Juan of Words

Reflections on the first thirty

A cake and some thoughts

So today is my birthday.  Yes, that big day that’s like a personal holiday for all of us.  Our day.  When friends and family come out of the woodwork to wish us a happy birthday and an even better year ahead, and while I’ve been whining online the last few days about turning 31, the truth is over this last year of being three decades old, or should I say young, my aging ego has finally come to terms with the idea that each year I will inevitably keep turning older.  In all sincerity, I am really quite grateful to have been able to make it this far and looking back to where it all began, in a tiny shack with no electricity just a lot of hope, my heart is humbled, my faith strengthened.  So in appreciation for all the well wishes, emails, tweets, wall posts, phone calls, etc., my offering to you, dear reader, is the imparting of these words below: a summary really of my first three decades of life.

Happiest Moments

Waking up that Christmas.  Being eight years old.  Actually feeling the magic of the season.  The sheer surprise of finding a gift for me.  Walking across the stage with my sister as college graduates.  Riding nine people to a car all the way to Mexico.  Doing it again as adults.  Hearing my name with the word ‘daddy’ in front of it for the first time.  Making the promise ‘till death do us part’ and meaning it.  Smiles on my mother’s face.  Tears of joy.  My father’s embrace.  Laughing till it hurts.  The mishap between my brother in law and my mother’s gift.  White tux, pink vest.  Violin lessons.  Recitals.  Forgiving.  Being forgiven.  And time to go ‘yu-yu’ of course.   

Hardest Moments

Racing to the hospital.  Waiting for results in the lobby.  Tears on my shoulders.  Uncontrollable weeping.  Saying goodbye every summer.  The blows.  The words.  The pain.  Guilt.  Falling flat on my face.  Watching loved ones fall flat.  Not being able to do anything about it.  Heartbreak.  Growing apart.  Distance.  Facing the ugly truth.  Realizing words cannot change people.  Allowing the heart to love once again.  Starting over.  Failure.  Making mistakes.  Talking through glass walls.  Dolor ajeno.  Death.  

Most Humbling Moments

Hearing ‘I love you’ in my darkest hours.  Receiving help from those with less to give.  Speaking my parents’ words.  My wife standing by my side.  Never letting me fall.  Thank-yous.  Calls of concern at two in the morning.  Presentimientos.  Being told to shut up.  Hearing the truth.  Experiencing the kindness of strangers.  My sisters’ sweat to help provide for us.  Their care of us, as children themselves.  Acceptance no matter what.  Our house in the Valley built for us at no cost.  Bags of clothing, groceries and toys pulling us through.  In-laws showing up to help.  Without even being asked.  Shelter.  Disappointment through the eyes.  My boy’s love.  Caring so much about other people.  Doors always open to me.  Responsibility for the ones that follow.  Growing up.

Funniest Moments

Getting spanked in front of my kindergarten class.  Getting spanked as a teenager by my mother.  Ordering eight whoppers as a fat kid.  Mishaps in middle school gym class.  High school play auditions.  Not being able to catch my balance.  Nostrils flaring as a tell-tell sign.  Dancing with my brother.  Mom drinking a shot of tequila.  Dad’s pranks.  Drunk episodes.  Too many to count.  Restroom walk-ins.  Naked walk-ins.  Running out of the house in only underwear.  Ice water on the bed.  And on me.  Spooking Edgar.  Getting locked inside a closet.  Getting kicked out of Catechism school.  And of course confusing The Galleria for a galleria.  As in a hen house.                     

Thank-Yous

To my mother and father for life and love.  Lessons of never giving up.  My older sisters.  Amazing support and motivation.  Strength even now.  My brother.  Respect and dignity.  Taught me it was okay for a man to cry.  My younger brother.  My rock through so many years.  The violinist of the family.  A sister wise beyond her years.  Caring.  Loving.  Truthful.  My baby sis.  Powerful.  A fighter.  Pulling me through so many times.  Pride.  My wife.  Side by side.  Against all odds.  Making me a better person.  Putting up with me.  Joy.  Beauty.  Grace.  My Edgar.  What a feeling to experience a love so pure and innocent.  My little man.  Friends and family.  There through every season.  Believing in me.  Even when I’ve doubted myself.  Blessed in every sense.  My prayers always with you. 

Once again, thank you guys for remembering me today.  Let’s see what three decades, plus one year are all about these next 12 months!  And hopefully another three decades, and then some.

El Que No Oye Consejo No Llega A Viejo

He Who Doesn’t Hear Advice Will Not Make It To Old Age

La Roux 'Bulletproof'

“This time baby I’ll be bullet proof.”

How many of us would not like to make this statement with utter certainty?  Could we, who knows how much farther our self-inflicted thresholds for pain and drama could expand.  Certainly beyond any current limitations, learned or otherwise, we’ve placed on ourselves until now.  Those points we all reach where we know not even another single step is possible without certain demise or at least a very undesirable and unpleasant experience afterwards. 

And though La Roux’s rendition of Bullet Proof, like so many other songs, is every bit the anthem for the sexiness of a carefree existence, life always has a way of knocking us back down to reality where the old adage of el que no oye consejo no llega a viejo still stands accurate.

In truth, history has a way of repeating itself, and despite our most fervent efforts, sooner or later we find the very words we couldn’t stand hearing ourselves departing our own lips, landing on the ears of someone new, causing them all sorts of anger and frustration, making them promise themselves they will never engage in the same rhetoric.  Many won’t, and perhaps they are the lucky ones.  Yet siding on the face of experience one cannot deny the wisdom of words such as these.  Even at their sound we know deep down inside they carry truth. 

For me they were the words used to guilt me into doing something I didn’t want to do or stopping me from doing something I really wanted to do.  Pues si no quieres entender haya tu…uno les da el consejo y hace lo que puede, pero si ustedes no quieren hacer caso que puede hacer uno*, those words are still etched into my brain, and every once in a while they still make a reappearance in my parents’ vocabulary towards me, more my mother tan my father to be honest.  Like any good Mexican mother she always knew her strongest ally against us was guilt, and she used it well. 

From the time I was a child and I’d throw tantrums threatening to leave home for good she’d slyly throw her hands up and say okay well if that’s what you want, what can I do?  If we were at the store and I insisted she buy me a toy I wanted after she told me no more than five times: bueno si no quieres comer haz lo que quieras…yo vine a comprar la comida para tener algo en la casa para que coman, pero si no quieres, mejor compramos eso y nos vamos**.  Later it became well if you don’t want to go to church y estar cerca de Dios what can I do?  If I have to do everything and you don’t want to help me, pobrecito de ti…that shows how much respect and affection you have for your mother.  If you want to waste all the sacrifices we made for you to have a better life here, and not go to school, it will make me really sad and disappointed but it’s your choice. 

I could go on forever, but almost always these words were followed by the disclaimer that she was telling me for my own good, por tu bien,no por el mio, because she cared about me, and if she didn’t she wouldn’t tell me anything at all.  The irony, which I learned much later, after many years of life teaching me the same lessons in a much harsher way, was that she was.    

That’s why the first time I realized her expressions were coming out of my mouth there was sadness in them.  All the emotion of arguing with my parents, the cynicism of my attitude, the thinking they were just crazy, she was just crazy, stuck in her old Mexican ways, not savvy enough to understand the American way of doing things, came back to me.  The hopelessness of knowing what I was saying was going in one ear and coming out the other, or not even registering at all, made us one, united us in a deeper sense, as if I’d reached some milestone in life.  The turning point perhaps, where I’d now be the one standing on the sidelines praying for the best, helpless to the mistakes being made in front of me, able to offer nothing more than advice and support. 

The only consolation, knowing that sooner or later words always have a way of sinking in, especially if they are repeated often, over and over.  El que no eschucha consejo no llega a viejo.

English Key:

* Well if you don’t want to understand that is your problem…we try to give you advice and point you in the right direction, but if you won’t listen, what can we do?

** Well if you don’t want to eat, do what you want…I came to buy groceries so that you would have something to eat at home, but if you don’t want to, we can just buy that and leave now  

Dios Aprieta Pero No Ahoga

God Squeezes But Doesn’t Choke

We watched her sit at the edge of our cement porch, next to the long slender window in our living room, out in the open air of our yard, next to the silver rusted propane tank, sewing our gifts in little spare moments, a little today, more tomorrow, until finally one day they were done and we could play with them outside or anywhere else we wanted. 

Almost everything we had she made. 

Each curtain in the house, some of them lined with lace, all of my sisters’ nice dresses and blouses, our pillows stuffed with rags, covers quilted together from old clothing people would give us that didn’t fit, crocheted throws on the sofa, embroidered napkins for keeping tortillas warm and entertaining, old blue jeans cut at the knees, made into shorts, even our table cloth was stitched by her.  My mother didn’t believe in wasting anything.  When my father’s pants were torn or ours had holes in them, she’d patch them up as closely to their original blue jean tone as possible.  Even our toys she’d make. 

One year we wanted our favorite Loony Toons characters as stuffed animals.  At the store they were just the right size, so plush and soft, in such a beautiful box, with so many colors.  We only wanted one.  They had so many!  Instead we saw yellow cloth being stitched to black fabric, stuffed with fluffy white material, slowly forming into round stomachs, long beaks, longer grey ears, then arms and legs, until finally one day we were presented with my mother’s version of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and the fat duck that came out on one of the shows with them.  We played so hard with those dolls that in a matter of weeks they were already falling apart.  Most of the time, though, we just wanted what we saw in the store or on television real hard.  Like My Buddy.  His commercial was so catchy.  Every time we heard it we’d stop: My Buddy, My Buddy, My Buddy and me…The kid on the screen looked so happy running around with his life-sized, plastic-faced doll dressed in overalls and plaid shirt.  My Buddy was all I wanted at seven!  

We never got the damn doll or the rip off version.  I consoled myself playing with my sister’s hair brushes behind our house.  There, next to the banana plants and weeds, knelt on the ground, I’d pretend they were Thunder Cats or G.I. Joe characters and spend hours in my own little world.  When I was really bored I’d grab one of our kittens and brush them over and over until they’d manage to get away from me.     

For birthdays mom would make us a cake from scratch, sandwiching marmalade in between two layers of bread, we’d light up the candles and dad would sing happy birthday to us.  Christmas we’d get maybe one handmade toy or a new pair of jeans or shoes.  Never what we saw at the stores!  That year, though we weren’t expecting anything, nothing at all.  We had been forewarned several weeks earlier that even though we had been good all year, for the most part, Santa Claus wouldn’t be making a stop at our house this Christmas.  Not that any of us actually believed in him at that age, or ever had.  His existence was more of a myth.

So when my mother woke me and my brothers up on Christmas Day to go see what Santa had brought us we all thought we were still dreaming.  Clumsily staring at her through squinted eyes, hairs crisscrossed in every direction, lagañas hardened at the edges of our eyelids, we climbed out of bed and walked across the kitchen into the living room.  There, individually sitting at the top of each of the three shelves of the white wooden stand my father had built, were three shiny new toy cars.  Red, yellow, and blue, they weren’t wrapped and came with zero bells and whistles, but the joy we felt inside at their sight is still immeasurable.  They were just like the ones at the store that we’d begged so much for, and now they were racing in our living room, zooming from one side of the house to the other.  None of us could believe what had just happened.  We didn’t even care who got which car, or what color car, we just wanted to play and celebrate an actual Christmas, probably the only true one I’ve ever experienced.

Santa Claus was never a part of the equation in our home.  There weren’t any trips to the mall.  We didn’t make a wish list or leave cookies and milk out, if we had had them we would have needed them to eat ourselves.  At school they did tell us about him and made us act in plays about him, the whole magic of Christmas and all, but life afforded us the luxury of not believing.

Thinking back, I don’t think that was such a bad thing.

Del Dicho Al Hecho Hay Mucho Trecho

From Spoken Word To Action There Is A Great Distance

Why?  Because it is easier to make empty promises sometimes than it is to actually recognize what we are doing wrong.  If nothing else, it takes much less time and energy to say what we think others want to hear, instead of what we really want to say to them.  How many a heated arguments could not have been avoided were we just to let our guard down and our pride to one side?

There is something about the idea of being right that makes us resort to the most childish of behaviors, often the very one even our own parents who gave life to us could not stand, because when it is all said and done, what we really care about is being able to say I told you so!  Hard as we may want to avoid this sentiment or claim that we are too mature to engage in this behavior, the reality is when our blood begins to boil, our brows can no longer furrow, and our eyes are done with the rolling, we no longer care about rhyme or reason.  All we want to do is get the last word in.  Be it with a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a coworker, or anybody else, it doesn’t matter.

I am guilty as sin of acting like a five year old all the time, even despite the fact that my 31st birthday is just around the corner.  In less than two weeks to be exact.  Yet even I can recognize that words mean nothing when they are followed by inaction.  

The thing we should remember, though, is that like the little boy who cried wolf, eventually our empty promises become just hot air, and what’s worse, they then begin to fall on deaf ears.  Deaf ears that belong to the people we care about, the people we love, and before we know it situations change, our loved ones make decisions without us, and relationships are scorned.  There is also no feeling quite worse than the guilt of knowing we could have done something to prevent a good relationship going awry.  It’s not always about being right.  Sometimes it’s just about following through, or at least genuinely making an effort to do so.

El Que Se Casa Por Todo Pasa

He Who Gets Married Passes Through Everything      

Amor, Amor, Amor...

Plastic chairs, red, blue, pink, and purple, all lined up, well as neatly as six, seven, eight, nine, and ten years olds could get them.  Some had cartoon characters like the Little Mermaid and Cinderella on them, others just flowers and stars.  They were the miniature chairs, the kind you’d buy at the 99 Cents store for all of one dollar and seven cents.  We’d filed them into place just outside our apartment in front of the dirty green pool gated from us by a simple black chain link fence, three rows and two chairs each.  The handouts we’d all collected from school our class assignments in the makeshift classroom we’d prepared. 

Usually one of us older kids would play the teacher, although a lot of times we’d fight extensively about who would take on the role before we even began to play.  Most of the time I would elect myself and get to order my younger brother and sister, along with our neighbors around, ruler-slapping of their hands and all.  At times my orders did become overwhelming for them and they’d gang up on me and overthrow my authority, but even then I knew once they calmed down my return to power would be almost guaranteed.

In Mexico, my cousin Elvira would play house with me.  She would place a soccer ball under her shirt and lay in bed in the tiny room of sticks and shrub in my uncle’s terreno, behind the kitchen on the property and away from the bedrooms of concrete walls, hidden from all of the adults.  I was her husband and it was my job to deliver the baby, which once born turned into a long cloth doll with two red braids, a simple dress, and a hand sewn smile.  We’d parade around that doll in each other’s arms, she’d send me off to work, I’d hunt and gather whatever sticks and rocks were laying about for food, and bring them back to feed my family.  That’s what it meant to be married for us in those days: simple logistics, no drama. 

And while our innocence was sweet, charming even, especially in hindsight, as we grew older the idea of happily ever after became less real, more fantasy than anything else.  For me, every heartache and heartbreak more reason to believe much less in the fairytale of love, and marriage something to be avoided at all costs.  Not that I was ever rushing to get to the altar. 

Yet once the nuptials were signed, and even before then when the address became shared, all fairytales aside, the real teachings of my parent’s union, the ones I was subconsciously role playing as a kid, became the lessons of true love and marriage.  Through four decades we’d seen them laugh, cry, fight, love and hate, and now for the first time in my life the why of all of it began making sense to me.  Despite everything they have been through, most of which they couldn’t have ever imagined as twenty-something year old newlyweds, they are still together today, and above all else their life as a couple has taught me that when you get married the very thing you should expect are the surprises.   

Because the truth is nothing ever really prepares us to spend the rest of our lives with another person.  As wonderful as our intentions might first be, sooner or later, reality sets in and we are forced to accept the brutal fact that marriage is actually quite, excruciatingly hard.

El que se casa por todo pasa.

Be it by choice or circumstance, once we agree to share our lives, for the rest of our lives, with another person, the road ahead, no matter how hard we plan, becomes ambiguous.  The reason: because none of us can ever truly plan for the unexpected, and marriage if nothing else is always unpredictable.  And while it is true that marriages today don’t last nearly as long as they used to – everyone knows it’s now until we can put up with each other instead of until death do us part – few of us enter into the sanctity of marriage with the idea that sooner or later we’ll be heading down a hallway instead of an aisle to annul our union. 

Instead we do so with the idea that somehow, despite the ups and downs of life, we’ll pull each other through and find a way to stay together.

A Camino Largo, Paso Corto

Art by Toti Cerda

Wind in my hair.  Dreams in my mind.  Joy in my heart.  Behind the wheel of my very own car for the very first time.  Not a loaner.  Not a hand me down.  Not the back seat of my brother’s maroon Chevy Impala where every day after school I’d be accused of tilting the car to one side by him and his stupid friends:  four-foot tall Perla, la pelona, Edwin and Edith, the twins, our randy and pimply neighbor Victor and a whole lot of other stupid kids from our high school.  No sir! This car was all mine.  I’d worked all summer mixing paints, putting up with crazy customers, stocking shelves, and running shopping carts inside of Walmart to scrounge up enough money to make a down payment.  One thousand dollars to be exact. 

At 16, without a lot of car dealers willing to sign me up for a loan, I’d managed to find a small mom-and-pop shop willing to give me a shot.  They needed the money and I needed the car.  With my mother huffing and puffing all the way there, we’d stopped at the bank, collected my money, and signed on the dotted line as cosigners for my 1989 grey, four door, Ford Taurus.  Ay mijo are you sure you can afford to buy a car right now?  You are so young, you’re only 16, I don’t know if you are going to be able to make all these payments.  Pero bueno, si no entiendes (if you won’t understand – she still uses guilt like nobody’s business to get her points across) I’ll go ahead and sign for you, but I want you to keep up with this responsibility.  This is no joke. 

I was just happy me and my younger brother wouldn’t have to run to the multi-colored car my sister had given me a few months earlier anymore, immediately after the last bell rang at school every day.  This was long after I had stopped riding in my older brother’s Impala.  When that bell rings you better hurry up and get to the car or I’m going to leave you, I’d warn my brother every morning.  To avoid being seen, we’d park in the visitor spaces of the apartments across the street from Eisenhower High School.  When school was over we’d run through the hallways, out the door, across the staff parking lot, and into our car.  If the school buses started leaving before we did (they drove by right in front of us) we’d sink down into our seats hoping not to be seen or get out of the car and stand far away from it until they had all left, anything to avoid embarrassment.

Thinking back, her car was actually not so bad except for the fact that it had a black hood, a grey side panel and a cream body, which didn’t look as great together as you’d think. 

My car was all one color.  It had soft, cushioned, grey, cloth seats that matched the interior faux-wood paneling.  It had a working cassette player, power windows and locks, a functioning air conditioner, that new car smell, and rode smoother than any other car I had ever driven.  It was my pride and joy even though I had only owned it for a few weeks.  And while it had more mileage than I cared to admit, it very rarely let me down.  Five thousand dollars all paid in advance, a year and a half later, when I was still17, it was all mine.  After I was done with it, the car became my mother’s, and 10 years later it finally gave out.  We got rid of it.

That Taurus had no hydraulics like my brother’s Impala, it didn’t have a booming sound system either, and it wasn’t very impressive, but it did teach me a very important lesson.  About striving for what I wanted, working hard to get it, and about what it meant to be the one able to hand down an entire vehicle to somebody.  More than anything it was a personal triumph.  I was becoming a man.  ¡Un hombre hecho y derecho!   Well not entirely, but it was my start.