Juan of Words

Un Buen Padre Vale Cien Maestros

A Good Father Is Worth One Hundred Teachers  

Art by Anton Refregier

There was something about the way my father’s clothes looked after he came home from work that commanded respect.  His shirts dark and sweaty from burning sun, splattered with large, small and extra large specs of hardened black tar, his pants the same, only layered in dirt from kneeling on roofs all day, his shoes, usually boots, massive and heavy.  The smell when he walked in our living room was musky and masculine, what a real man’s should be, that’s what I’d think at 10, safe and protected when he was around, we all felt.  Quiteme las botas, he’d say.  One of us would straddle his boot like a horse and tug as hard as we could, first at the heel, then at the tip, finally, after a great deal of force, both hands at the shaft, one firm last pull and both boot and kid would fall on the floor.

He was never one for many words.  When my mother would start es que tu nunca me haces caso, hay este hombre…, no te dije que dejaras los zapatos afuera…, he’d say nothing, just sit there, quietly, trying not to aggravate the situation.

Sometimes things would escalate and his rage would become untamable.  Those were the times we were afraid of him, when we’d wish we could do something to calm him down, but we were all just kids and much too little to do anything.  A true macho in every sense of the Mexican meaning: heavy handed, roaring voice, scared not of a single soul, ready to loosen his belt and yank it out from around his waist at any moment.  We knew if my mother’s chanclazos burned, his manotazos and cintarazos would leave marks, for days.  My mother knew this too, so a lot of times, unless we were extremely bad, dad would never find out about what we did.  That’s not to say he wasn’t tender and kind. He was.  And still is.  Some Saturdays he’d just hand us a five dollar bill and tell us to spend it on whatever we wanted, even when we knew he didn’t have the money.  When we were alone, he’d tell me about his childhood, the scorching heat against his back everyday, the loneliness of losing his mother at the age of five, and why we were prohibited from following in his footsteps.

He never missed any of our birthdays.  He wouldn’t dare let us suffer.  If mom sent us to work with him, he’d leave us behind at the warehouse, away from the sun, where we wouldn’t have to endure what he did.

We just never told her about it.

Dad’s skin was toasted a deep brown.  From years of quebrandose el lomo para sacarlos a ustedes adelante, mom would say (from years of breaking his back to make sure you all have everything you need).  In the pictures of decades past he was guero, no wrinkles, dark black hair, lots of it, slim, clean shaven, happy, youthful.  Not tired.  A different person almost from the father we knew, but then his laughter would fill the room and there, behind the leathered skin and graying hair, the same young man staring at the camera, smiling through time, too young and clueless to know what was waiting for him just a few years ahead.  He wasn’t so scary after all.  He was just dad.

Más Sabe El Diablo Por Viejo Que Por Diablo

The Devil Knows More From Old Age Than From Being The Devil

The devil: El diablo

One day I’d be somebody. One day I’d make enough money to stop wanting what everyone else had.  One day my day would come, and it’d be shiny and new, expensive, cherry red, big, with lots of rooms, a pool in the backyard, flashy, classy, the works, like those people in the telenovelas, just like the two and three story mansions in River Oaks we’d go trick or treating at every Halloween.  Racing to beat each other to the next house, grabbing handfuls of entire candy bars of chocolate, throwing them in our plastic bags of grocery stores like Fiesta and Krogers, pushing each other, fighting, laughing, and finally racing back to Pera and her van to hold our bags up in the air, measuring to see who had gotten the most candies.  On the drive back my brothers and I would stuff ourselves with as many sweets as we could before my father would make us sit on the dining room table, sifting out even the most partially-opened candies.

You see, every year the noticias would report that kids were dying, or at risk of dying, from eating sweets layered or injected with poison.  For my parents that meant anyone of us could drop to the floor and become unconscious, maybe even die, at any given moment: Ay Dios mio! Socorro! Auxilio! Alguien ayudenos por favor!  They’d tell us that we might not be able to go trick or treating this year, but we’d beg and plead until they conceded, under the strict condition that we not place any of the candy in our mouths until we made it back and let them make sure it was okay to eat.  We weren’t kids anymore – we were in middle school now, my youngest brother about to finish his elementary education – and we had never heard of any kids dying from eating Halloween candy, so what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, we thought.  That became our excuse for everything: hurry up, we’re almost there; let me have one of those; I’ll trade you for this one; hurry up before we get home! 

Money was the only way to make it to the other side of poor.  That’s what I’d always seen, and it did appear the grass was much greener on the other side, at least from my perspective as a guerco tonto too big-mouthed and closed-minded for my own good. 

When we’d go to The Galleria, people with money, even those from Mexico who barely spoke a lick of English, blonde and blue eyed, not brown and dark, even a few dark ones who were wealthy, were treated with respect, waited on, hand and foot, greeted at the entrance of boutiques, showered with compliments, spoken to with dignity.  No dirty looks, no being chased around stores, no feeling less than equal.  My clothes by comparison were ratty and old.  Whitewashed jeans, Payless shoes, scruffy hair, shirts and pants too tight for my growing body, both up and sideways.  After three years in our new lives, we still had nothing.  Our apartment number was different, but the furniture and everything else inside it, including our family, was still the same, the only thing that had changed was our view of our world.  The innocent kid who’d lie in bed promising my mother a shiny new dress and house to go along with it was gone, in his place a shoplifting son who everyday became more a criminal.  I’d tired of seeing them struggle, depending on faith to see us through, angry at the world, I’d decided the things I wanted would be mine.  And they were!  Only I hadn’t realized what the cost of them would be, or how just being me would get in the way of taking stuff.   

One day I just couldn’t do it anymore.  My day never came, it still hasn’t, but we did make it out of Bali Hai Apartments.  By then, I’d seen enough, lived enough, struggled enough, to know whatever I had, or did not have, was not enough to change who I am.

Madre No Hay Mas Que Una

A Mother, There Is Only One

The days my mom would make fried chicken were extra special.  For me, they meant racing in and out of the kitchen, predatorily circling, slamming the barely-there screen door, over and over, it creaking, slowly, even when I carefully tried to close it, until my mother would give me the look, which we all knew meant cut it out, ya basta!  It wasn’t so much the eyes that were scary, as much as the brows, the way one would furl up while the other slouched down, almost touching the flour-stained red cheek on my mother’s light complexion.  No words were necessary when we got that stare.

Our kitchen was long and simple, a tiny stove on one side, a small fridge on the other side, white cabinets, just big enough to fit our food, at the entrance a screen door that might as well have been a revolving door as much as my two brothers and I jumped through it, onto the cement block right below, just before the sandy, sometimes snake-infested, ground.  At the other end a handmade, wooden picnic table which we used as a dining table surrounded by tree stumps for chairs.  Behind it a single window with a solid maroon, pink and blue polka-dotted curtain; this is where we celebrated birthdays every couple of months, or in some cases every couple of days, with homemade, marmalade-sandwiched, double-layered cakes covered in egg-beaten, color-dyed frosting .  My brother was born in March.  My sister in June – ten days before me.  My other sister in July.  My youngest brother in August – nineteen days before my father.  And my mother in December.   We were all under 13.  My two youngest sisters had not been born yet in these, our early days in the Rio Grande Valley.

Raw chicken dipped in egg whites, rolled over loose flour spread on a bare counter, tossed in a scorching hot, grease-jumping frying pan full of melted lard.  Hay, every once in a while my mother would yell when the grease popped onto her arm while making her McCook-famous fried chicken.  She knew this was my favorite meal so every time I’d threaten to run away and go hide in the bushes outside she’d start frying and sooner or later I’d come running back to the jumbo bottle of ketchup already waiting for me on the table.  When we weren’t mad I’d make sure to stay close at any cost to make sure I got to the fried chicken before anyone else did.

Grease and ketchup running down my arms as I hungrily raced to stuff as many crunchy drumsticks into my mouth as possible, then I’d take my tongue and lick the flavor off my arms and fingers until I couldn’t eat anymore.  Cochino!  Gross!  Nasty!  Cochino, marrano del monte!, my brothers and sister s would yell at me for doing this, but my mother would say nothing, she’d just warmly smile, her eyes sparkling at me in approval.  After I was done, everyone else would sit down to eat.  This was her way of spoiling me and I knew it.  Even with the look I knew the fried chicken was for me.

En Boca Cerrada No Entran Moscas

A Closed Mouth Gathers No Flies

Possibly not, but sometimes the temptation of participating in some juicy gossip is much stronger than the will to avoid those friendly individuals with such loose, almost venomous, tongues.  Especially when the subject matter at hand deals with a particular person of whom we are not very fond.  But who is more enamored with the art of gossiping, really: men or women?

According to my wife, us men are much more addicted to the sport of unmeasured words, sharing many more indiscretions with each other than our supposed more fragile female partners.  In fact, in her opinion, we tend to gossip a hell of a lot more, we just don’t do it right!  A woman knows how to share only what she wants to, and measures her words very carefully before saying them.  A man, on the other hand, just gets brave after a couple of beers…and later laments what he let slip out.  The truth is, and guys let me apologize now for letting this cat out of the bag, as much as I hate to admit it, the more I think about it, I realize she is actually right.  Personally, I’ve uttered so many of my own truths during inebriated stupors that I don’t even know anymore how many of my secrets my buddies actually do know.  As an adult, embarrassing as it is to admit, I’ve even cried in front of grown men, something I would have never, ever done without the encouragement of a few beers.

But perhaps the reason we males feel so liberated to vent with one another, especially when alcohol is involved, is because we as men are not as judgmental with each other as our female counterparts.  Rarely do we take into consideration our own feelings, much less the emotions of the other person we are talking to, before words just start coming out of our mouths.  And yes, I see all of you ladies nodding your heads up and down in agreement.  We don’t complain about how much those words hurt our feelings, or obligate our buddies to defend their actions TIME and TIME again.  Neither do we use guilt to deliver our final blow.  If we get mad, we punch each other around until we get exhausted, then we continue as if though nothing ever happened. 

Yes, we do like to gossip, possibly more than our wives and girlfriends, and maybe it’s not right, but we all know damn well that gossiping is one of life’s greatest and guiltiest pleasures.  A good chisme makes us laugh, and sometimes even impacts the decisions we make.  In my humble opinion, if we don’t open our mouths, we don’t have a voice.  And what is the point of having a mouth that gathers no flies, if we can’t use it to express ourselves? 

Unos Nacen Con Estrella, Otros Nacen Estrellados

Some Are Born In A Silver Crib, Others On A Silver Platter

About us they never knew a single thing.  Not the way we woke up every single morning to the scent of huevo con chorizo frying in the kitchen, tortillas freshly made, stacked under a carefully embroidered napkin of white cloth with pink and blue flowers at every corner, both flour and corn.  Not the way an occasional allowance of no more than one dollar made us so happy and grateful.  Not how good it felt to come home with the clothes we’d picked out for the next school year several months earlier, at the end of every summer when we’d pick them up from layaway, racing back and forth, changing from one outfit to the next, until all three had been paraded around our living room.  Or for that matter what the experience of actually shopping for anything new meant to us.  To them we were just another family like thousands of others: poor, uneducated, uncultured, with parents that spoke only Spanish, and worst of all stuck in our pitiful existence. 

We were the Mexicans people talked about so much in those days, before Reagan and his amnesty for immigrants.  The ones with a carload of children popping out of every door every stop we made in our multi-colored vehicle on its last wing; the ones stealing jobs and opportunities from Americans; the very ones that had to be detained and deported to prove a point that this country was not a place to violate laws.

What they failed to realize was that by sending us back they brought us closer together, and made us stronger.  In the arroyos of El Sauz we learned of civility, humility and dignity from the other children who treated us like royalty just because we had come from the other side.  El Norte that everyone talked about so much, where we were dirt poor by all accounts, but rich in comparison to the people living in our parents’ hometown.  With every trip to the nearby pond to gather water for our baths in small galvanized pails carried over our shoulders with a wooden stick, we became more aware of our parents’ sacrifices.  From our grandmother we learned how strong and beautiful the word Mexican actually is – not a term to be used derogatorily or in which any shame should be placed.  She was our matriarch who prayed to the Catholic virgin everyday, who enticed us with chocolate-infused coffee every morning, who constantly reminded us that we were her grandchildren and needed to speak Spanish to communicate with her.          

Upon our return we were no longer the same brood of speechless immigrants too afraid to make any waves for fear of being deported.  We had been there and back as a family, and now we had finally found our voice.  You don’t have a heart, all of you immigration people are heartless, my mother exclaimed at the judge after being told she would be the only one in our family not obtaining a green card, but as long as my kids and their father get legalized I’m happy.  It was a gutsy move, but one that proved quite worth it.  A few weeks later we found out that everyone in our family soliciting green cards would be getting them, including my mother.  Almost as if in that instant, that immigration judge had seen past our illegal status, to the pleading heart of a desperate mother wanting nothing more than to remain with her children.  

Yes, we were poor – uneducated and uncultured, as well.  Our parents did speak mostly Spanish, very little English.  And maybe our existence was pretty pitiful to outsiders, but we were on our way and now we knew that we were worth much more than what we had been told.  We were definitely not stuck, just at a crossroad. 

This post is dedicated to the new wave undocumented immigrants facing hatred and discrimination because of whom they have been told they are in this country.  May you find your true voice and strength, and fear not what the result might be of standing up for what is right.

Un Clavo Saca Otro Clavo

One Nail Take Out Another Nail

There were many things unfamiliar to us in the big city.  For eight years we’d known nothing but the sandy roads where my brothers and I spent countless hours making up imaginary games; long stretches of shrub and snake-infested woods we’d walk through to collect drinkable water from the local well; friendships no further than our own home; the one bedroom whitewashed house with dark brown trimming we all shared; and the harmonious choir-practicing my sisters did in front of the mirror with their hairbrushes.  Our lives in McCook were quite simple.

Everyone in our ranch went to the same schools, as well as the same church, grocery stores, retail centers, and park in the town of Edinburg, about an hour away.  For our Christmas shows at McCook Elementary local farm workers, mostly Mexicans, including my parents, and farm owners, mostly white, shared the same cafetorium where their kids normally ate lunch, to watch the simple plays put together by teachers like Ms. Keller and Ms. Valdez.  One year I was a care bear and my only line was to say C is for caring.  After much stuttering and panicked sweating I managed to get the words out of my mouth and nervously knelt on the stage where my teachers had told me to.  For these special occasions my mother would bring sugar cookies as her contribution to the pot luck feastings, but rarely touched any of the offerings set out by any of her neighbors.  We were all much too timid to eat amongst our better off neighbors and bosses, after all these were the ladies that paid my mother $15 a day to clean their homes.

I’d never seen a person of color outside of white and brown in the Valley, not even on television since we mostly watched Little House on the Prairie, The Visitors and cartoons like Thunder Cats and He-Man in those days, as well as my parents’ telenovelas like Rosa Salvaje and Quinceañera.  Songs by Madonna and Whitney Houston are what my teenage sisters would sing around the house, although the rest of us hadn’t a clue who these people were – we just liked listening to them and thought some of the lyrics were catchy.  In a lot of ways they were our connection to the outside world since they were then attending junior high in Edinburg with teens from other little ranches and the town itself.  We looked up to them.  We envied them.  We thought they were so cool, and we waited for the day when we’d have the chance to travel into town everyday, even if it was only for school.

Sometimes semi-trucks full of cantaloupes and watermelons would show up on their way to drop off their cargo to the farmers’ cows and we’ve waive them down until they stopped and let us pick out some of the fruit for ourselves.  My brother would climb the semi and throw down melons for the rest of us to catch and place inside the potato sacks our mother had rushed over.  We’d then have sweets for days.

At the Bali Hai Apartments, though, we had many different kids to play with, lots of channels to watch, this new snack called a sandwich we could easily make ourselves, as many of them as we wanted, a little old lady who lived in apartment number one and sold us Mexican candies as cheap as five cents each, even an Asian neighbor in one of the apartments upstairs.  To get to Pilgrim Elementary, which used a panda as its mascot, my mother would walk my brothers and me almost two miles to the school and wave at us from across the street as the crossing guard safely guided us past the black chain linked fence.  In the afternoons we’d walk ourselves home past several apartment buildings and houses, across the acres of abandoned land, through the makeshift trails made by the people from our own apartments walking back and forth, until we finally met my mother on the other side of the trails.  She was always there without failure.

Where and when I saw a black person for the first time I don’t recall, although it must have been pretty uneventful since no recollection of it comes to mind.  Our concerns were much more focused on adjusting to our new lives and we had learned enough at school to know that people of color, no matter how light or dark, all shared many of the same struggles.  There was much more awe in playing Carmen Sandiego on an actual computer for the first time in my life than anything else, as there was in wondering what people did during the day in those big skyscrapers my mom and sisters would clean in the evenings.  When we’d got to pick them up after work in my dad’s truck I’d run around the buildings pressing my face against the glass windows to see what was inside until he’d yell at me to come back.  Desks, computers, notepads, telephones, and the occasional picture frame and flowers are what I’d mostly find, yet my curiosity was never satisfied.

Eventually to pass the time my brother and I would head to The Galleria with our newfound friends from Bali Hai.  Big shirts and big pants were the style in the early 90’s and that’s what we’d wear to fit in.  This choice of clothing also came very handy when we decided to start taking what we wanted from the mall without paying for it.  We’d grab a handful of shirts from the rack, head into the dressing room, rip off their tags, put on as many shirts as we could under own shirts, and walk out of the store nonchalantly hoping not to get caught.  It was a rush unlike anything we’d ever felt playing in the sand in McCook, and it made us feel all grown up.

We were poor and we knew it.  Even though we weren’t living in McCook anymore and our parents could afford to buy us more of the things we wanted, our family was still the type of family people handed down clothes and food to and felt sorry for.  All those mouths to feed, pobrecitos…people would say and think. You could see it in their eyes even if they never vocalized it.  The funny thing is it was the same look we’d gotten in Edinburg when we’d go shopping, a trail of kids behind my mother, only here it hurt and made us feel less adequate.  Shoplifting was our way of fighting back against the stigma of being poor!  It wasn’t right, but in the moment it felt great.

Haz Bien Y No Mires A Quien

Do Good And Don’t Worry For Whom

The Bali Hai Apartments were cheap and they were the closest place to my uncle’s house we had found in the first few days we arrived into Houston. 

Unless you peeked through the floor-to-ceiling double curtains in our one bedroom apartment, or one of the younger kids in the house raced through the makeshift clothe doors you couldn’t really see the bunk bed in our dining room.  Neither could you tell my mother’s more than six foot tall brother, his wife, and their two children – one boy and one girl – were living in that space.  The Bali Hai Apartments were a small complex by all accounts.  At most, 30 odd units, all either one or two bedrooms, circled a small eight-shaped pool in the center of the compound.  Two months out of the year the water inside the pool was clean enough to swim in.  On those days, all of us kids would take turns diving into the murky blue water from the top of a large, black, cave-looking rock, the kind you might find in Hawaii or some exotic place like that, but ours was old, dirty and manmade.  The other 10 months of the year the water was green and slimy. 

Next door, an abandoned apartment complex sheltered at least a dozen homeless people who pretty much kept to themselves unless we ganged up and provoked them by throwing rocks and calling them names.  Our parking lot was our playground where we’d play basketball, blow up hair spray cans in the garbage can, fight with each other, and built imaginary club houses in the bushes.  To the east of us were several small skyscrapers and the largest building in the city, the Transco Tower; to the north, across several acres of green grass, the world class shopping center known as The Galleria, the same one my brother had first thought was a giant hen house; on the west side, more untouched acres of land before a neighborhood of poor little houses; the abandoned apartment complex was to the south of us. 

My boy cousin was especially bad.  He was just about the same age as my sister Linda, about two years old, but he was spoiled rotten.  My aunt didn’t believe in corporal punishment, something I had hoped would rub off on my parents, but never did, and would let her son run wild.  We’d just hear wails and whimpers every time he had bitten my sister again.  This was a constant source of grief for my mother who didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just slap him in the hand a few times to let him know what he was doing was wrong, but she tolerated and bit her tongue for the sake of peace.  So my brothers and I took matters into our own hands.  If we saw or heard him making Linda cry we would walk up to him, look around to see if anyone was looking, give him a quick pinch, and walk away as if nothing had happened.  He couldn’t speak very much so that made telling my aunt on us pretty unlikely, but eventually he figured out how to get back at us.  Out of nowhere an entire apple on a fork would come flying at us when we least expected it, usually when we were watching Duck Tales or Looney Tunes after school, and we’d race after him through the tiny apartment in a mad rage.

At night, our family of eight slept like sardines on two beds.  Shoulder to shoulder, laying sideways, my two brothers and I slept on one bed, with my two older sisters taking turns sleeping next to us.  On the other bed, my mother, Linda, and whichever teenage sister wasn’t on our bed.  My dad slept on the floor or in the living room on a sofa.  My uncle and his wife slept on the bottom bunk, while their two kids slept on the top one.  Sometimes we had other relatives spend a few days or weeks with us and they’d sleep on the floor or on whichever couch was free in the living room.         

We weren’t well off by any means, but we never went without. 

By that time both my parents and my older sisters were working.  My dad had found a steady job in roofing, and except for the days when it rained, he was working pretty regularly.  My mom was working at The Galleria part time in the daytime and then would head over to the skyscrapers in the evenings with my two sisters – they must have been 15 and 16 at the time – to clean business offices and cubicles.  I was 10.      

Eventually we moved into a two bedroom unit at Bali Hai, which was pretty much the same situation except my uncle and his family were no longer living with us.  Instead a few of my cousins from Mexico were now here and they were staying with us until they got on their feet.  We didn’t have to sleep so tight anymore, but we always understood that at any moment we might have to return to one bedroom if that meant my parents could help someone out.  Mainly my mother was the one who would argue and battle my father down until he agreed to help the next wave of family members.  It was as if she could not turn anyone away.  How many people she actually helped from that apartment complex turned sanctuary I’ll never know. 

Her reasoning, though, was always plain and simple: today for them, tomorrow for me.

Nunca Sabes Lo Que Tienes Hasta Que Lo Pierdes

You Never Know What You Have Until You Lose It

Accidents, I’ve had more than I care to admit.  Some of them my fault, others, believe it or not, not my fault at all, just the product of bad luck, or karma – one of the two.  For better or for worse, when the Texas Department of Public Safety and I entered into our marriage of wits it was until death do us part, at least for me, or until I moved out of state.  A few times we’ve been at the brink of despair, heading for “Splits-Ville,” especially at the inception of our story together, but we’ve always managed to pull through.  No laughing matter, simply all I can do to hold back from crying.

The worst involved a maroon colored La Baronne convertible property of one of my sisters, a freeway, lots of fire and an explosion.  I’d borrowed her car to make it on time to the job where I spent eight hours a day making payment arrangements for people unable or unwilling to pay their phone bills.  Cruising along, top down, music pumping, cigarette lit, all of a sudden precisely before my exit a dark cloud of black smoke unleashed itself upon me.  From every direction, every single vent, the smog was darkening every crevice of the La Baronne’s front window.  Paranoid as they had us about being late, all I could stupidly think was to get off and walk fast before quarter to three turned into three o’clock.  At the light, a coworker offered a ride and we made it on time.  That’s when the worrying and reality actually set in. 

Wow, did you all see that car that was on fire on the side of the freeway, were the next words I heard.  My heart sank.  What would I say?  How would I explain to my sister her car had burned up.  The older boss lady at my job found my predicament quite amusing:  Well what are you going to do now?  It’s not like you can do anything if the firefighters are already out there?  Nevertheless she obliged and allowed me to walk the several blocks back to the car.  Traffic tickets were expensive I knew that.  Let alone tickets for burning up an entire patch of state grass on the side of the freeway, and what about having all those firefighters out there, and holding up traffic, definitely had to cost a pretty penny.  So my game plan was eyeing activity from the Target parking lot just across the way.  From there I’d fabricate my story and save face. 

Only at the sight of that car, all the blackened grass, and the frenzy of people moving back and forth, I knew I had to be honest.  I called my sister and broke the news.

Surprisingly and thankfully she did not yell at me, well not for long anyway.  Instead she wondered if I was okay and told me not to worry.  I didn’t receive any tickets, but they weren’t necessary.  I’d seen how hard she worked to pay for that car and I was the one that now had to live with that guilt. 

I wish I could say my track record has improved since then, but quite the opposite is true unfortunately.  Literally stacks of pink and white colored papers are archived in my name somewhere in the state of Texas with violations ranging from expired stickers to speeding, even a few for failing to yield.  I’ve totaled at least three cars over the past 10 years, and have been threatened with losing my license on more than one occasion.  Not that I’m proud of these achievements – actually written out here like this now they are quite shameful.  Instead they’ve taught me a thing or two about owning up to the things we do. 

As in an actual marriage between two people, or any relationship for that matter, it is impossible to overcome a dilemma if we are unwilling to be honest and take ownership of our mistakes and flaws.  I know, I’ve tried to play stupid and it only gets you so far.  Because at the end of the day we are the ones that have to deal with the consequences of our own actions, not the other person or people who can choose to leave at any moment – in the same way we can as well.  And many times once that something is lost there are very little probabilities of getting it back.  Our marriage is still on rocky ground, but the state of Texas and I have come to a new level of understanding I feel.  

You never know what you have until you lose it.

Más Vale Tarde Que Nunca

Better Late Than Never

There were times I’d lay in my bed wishing things were different.  One arm on the side of me, bent upwards underneath my face, the other slightly embracing me, against the world, hands fisted, solemn face, eyes refusing to shut, mind lost.  Counting sheep didn’t work.  The thoughts inside my head would take over.  Before I knew it scenes were forming, people were engaged in dialogue, my own mouth was moving, and exactly what I’d wanted to say was coming right out, like nothing.  Aww man why didn’t I say that, I’d scold myself and once again remember what number sheep was I on?

Over and over this routine would continue until either my thoughts were gone, or I’d get up and find something to do to avoid the thinking.

Usually that something was watching television and making myself a sandwich.  Two slices of bread, three pieces of ham, two slices of cheese, literally a slab of mayonnaise, tomatoes, lettuce, lots of pickles, mustard on both breads, hot sauce, and when we had them, chips of any flavor, although my favorite were sour cream and onion, laid on top of everything else, and then made into crunchy bits by my hands pressing in on both slices of bread.  A large cup of soda or chocolate milk accompanied my snack.  When it wasn’t enough, which it never was, I’d get up and make another sandwich.  I didn’t even bother to put anything up after the first sandwich because I knew I’d be coming back for more. If my mother caught me in the act she’d say mijo ya no comas tanto pan, que ese pan nada mas engorda, which basically meant stop stuffing your face. 

I was a big kid and loved to eat.  The same kid who walked into Burger King and ordered eight whoppers, the one who scurried away from my family at Fiesta to order a couple of tacos, the one who stopped at Circle K every day after school to pick up a small package of potato wedges with cheese, later the teenager who skipped homeroom every morning to make sure I had a proper breakfast before going to school, my younger brother forced along for the ride most of the time, until one morning he said no more and jumped out of the car.  From then on I rode alone.  Those lyrics from 50 Cent, I love you like a fat kid loves cake, I can totally relate. 

What I didn’t figure out till much later, many pounds later, was that I was eating for the wrong reasons.  First, five pounds were shed, so I kept walking.  Twenty pounds lighter I wanted more.  Fifty pounds into my exercising it was now a competition.  At the mall only shorts and a muscle shirt were worn for the weekly weigh-ins.  I was the biggest loser.  After a year I was 100 pounds lighter and thinner than I had ever been in my entire adult life.  At Walmart most every size was too big, so children’s large shirts were my preference.  I could run five miles six days a week without so much as a whimper, early in the morning at that, rare for someone who’s never been a morning person. 

People didn’t recognize me anymore, they were nicer to me, they paid more attention to me, as if I had transformed completely from one day to the next.  The old me was gone in their eyes, but for me nothing had changed.  Well except for the fact that I no longer cared about how big or small I was.  In the end nothing had changed except for my own perception.

That’s the thing about self-image it’s not about the way you look or how much you weigh, although I can’t deny it feels great to be healthy, but most importantly the decision to accept ourselves no matter what is an empowering one.  Today, I know I could stand to lose unas cuantas libras, but whether that happens or not does not determine how happy I am. 

It’s never too late too late to change our perception, and yes I still do love cake!

Perro Que Ladra No Muerde

A Dog Who Barks Has No Bite

Solo Vino, Fidolice, and Miclo all names of friends of the four-legged kind who have been a part of my life  at one point or another.  None of them entirely too brave.  Solo Vino, I can’t even remember when we made our memories together.

My parents decided that would be the most appropriate name for you since one day you just showed up out of nowhere (Solo Vino = Showed Up On Your Own).  We fed you and you decided to stay.  When we headed back to the States you became the keeper of my grandparents and their land.  If anyone so much as stepped within your peripheral vision the roaring strength of your woofs could be felt for miles, as far down as the arroyos.  You growled, you howled, you forced yourself against the power of the iron fence, and paced wildly until your warnings were heeded, but you never actually attacked anyone.

Instead you waited for your cue.  Callate perro or shh-ta we’d say and you obediently would comply.  Fidolice and Miclo you never cared much for barking, only in the most inappropriate of times, like when we were sleeping or talking on the phone.  Eventually you’d stop, but not before we yelled at you to shut up.  Of course, others from your same breed would follow their fierce bark with a vicious attack.  As in life, we never could tell when a woof from your kind was really a threat or just a frivolous warning aiming to create fear in your bite.

In middle school, my bus driver Mrs. Campbell turned out to be mostly bark and very little bite.  From the moment we walked onto the bus she glared through us, letting us know she wasn’t having any of the hell we had unleashed on our previous bus driver.

Our route had a reputation.  We’d been zoned outside of the well-to-do schools in the area in which we lived because we lived in the rattiest of apartments, ironically next to The Galleria, to an overpopulated, understaffed campus 30 minutes away – closer to an hour ride on a school bus.  Southwest Cholos and wannabe cholos, along with a pimply array of low income, high testosterone, mostly Mexican or Mexican American kids rode this bus that a year earlier had all but driven the elderly and feeble Ms. Lilly insane.  Rumor had it she had refused to come back to work after completing a school year with us.  We were bad and we knew it.  In our world of little means and respect this was something we could take pride in.  Mrs. Campbell, though, was different.

She was a deep dark brown, mature in her tone, and firm in her middle age.  Every couple of weeks, at the top of her head she donned another hairstyle, which she’d then spend days talking about with her bus driver friends at the foot of our bus while we loaded inside for our drive back home.  On more than one occasion we bounced our heads against the seats as Mrs. Campbell slammed on the brakes to let us know she meant business.  I will turn this bus around right now, she would threaten.  We’d stop our paper throwing, yelling at other school buses, yelling at each other, and pencil break fights until she continued driving.  If we didn’t stop Mrs. Campbell would just sit there staring us down through the rear view mirror, saying nothing at all.  Even though we didn’t like to admit it we admired her for keeping us in check.  Those of us a little more pimply and dorky felt a layer of security from our bullies on her bus.

One day our behavior was so bad Mrs. Campbell literally turned our bus around and drove us back the three fourths of the way she had already driven, pulled up at the entrance of the school, and watched from her seat as our principal escorted all of us back into school.  The wannabes had initiated a fight at the very first drop off site for our route, proceeded to insult Mrs. Cambell when she got off to stop the fight, and then had thrown rocks at the back windows of the school bus.  Get back in here, she roared at her young passenger and said nothing again about the incident the rest of the school year.  Parents were called, kids were publicly scolded, in school detentions were assigned, and from then on nobody dared so much as provoke Mrs. Campbell.

The very last day of school when the first student went to get off the bus she stopped them.  Sporting a red, partially curly at the top and straight at the bottom do, Mrs. Campbell hugged Southwest Cholo Adrian, the toughest kid on the bus, and handed him a small white bag and a pencil.  On and on each student that exited that old yellow school bus was greeted with the same farewell from Mrs. Campbell.  When I finally made it home, I tucked myself away in the privacy of our only bathroom, quietly opened the small little white bag and found in it a few chocolate kisses and a simple handwritten note that read: Thank you for riding my school bus.  It was a pleasure having you on my route, and I wish you the very best in the future.  God Bless.