Juan of Words

¡Ando Bien Contenis!

Contenis, as in happy, excited, overjoyed, in good spirits, and a host of other positive-feeling adjectives.     If you’ve ever heard a Mexican say this word and wondered what he or she was talking about, you should know this variation on the Spanish utterance for happy is just that.  Another way to express a feeling of joy!

Not anything relating to tennis shoes, unless we are excited about a new pair of sneakers and use it to express how contenis we are.  For Example:

Q:  ­¿Que onda guey?   What’s up dude?

A:  Aqui nomas.   Just here.  

Q:  ¿Como andas?   How are you?

A:  ¡Contenis!   Happy!

My favorite morning radio deejay uses this word all the time, in so many different ways, that it has just become one of my favorite Mexican Spanish slang words.  It’s very flexible, can be uttered in various intonations, can be applied to virtually any friendly exchange, and is just more fun to say than contento, feliz, agradable, satisfecho,etc.  Yet if you look it up in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española (the worldwide leading authority on the Spanish language) there is no definition for contenis.

Still contenis makes me happy!  How do you use this expression?

Census Sense!?

Much ado is being made about the 2010 Census taking place this year.  The Hispanic community in particular is being bombarded with messages that legal status should not prevent us from participating, that if we don’t participate we will lose out on federal funds and programs, that last time around thousands of us were not counted, and that as a result our communities did not receive the help they needed.

At the same time thousands of Latinos are being detained and deported straight from their job sites, employers are being pressured to eliminate undocumented workers from their work staffs, and much debate still remains about what ethnic group we can all be categorized under – even within our own community.  Some prefer the term Hispanic.  Others would rather be called Latino.  Many more favor terms like Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, Cuban-American, Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, etc., etc.

And those 10 infamous questions do not even list Hispanic, Latino or Spanish as a valid race option – perhaps because we make so many distinctions about our own demographic.

Lately, for example, I’ve been hearing a lot about how the most recent generations of Hispanics – the ones who speak mostly English and hold college degrees – are the ones that are making the biggest impact on our community.  That they are the ones that are voting, getting better jobs and leading us into new heights of success and acceptance in this country.  That may be true, but why should we denounce who we are in order to gain wider acceptance in this society?  When did speaking Spanish become a bad tag?

I like reading English newspapers and magazines just as much as anyone else.  And yes, sometimes speaking, reading and writing in English is my preference, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s important for non-English speakers to have a voice.  Education and college degrees are important!  So are having pride in our personal backgrounds and standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.

I’m not advocating for a revolt against the 2010 U.S. Census.  It is what it is, and we should take the 10 minutes out of our lives to fill it out, regardless of what our legal status or education level is in this country.  Because it may very well impact how our communities evolve over the next decade.  In doing so, however, let’s remember our differences should not be greater than our similarities.

Holding a degree and speaking the language better than others does not make us better than anyone else!

It is in our hands.

Father And Son

Last night my neighbor and his son were standing outside their home in the dark.  The light was dim, the body language was jerky, almost awkward, and the voices were deep.  Not that I could hear anything from where I was observing across the street, or wanted to, but as I sat there smoking my cigarette I couldn’t help to think about my own relationship with my father. 

There was something familiar in the way the boy humbly towered over his father.  The way the father cautiously measured his every move.  And finally how so much seemed to be understood by the simple arm embracing that took place before the son drove off.  After he was gone, my white-haired neighbor stood there, alone, staring at the road for a few minutes.  No words were spoken.  No emotions were visible.  He simply stood there, and then in one instant was out of sight. 

My father and I have never been expressive about our emotions.  We know that we love each other and that is enough.  The closest we’ve ever come to actually exchanging an I love you was when we shared a couple of beers and made small chatter about simple nothings.  There is just an unspoken understanding between fathers and sons, I think.  Where with my mother I can hug her, kiss her forehead and verbally enunciate how strong my feelings are for her.  With my father it is not necessary. 

His lessons to me have been to persevere no matter what, to take responsibility as a man, and to provide as best I can for my family. 

I wonder what the transformation from boy to man must be from the other side.  To see your son grow from something so small you can carry with one hand to a towering facial-haired adult.  To hear his voice deepen farther and farther away from the innocent sweetness it once was.  To know that his strength is now more powerful than yours, and that all the time you thought you had is now gone. 

It’s definitely not something any of us are ever fully prepared for

De Noche Todos Los Gatos Son Pardos

At Night All Cats Are Strays

We weren’t exactly strays, but we were in the dark in many ways.

That night we made the decision to leave for the city there was nothing but frantic movements.  In one instant the sharp pain of my father awaking us with jagged force, the overfilling what little we could into the few bags we had, the hurrying to leave before sunset, all blended together into one drunken blur of adrenaline and excitement.  Before I knew it we were on the road going north farther than we had ever traveled away from our sleepy little border town, at least in this direction.

My father hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell his uncle that after more than eight years of working for him and living beside him he was moving us out of town, so we had to hurry up and leave before anyone awoke that morning.  We were heading for Houston.  My father had a brother there and my parents had enough money to get us there.  People said there were lots of jobs there and something called minimum wage.  I don’t know if there was an actual plan to what we were doing, but we were told we’d be staying with my uncle for a few days until we could afford a place of our own.  I’d never met this uncle, but the excitement of knowing he was somewhere new made me want to meet him.

Our biggest excitement in the Valley was making the weekly trip to the grocery store.  Valley Mart was an hour away from our home in the woods and every Saturday like clockwork we would all pack into my dad’s car to make the trip into town.  If we were lucky, he’d hand us a few quarters to go buy some candy or anything else we could afford.  Even when we didn’t get any money, being inside the Valley Mart was thrill enough.  Yet we had always wanted to know what else was out there.

For years my mother had begged my father to move us into the city.  He always shot her down by reminding her neither of them, nor my two eldest sisters had the legal documents to make it past the immigration checkpoint on this side.  One slip of the tongue and we would be back in Mexico faster than you could say immigrant.

By this time, though, everyone had their residency papers, and try as he had, my father finally realized improving our life in the Valley was not going to be possible.  He didn’t earn enough and we were only getting older, requiring more and more.

This was long after our days of running to hide from la Migra. Before then, every time we’d see their green trucks driving along the main road – a good football field from our home – we’d run inside yelling la Migra, my mother would lock us inside the house, and we wouldn’t come out again until we were certain no immigration officers were nearby.  They did come to our house a few times, and just a few years before, their threats of involuntary deportation had been enough to send us packing back to Mexico for several weeks.  Our family, however, like countless others, could not afford to stay put.  We came back and were lucky enough to gain legal status in the United States.

Green cards were all we needed to take flight.  Now there was nothing stopping us from hitting the road towards Houston.  My father, my mother, my three sisters, my two brothers, and I all crammed inside my dad’s car for the trip.  My youngest sister was not born yet.  On the drive over my brothers and I spent the entire time asking the same questions over and over:  What is the city like? Are there any trees there? How tall are the buildings? Are we there yet? We imagined a barren landscape with nothing but concrete floors and metal skyscrapers shooting up from the ground.  Apartments and homes stacked one on top of the other, building after building.

My father didn’t do much to avoid our wild imaginings. Perhaps he thought they were charming, even a little magical.  For me they were – I didn’t sleep at all that night, afraid to miss any of the incredible new things my eyes were discovering.  That moment of driving into the big city I would not miss!

Ironically, we never actually realized where the city began because the trees and grass never disappeared as we had imagined.  Instead we rode in on a sea of concrete past the extravagantly spacious commercial complex labeled The Galleria.  My older brother yelled out look dad that huge building is a galleria (hen house).  We all gasped in amazement: wow what an enormous hen house! We could even drop off the rooster we brought in the backseat of the car with us there if we wanted to, or sell it for money. Eventually we realized it wasn’t a hen house at all – it was, and still is, one of the most prestigious shopping malls in the United States.  Later we’d get to know it well because our first apartment was actually within walking distance of The Galleria.

That night we wandered aimlessly, lost in the little we knew about the world from our vantage point as simple country folk, but amazingly on the road we were like so many others – immigrant or not.  Just another car driving down the interstate looking for a new start in a new place; hopeful about the possibilities ahead; scared, nervous, happy, sad, all at the same time.  In the darkness we were no longer invisible.

Ojos Que No Ven, Corazon Que No Siente

Eyes That Don’t See, Heart That Doesn’t Feel

How many of us have not used this justification to explain something we’ve done, or are doing, that we know is wrong?  Most commonly associated with this dicho are affairs of the heart, but what about the more mundane lies we tell each other on a day to day basis?  The so-called white lies we employ perhaps as a nicety, maybe to spare others from grief, or just maybe by force of habit.  Do they merit acceptance in our lives?

Over the years I’ve gotten progressively better at the art of fibbing, although my family would definitely contest that they can always tell when I’m lying.  And they can!  For some reason my nose flairs up, my eyes become larger than what they already are, and a ridiculous smirk takes over my face.  Strangers can’t always tell because they’ve not spent a lifetime around me, but as they get to know me better they too eventually concede that straight out lying is not my forte. 

A few months ago we were playing a pretty sinister prank on one of my new coworkers.  The idea was to make her believe that singing and dancing was part of her job description.  Mind you, she was hired as a business professional.  We had her going, she was actually swallowing our crazy prank, saying things like: why didn’t  you  tell me this before I got hired, but the more our story unraveled, the more I could not contain my laughter.  It got so bad that I had to step out of the room to not ruin the setup completely.  Poor thing, she ended up believing what we had told her for a few weeks until we finally confessed our mischievousness.  She later confirmed my theory that my inability to fib had almost ruined the lie. 

My parents weren’t always so fortunate. 

When I was a boy my abilities to blame my younger brother for everything were incredible.  My siblings knew my tales were quite tall and so the objective was always to get my parents alone.  More often than not they would believe me.  To this day I do not completely understand why, but they did.  Needless to say my brother was quite agitated with me most of the time.  Eventually they stopped.

Today, I am more careful about what I lie about.  Somewhere along the way I realized how much white lies can actually hurt.  Like words, even though they are not sticks and stones, they do hurt.  A lot of times a lot worse than a good punch.  Because the pain of a bruise will eventually go away, but the sting of an insult can last forever.  More than two decades later, all of the fat jokes I endured as a young boy still burn when I think about them.  Not to the point where I would want to go on Jerry Springer and confront anyone, but like it or not they do awaken buried emotions within me.      

That’s why for me, the pain of knowing that something was kept from me albeit for my own good, or the idea of someone having looked at me straight to the face and lied to me, is more heartbreaking than anything else – especially when that person is someone that I care about.  My preference is to hear the truth no matter what it is or how painful it might be because at least then all the cards are on the table.  Yet, I’ll admit, I too have done my share of protecting others by telling them only so much and lying to keep my personal interests at bay. 

Each time, my dishonesty has caught up with me and my relationships have been tested – at least resulting in a hostile argument. 

We don’t like to be lied to.  It is insulting, unattractive, and just plain hard to deal with.  But who among us can claim never again to bend the truth in any way?

Does the heart not feel what it cannot see?  Perhaps not, but eventually when the truth comes out who knows whether the pain will be less or more harsh, and if our relationships will be strong enough to overcome the feelings created as a result.  Affairs of the heart gone awry are awful, yes.  But isn’t it equally devastating to find out that we are always being lied to about the simplest things?  You can’t build a relationship around lies.  If you do, you are only lying to yourself.  And that is the worst kind of fibbing we can do.         

Ojos que no ven, corazon que no siente – think about it next time. 

La Letra Con Sangre Entra

Words With Blood Enter  

The people in my English as a Second Language (ESL) class always showed up early.  No matter how late I made it into class they were already there.  Their books were propped open; they were practicing their lessons on their own; and as soon as I walked in they greeted me with the warmest of welcomes.  In unison, all of their varying accents would shower me with good evening Mr. Alanis. 

To which I’d reply good evening class.

On days when I had waited too long to leave the office and showed up more than 15 minutes late their smiling faces made me feel especially guilty.  Here were my students, all of who had either just come off their more than eight hour shifts or were just getting ready to start one after class, sitting so eagerly and ready to learn and I was barely strolling in because I hadn’t planned accordingly.  On top of that, I knew their work required actual hands on muscle and sweat.  They had to be tired and ready to go home after cleaning so many restrooms and patient areas, but here they were waiting.

Immediately we’d commence into the lesson because that was the only way I could think of to make up for my tardiness. 

My students were adults.  They were all employees of the Texas Medical Center.  Some were from Africa.  The rest were from Latin America, mostly Mexico.  Some were in their late forties and fifties.  Others were very young, probably in their early twenties or thirties.  They all wore uniforms of two different tones.  The darker blue tops most of them wore signified they belonged to the entry level maintenance crew.  The lighter blue shirts, which only two or three wore, meant they were one step above entry level.  They were supervisors to the janitors and housekeepers.

In class, however, these distinctions did not exist.  They all worked as one trading phrases like we’re all in this together, if you don’t try you’re not going to learn, take your time you will get it.  My African students joked in Spanish with my Latin American pupils, and vice versa.  Everything was a new experience for them.  And what I learned later was that it was for me as well.

Their determination impressed me.  Women older than my mother, with grandchildren my age, learned more and more each time we met.  The sheepishly quiet Mexican kid who clearly lacked confidence more than knowledge slowly grew more secure.  Wanda, the lone Puerto Rican and only high school graduate in the group, became the leader of the pack.  And my Africans, oh how they amazed me – we did not have the benefit of sharing a native language, and yet they thrived exceptionally well.

Baharia and Kasahun would always interpret my sign language to the other African students in the class.  When we couldn’t understand each other at all, they would take my markers and draw pictures on the whiteboard.  Eventually somebody in the classroom would figure it out and we would move forward. 

When time came for our sessions to finally end they graced me with a dinner fit for a king.  Each student prepared a specialty dish from their native country and brought more than enough for everyone to eat.  We sat around the tables we had spent the past 14 weeks learning on and shared our final moments together.  Before the 8:00 p.m. class came in for their last session, each of my students embraced me and humbly thanked me for my time and efforts. 

I should have been the one thanking them. 

Driving home that evening, and many times since then, my thoughts were drawn around each one of those students in my ESL class.  They were never paid for attending my class.  Instead, many of them had to cut back on their own hours to make it.  Sometimes they were called out in the middle of class to go back to work.  We weren’t really teaching them complete English lessons.  The intention of the class was to teach them just enough to be able to communicate on a basic level with the people they had to interact with on a daily basis.  They earned less in a day than what I got paid for the two hours of teaching, and despite all of this, they were resolved to learn whatever they could.             

That they learned a great deal I do not doubt, but the lesson they taught me was very valuable as well.  That when you really want something, you go for it!  You don’t test the waters and quit if is too hard.  You make a decision, take steps – no matter how small – towards your goal, and you never give up.  You fight for it against all odds, and deal with the hardships as they come. Even if you are in your late fifties and you’re just starting out, nothing is impossible if you’re willing to do the work – especially when education and self-empowerment are your ultimate goals.   

La letra con sangre entra.