next thing I know I’m asking them to teach me how to smoke. Of course, they were happy to induct me into the hall of new smokers. I remember they argued about the brand to start me on. Finally someone pulled out a “soft” brand. Viceroy, they were called. And I tried my hardest to learn. I kept at it, until it was time to go home.
My bus stop was a block away from the pool hall. As I’m standing there in the smoggy afternoon of my hometown I began feeling sick to my stomach, convinced I was going to throw up within minutes if I didn’t get some fresh air fast. So sick was I that I had to take a cab home, sweating cold on the ride home, with the window down letting the air come in and cool me down.
The next day, I bought myself my first pack of Marlboros, the red ones, which was the brand most commonly smoked by my friends and I became a smoker. Not a good smoker. I never really felt the smoke settling deep into my lungs, but I hoped I borrowed some of that “hipness” I had witnessed in the pool hall.
I smoked for about two decades. I quit cold turkey the day I found I was pregnant on April 22nd or 23rd of 1998. It was something I--the strange abnormal woman I thought I was--could do for the person being formed in my uterus to help her be as healthy as possible; it was what I minimally could do to give her my best internal environment. Unlike my mother, it wasn’t hard for me to quit. My body was receptive and happy to let go.
Valentina was born in November. By New Year’s Eve 1998 we had a friend visiting from Guadalajara. After dinner and a couple of glasses of red wine, I asked him for a cigarette, wanting to recover the “cool look” of the black and white movie smoker. I took a puff and was totally surprised by the god-awful taste of the cigarette. I couldn’t believe the horrible taste it had and that I had endured it for almost two decades. I just gave the cigarette back after that first drag and haven’t touched one since.
Happily, my husband, once a heavy smoker himself, also quit cold turkey two or three years after I did, and our home has been smoke-free since then. When my mother stays with us, she knows she has to smoke outside. So, I’m glad we have a covered patio she can use for her vice.
I can’t deny that sometimes, especially in gloomy, gray, cloudy, cold, wet days, when I’m drinking my coffee, something in me stirs and then I crave for a cigarette. That’s the image that stays: a woman, pensive and quiet, be it reading or writing, with a cup of coffee in hand, looking out a window into a rainy cityscape, feeling the longing for a lover perhaps, the nostalgia of a youthful indiscretion, sighing, taking a sip of her java and a drag at her cigarette while her memories come alive and the rain continues outside…
Stop, Margarita, stop, right now, that the convenience store, you know, is conveniently nearby…
Friday, April 15, 2011
#15 -- People, Bring Me the Mariachi (Hold the Tequila)!
Today I would like to touch on a Mexican icon. As you know, the mariachi band is a major symbol of our culture and our country, and the mariachi plays an important and defining role in the colorful and mostly joyful folkloric music to which we dance and that mostly all foreigners associate with the mariachi band.
In Spanish a mariachi is not a band, nor do we call them a group, an ensemble or do we have any other noun to describe it, though maybe in reality it is all those things. A mariachi is a mariachi. It’s commonly been thought that the word mariachi is a variation of the French mariage, meaning wedding or marriage, and hails from when Maximilian, a Frenchman, was Emperor of Mexico. Accordingly, the mariachi was named by the French after the “par-tay” with which it was most commonly associated. I read that this story has recently been discredited, because apparently the word mariachi was already used when the French came to Mexico, though it was related more to the wood of the platform where musicians and dancers performed than the actual musicians. But nobody really knows.
Anyhoo, I mention the mariachi because I’m convinced we carry it in our genes. Many younger generations may show disregard for the “ranchera” music essentially sung with a mariachi (forget the happy sones and huapangos performed by professional dancers).
The word “ranchera” refers us to the “rancho,” but not as our ranches in the United States, in terms of a ranch being a large chunk of land being the private property of one individual or family. A rancho in Mexico refers to a small village or hamlet mostly made up of farmers and peasants. Men wearing sombreros and women wearing shawls or rebozos; all from a very low socioeconomic class. For instance, my parents and the rest of my ancestors, were born and raised in the rancho of Abadiano in the state of Michoacan. Nowadays Abadiano is more a small town than a “rancho.” But my first images of Abadiano do not include running water or electricity. Rocks were used to make fences; there were no paved roads or trails. You get the picture.
So, in their origin a ranchera song was typically a song created by the inhabitants of the ranchos. When I pay close attention to these songs I can imagine the men (more than women) making up verses, adding and enriching the song as they plow their fields under a harsh sun, or while strumming an old guitar as the sun sets.
The bottom line I guess is that the ranchera music in its essence comes from the land and the people that cultivate it, not from schooled people or city folks, not from professional composers or singers, though later it will be wildly commercialized when it has its heyday especially in the forties and fifties. A good old-time ranchera song is sun-toasted brown and it doesn’t know any fancy words. And many of them are sung with grammatical mistakes, reason why many express their disdain for this music because they consider themselves too high above this “lowly” artistic form.
But in a good ranchera song you find poetry and light. I will try to show you with one example. This song is called “La mujer ladina.” The word ladina has a negative connotation, referring to someone of mixed race (like a mestizo) that really has not fully assimilated to the Spanish colonization, or someone that is sly, cunning or malicious. In this song the woman has toyed with the guy’s affection. The original song has some mispronounced words (in quotes in the Spanish lyrics). In spite of them, I think you can sense how deeply this man felt for his “ladina” girl and the long-term effect of her nearness in his life. I find the words very evocative. A Google search will give you several versions. I believe the onne by Lucha Reyes (another icon) might have been the first one. Please excuse my literal translation into English, but I hope it gives you an idea of our ranchera songs. In any respect, I didn’t even get to name the Mexican icon I had hoped to write about. But the mariachi and the rancheras are inevitable if I’m to talk about Him. Hopefully I’ll do that soon.
“The Ladina Woman”
I lost my peace of mind
because of one cunning woman
she nailed a thorn deep in me,
thorn that I cannot pull out
Since she had no morals
And she was an evil woman
She took my love with her
And never did she return
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
They say that time erases
All of love’s regrets
But to me it seems
That it only gets worse
I have no joy, I know no peace
and sometimes I even cry
and my soul pains me so
That I can’t stand it anymore
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
Spanish original by Juan José Espinoza
Por una mujer ladina
perdí la tranquilidad,
ella me clavó una espina
que no me puedo arrancar.
Como no tenía "concencia"
y era una mala mujer...
se “juyó” con mi querencia
para nunca jamás volver.
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue solo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
Mas dicen que el tiempo borra
los pesares del amor,
pero a mí se me “afigura”
con que con el tiempo estoy “pior.”
No tengo dicha ni calma
y a veces me hace llorar
y me duele tanto el alma,
que no me puedo ni “resollar.”
[refrain]
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue todo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
In Spanish a mariachi is not a band, nor do we call them a group, an ensemble or do we have any other noun to describe it, though maybe in reality it is all those things. A mariachi is a mariachi. It’s commonly been thought that the word mariachi is a variation of the French mariage, meaning wedding or marriage, and hails from when Maximilian, a Frenchman, was Emperor of Mexico. Accordingly, the mariachi was named by the French after the “par-tay” with which it was most commonly associated. I read that this story has recently been discredited, because apparently the word mariachi was already used when the French came to Mexico, though it was related more to the wood of the platform where musicians and dancers performed than the actual musicians. But nobody really knows.
Anyhoo, I mention the mariachi because I’m convinced we carry it in our genes. Many younger generations may show disregard for the “ranchera” music essentially sung with a mariachi (forget the happy sones and huapangos performed by professional dancers).
The word “ranchera” refers us to the “rancho,” but not as our ranches in the United States, in terms of a ranch being a large chunk of land being the private property of one individual or family. A rancho in Mexico refers to a small village or hamlet mostly made up of farmers and peasants. Men wearing sombreros and women wearing shawls or rebozos; all from a very low socioeconomic class. For instance, my parents and the rest of my ancestors, were born and raised in the rancho of Abadiano in the state of Michoacan. Nowadays Abadiano is more a small town than a “rancho.” But my first images of Abadiano do not include running water or electricity. Rocks were used to make fences; there were no paved roads or trails. You get the picture.
So, in their origin a ranchera song was typically a song created by the inhabitants of the ranchos. When I pay close attention to these songs I can imagine the men (more than women) making up verses, adding and enriching the song as they plow their fields under a harsh sun, or while strumming an old guitar as the sun sets.
The bottom line I guess is that the ranchera music in its essence comes from the land and the people that cultivate it, not from schooled people or city folks, not from professional composers or singers, though later it will be wildly commercialized when it has its heyday especially in the forties and fifties. A good old-time ranchera song is sun-toasted brown and it doesn’t know any fancy words. And many of them are sung with grammatical mistakes, reason why many express their disdain for this music because they consider themselves too high above this “lowly” artistic form.
But in a good ranchera song you find poetry and light. I will try to show you with one example. This song is called “La mujer ladina.” The word ladina has a negative connotation, referring to someone of mixed race (like a mestizo) that really has not fully assimilated to the Spanish colonization, or someone that is sly, cunning or malicious. In this song the woman has toyed with the guy’s affection. The original song has some mispronounced words (in quotes in the Spanish lyrics). In spite of them, I think you can sense how deeply this man felt for his “ladina” girl and the long-term effect of her nearness in his life. I find the words very evocative. A Google search will give you several versions. I believe the onne by Lucha Reyes (another icon) might have been the first one. Please excuse my literal translation into English, but I hope it gives you an idea of our ranchera songs. In any respect, I didn’t even get to name the Mexican icon I had hoped to write about. But the mariachi and the rancheras are inevitable if I’m to talk about Him. Hopefully I’ll do that soon.
“The Ladina Woman”
I lost my peace of mind
because of one cunning woman
she nailed a thorn deep in me,
thorn that I cannot pull out
Since she had no morals
And she was an evil woman
She took my love with her
And never did she return
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
They say that time erases
All of love’s regrets
But to me it seems
That it only gets worse
I have no joy, I know no peace
and sometimes I even cry
and my soul pains me so
That I can’t stand it anymore
[refrain]
Down by the bank of the river
Under the shade of a pepper tree
She gave me her love
An early morning blue
And later in the canoe
We went a-drifting
Ay, the water how nicely it rocked us
When I started kissing her again.
Spanish original by Juan José Espinoza
Por una mujer ladina
perdí la tranquilidad,
ella me clavó una espina
que no me puedo arrancar.
Como no tenía "concencia"
y era una mala mujer...
se “juyó” con mi querencia
para nunca jamás volver.
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue solo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
Mas dicen que el tiempo borra
los pesares del amor,
pero a mí se me “afigura”
con que con el tiempo estoy “pior.”
No tengo dicha ni calma
y a veces me hace llorar
y me duele tanto el alma,
que no me puedo ni “resollar.”
[refrain]
A la orillita del río,
a la sombra de un pirul...
su querer fue todo mío
una mañanita azul.
Y después en la piragua
nos fuimos a navegar...
Ay, qué lindo se movía el agua
cuando yo la volví a besar.
Friday, April 8, 2011
#13 and #14 -- Religion Talk
I want to talk about religion today. I’ve mentioned before that I was raised Catholic. And I was devoutly Catholic. So much so that at twelve, I clearly remember promising God that at fifteen I would go into a convent to become a nun and serve Him. Fortunately, a couple of years after my fifteenth birthday, knowing well that I no longer wanted to be a nun, I went to confession and was relieved of my guilt by a kind priest who told me God wouldn’t hold against me a promise I made as a child.
Then, in high school I became a “devout” atheist. I had the time, since my three years of high school in Mexico, I somehow turned into six long and difficult years. I joke saying I have a “doctorate” in high school. But I will leave this for when I’m ready to talk about neurosis.
I remember being hungry for knowledge, a true bookworm. Nothing made me happier than having to spend all day in my school’s library. The book-covered high colonial walls of our library held an attraction that I couldn’t resist. What a true adventure to get lost leafing the dictionary, looking up a word and then moving from one to another word, forgetting about what took me to that humongous and magical book.
So in Philosophy class when a teacher explained materialism to us, I was caught. It made so much sense to me to answer the question, “What came first, matter or ideas?”. How logical to answer matter-of-factly, ”Why, matter of course.” In my mind it was sheer logic. The idea of God came later as we tried to explain our fears away when lightning struck and floods came upon us and we had no technology or science to explain them. God was the perfect answer.
So I declared myself an atheist and confronted the consequences, especially with my mother. I thought her and all like her ignorant, uneducated and trapped in the circumstances of the conditions of their lives. I wanted to have the words to explain the clarity of the books I was reading.
When I got married the first time, my boyfriend and I shared the same beliefs. Still, to make his mother and mine happy he proposed we go ahead and marry by the Church. I refused because it went against what I knew to be the truth and because I couldn't accept to be hypocritical. So we were married by a government bureaucrat. And, of course, like everybody else, we were so much in love that we married for life.
We were in our twenties, so we were broke. We were both in college and had no money. I had a roommate and the night before the Big Day she decided to bake us a “wedding cake” and I stayed up with her a big chunk of the night helping her make it and decorate it with raisins because she didn’t have chocolate chips. I loved Martha’s cake! To me it was a symbolical and faithful representation of the bride and groom’s honesty and sincerity and willingness to not have a shred of phoniness and fakeness. We were only able to gather enough scraps of gold to have one wedding band made: mine, a thin band of 10K gold. Honeymoon? Yeah, a happy three-hour bus ride to the city of Morelia and then to beautiful Patzcuaro.
A few years went by, then a sad divorce, a second relationship and at the ripe age of 38 I became a mother. We were not trying to get pregnant, but it happened. I could not believe it. My body was a woman’s body. I had to start believing it. I always thought myself too weird to have a normal woman’s life. And there I was, in spite of myself, “with child.” I could not explain this to myself. Only one explanation was possible in my mind. Definitive and absolute. I started journaling the day we found out we were pregnant. I was certain that this baby, however it came out, was a precious gift.
At that age, given my weight and other health concerns, I was considered a high risk pregnancy. At doctors’ offices I told anyone who would listen, “Go ahead and do all your tests. And if you tell me there is something terribly wrong with this baby, I will not allow an abortion. You don’t turn gifts away.”
Then when I held perfect little Valentina in my arms, I knew that God loves me, he has to. Wh else would he fill me with the humility and the awe of having a human being formed in my body, a body for which most of the time I held no love or appreciation? So I started having these internal conversations with myself about my atheism. An then I would often be surprised with moments of grace that I could not explain but through my knowledge of God.
Still, I could not reconcile with my Catholicism. That was a hard one. There were just too many questions I couldn’t answer through my old religion. But I began accepting to myself and to others my process of recovering God.
But my heart needed some form of spiritual ritual. At first I thought being ever grateful, ever prayer-full, and aspiring for humility would be enough. I thought talking intimately to God would be enough. But at some point I craved for some formality in my relationship with God.
So here I am, about three decades later, going to mass and even praying the rosary. I had to relearn the words to these Catholic prayers, but here I am, doing it. My husband Raul and Valentina have joined me with an open heart and most Sundays we go to church as a family. Some evenings I stay with Mother Angelica on TV to pray the rosary, responding in Spanish to her English Hail Marys.
When I feel my old doubts and questions simmering to the surface, I squelch them. I have no time for them. The things that still might not make sense to my logic mind I quickly try to disregard and choose to hold fast to my renewing faith. I talk to him and Mary every day, every day requesting the miracle of healing my broken body, but ultimately accepting the high grace of being alive.
When depression comes every now and then, and I am discouraged by even the privilege of life, I remember to look for my daughter’s face and smile. And then it comes, strong and purposeful, the remembrance of why I’m the mother of this cherished child…God must love me.
Then, in high school I became a “devout” atheist. I had the time, since my three years of high school in Mexico, I somehow turned into six long and difficult years. I joke saying I have a “doctorate” in high school. But I will leave this for when I’m ready to talk about neurosis.
I remember being hungry for knowledge, a true bookworm. Nothing made me happier than having to spend all day in my school’s library. The book-covered high colonial walls of our library held an attraction that I couldn’t resist. What a true adventure to get lost leafing the dictionary, looking up a word and then moving from one to another word, forgetting about what took me to that humongous and magical book.
So in Philosophy class when a teacher explained materialism to us, I was caught. It made so much sense to me to answer the question, “What came first, matter or ideas?”. How logical to answer matter-of-factly, ”Why, matter of course.” In my mind it was sheer logic. The idea of God came later as we tried to explain our fears away when lightning struck and floods came upon us and we had no technology or science to explain them. God was the perfect answer.
So I declared myself an atheist and confronted the consequences, especially with my mother. I thought her and all like her ignorant, uneducated and trapped in the circumstances of the conditions of their lives. I wanted to have the words to explain the clarity of the books I was reading.
When I got married the first time, my boyfriend and I shared the same beliefs. Still, to make his mother and mine happy he proposed we go ahead and marry by the Church. I refused because it went against what I knew to be the truth and because I couldn't accept to be hypocritical. So we were married by a government bureaucrat. And, of course, like everybody else, we were so much in love that we married for life.
We were in our twenties, so we were broke. We were both in college and had no money. I had a roommate and the night before the Big Day she decided to bake us a “wedding cake” and I stayed up with her a big chunk of the night helping her make it and decorate it with raisins because she didn’t have chocolate chips. I loved Martha’s cake! To me it was a symbolical and faithful representation of the bride and groom’s honesty and sincerity and willingness to not have a shred of phoniness and fakeness. We were only able to gather enough scraps of gold to have one wedding band made: mine, a thin band of 10K gold. Honeymoon? Yeah, a happy three-hour bus ride to the city of Morelia and then to beautiful Patzcuaro.
A few years went by, then a sad divorce, a second relationship and at the ripe age of 38 I became a mother. We were not trying to get pregnant, but it happened. I could not believe it. My body was a woman’s body. I had to start believing it. I always thought myself too weird to have a normal woman’s life. And there I was, in spite of myself, “with child.” I could not explain this to myself. Only one explanation was possible in my mind. Definitive and absolute. I started journaling the day we found out we were pregnant. I was certain that this baby, however it came out, was a precious gift.
At that age, given my weight and other health concerns, I was considered a high risk pregnancy. At doctors’ offices I told anyone who would listen, “Go ahead and do all your tests. And if you tell me there is something terribly wrong with this baby, I will not allow an abortion. You don’t turn gifts away.”
Then when I held perfect little Valentina in my arms, I knew that God loves me, he has to. Wh else would he fill me with the humility and the awe of having a human being formed in my body, a body for which most of the time I held no love or appreciation? So I started having these internal conversations with myself about my atheism. An then I would often be surprised with moments of grace that I could not explain but through my knowledge of God.
Still, I could not reconcile with my Catholicism. That was a hard one. There were just too many questions I couldn’t answer through my old religion. But I began accepting to myself and to others my process of recovering God.
But my heart needed some form of spiritual ritual. At first I thought being ever grateful, ever prayer-full, and aspiring for humility would be enough. I thought talking intimately to God would be enough. But at some point I craved for some formality in my relationship with God.
So here I am, about three decades later, going to mass and even praying the rosary. I had to relearn the words to these Catholic prayers, but here I am, doing it. My husband Raul and Valentina have joined me with an open heart and most Sundays we go to church as a family. Some evenings I stay with Mother Angelica on TV to pray the rosary, responding in Spanish to her English Hail Marys.
When I feel my old doubts and questions simmering to the surface, I squelch them. I have no time for them. The things that still might not make sense to my logic mind I quickly try to disregard and choose to hold fast to my renewing faith. I talk to him and Mary every day, every day requesting the miracle of healing my broken body, but ultimately accepting the high grace of being alive.
When depression comes every now and then, and I am discouraged by even the privilege of life, I remember to look for my daughter’s face and smile. And then it comes, strong and purposeful, the remembrance of why I’m the mother of this cherished child…God must love me.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
#12--Of Angels and Dreams
Here ithey are...Challenging and imposing: The Blank Page, my sense of responsibility and having no idea of what to write about... Let me tell you about a woman I met this week. I went down to the cafeteria at work looking for frozen yogurt. Mercedes, the cashier, kindly as usual, helped me fill my little cup because my non-functioning hand can't be bothered with daily stuff as this. While Mercedes and I were trying to figure out how I could handle carrying cane and dessert with one hand all by myself, a lady in line offered to help me to my desk . Mercedes (Meche) has practice and experience with me, since frequently enough she and Sylvia, the other cashier, get my coffee and morning pastry ready in such a way that I can manage walking with my breakfast wrapped in bags, in a way that I can walk with my cane and carry my goodies back to my desk without spilling my drink. After my stroke, I'm no stranger to human kindness from the most unusual sources. So once again, I remembered the importance of humility and the value in accepting help, and I allowed this person whom I had never met to bring my yogurt to my desk. She told me she lost her husband Carroll to Lou Ghering's some years ago and that she tries to make it a point to help people with limitations such as myself when she gets a chance. I told her that for that moment I saw her as an angel and that I was grateful. When she asked if she could help me with anything else, I just said feeling the tears coming into my eyes, to please pray for me and my healing, as I tend to do now when I have conversations like these with virtual strangers. A couple of days later she walked with me again and gave me a beautiful rosary with wood beads that I received with due humility. What an offering! What a privilege to someone like me, for so many years an atheist, to receive the grace of this wonderful gift. Thank you, Liza Nelson. I treasure it with reverence, and see it as a conspiratorial wink from God. My dream? It was wonderful. Sunday morning I woke after dreaming that my left hand was finally again under my command. I was in uncontrollable tears. I called my mother to tell her that I would start the day working with both hands a-flutter and happy over my keyboard. Coincidence? I choose to believe not...
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