Juan of Words

El Azul Celeste Cuesta

Querido Hijo:

Hijo de la vida.

I’m going to tell you like my parents told me, ponte a estudiar para que no te toque trabajar como burro como nosotros! Even when the dreams seem long and far away, unattainable, silly, too damn high to ever come within reach, keep pushing, keep pulling, keep moving.  In baby steps, peleando, arrastrándote a ti mismo si es necesario. Not looking for the easy way out. There is none.

If you don’t believe me, go out there, make your mistakes, fall flat, get up, do it again, and again, and again.  Keep fooling yourself, believing your day will come one day.  If it does, count your blessings y ponte las pilas.   Sino, be humble enough to find another way.

Circumstances, bad luck, misfortune, tragedia.  Mijo, sadly, these are challenges and obstacles we don’t control.  Yo que más quisiera, quebrarme la espalda con tal de que tú no sufrieras ni un poquito. Pero la vida es así, cruel e injusta.

Nevertheless, my thoughts and prayers you will always have.  Always!

Del amor, what can I say?  No te apresures.  Nothing you can’t wait for.  All pain and heartache when it’s not right.  So hard to figure out when it is.  El amor por ti mismo, mucho más importante. Créeme.

When you finally make it, and I know you will, to that place in life set out for no one else but you, no dejes que tu orgullo te ciege.  Extiende la mano. Pull up the ones that follow.  Find solace in these words, wisdom in your journey, and compassion in your heart. Do for others what no one did for you.

O como yo, sigue el ejemplo de tus padres.

No Hay Atajo Sin Trabajo

There Is No Short Cut Without Sacrifice

Con animo!

Early Saturday morning we were running.  Jumping out of bed, racing into the bathroom, scrubbing teeth with toothbrush, running combs through strands of wild hair, splashing water on our face, tying up our shoelaces, swallowing whole tacos full of huevo con chorizo.

Mijo, comete esto antes de que te vayas…va ‘tar bien caliente y ustedes pobrecitos van a estar en el solazo todo el día.  Ay, me da mucho cuidado con ustedes.  No me gusta que estén afuera tanto tiempo.

Every Saturday was the same.  Before we’d board the van waiting for us at the entrance of the Bali Hai apartments, halfway full by this time with boys, 10 to 12 years old like us, lazily struggling to keep their eyes open, my mother would insist we eat something before heading out the door.

Just me and my brother Chuy.

In transition from children to adults, man-boys is what we were.  Working made us feel responsible, proactive, self-sufficient, like we were carrying our own weight around, acarriando-ing nuestro propio granito de arena pa la casa.  In truth, I don’t even remember how we began working for the distributors of the Houston Post.  All I knew was come six in the morning my brother and I had to be ready to go, literally inside their van.  If we weren’t, they would leave without us and find some other kids to replace us at the next stop.  The one good thing about our job was that even though our ride would show up at the crack of dawn, by the time we actually made it to our store it was closer to 8 o’clock and the light of day would already be shining upon us.

First they’d take us to the distribution center.  There we’d pick up our newspapers, transfer into our box truck, which we were told would take us to our final destination for the day, with as many other kids as possible, ride another thirty minutes to an hour, gathering signs, bags and other needed materials for the job, one by one unloading our stacks of newspapers when it was our turn to get down.

Those summers at the grocery stores were actually pretty fun!  All the oohing and aahing from complete strangers confused and surprised to find kids as young as us yelling Houston Post…Houston Post…Houston Post; friendships made with working teenagers as young as 16, young adults in their early 20’s; the thrill of roaming through the stores whenever we could get one of them to watch our newspapers; and the happiness of seeing our parents drive up all the way from our apartments just to drop us off our homemade lunches.  Como estan…no se asolen tanto…tomen agua…si les da mucho calor metanse a la tienda a caminar… my parents would go on and on like this every time.  While their words annoyed me they also appeased the little boy inside me – the one not too long ago sitting in the living room of our apartment watching Saturday morning cartoons with his younger siblings, not working for a living.

Chuy wanted Nintendo games.  I wanted lunch money.  That was our motivation.

Our reality was we couldn’t bear to see our mother suffer.  As soon as we’d get home we’d proudly take whatever we had made that day, usually 15 to 20 dollars, and place it in her hands.

It wasn’t much. But it was all we could offer.

Hoy Por Ti, Mañana Por Mi

Today For You, Tomorrow For Me

From "My Family: Mi Familia"

It’s unspoken contract.  An honorary promise.  The strongest measure of your personal reputation.  That today, what is asked of you, or what you are asking for, will be reciprocated, in the form of an apadrinamiento.  Rarely of a simple baptism, Confirmation or first communion.  Instead, a dollar for dollar match of your investment in another’s rite of passage – usually a wedding or quinceañera.  It’s riskier than a tanda, for in matters of the heart, and teenagers igual, rarely do we have any control, and a full return is never guaranteed.  What begins today in a promise of forevermore can end tomorrow in a “¡vete al diablo!” without even so much as a warning.  Still we pride ourselves in our padrinos and compadres and even the best of mexicanos will someday ask…” today for me, tomorrow for you.”

¡Sin pena!  Seamos padrinos.

NOTE:  This post is no way, shape or form constitutes an open invitation for apadrinamiento requests to the author, either verbally or in writing.  Any such requests are made at your own risk – the author claims no responsibility for outbursts of laughter, anger or disbelief.

La Basura De Unos Es El Tesoro De Otros

One Person’s Trash Is Another’s Treasure

Garage Sale buying

Inspired by a gringa named Sra. Lopez who runs one of the most compelling Hispanic-interest blogs on the World Wide Web (www.Latinaish.com), centered on her life as a Caucasian-Latina, I had to write about our obsession as Latinos with being frugal and always finding deals wherever we go, at least in my world.  Her latest post, If they buy it, sell it, pues, explored her suegra’s overzealous joy with receiving trash bags full of used clothing and how she finds a use for everything inside, even the lingerie.

A very entertaining read like most things blogged about by Sra. Lopez.

Plus it got me thinking about my own madrecita who coincidentally has very good luck with garage sales all the time.  You could ride in the same car with her, stop and shop at all of the same houses, and spend the exact same amount of money, and she would still come back with more and better things than you, literally.  The used pairs of shoes,  50 cents each, electronics past their prime yet still in working condition, furniture, items of clothing, or whatever else, there is a science to the way she shops.  Not for herself or the luxury of shopping, but for others and for business.  Like la gringa’s suegra, she gives away whatever can be recycled within her circle of family and friends and sells the rest, here and in Mexico.  In fact, her garage sales have garnered quite the reputation in Cerritos, San Luis Potosi for offering quality items at the cost of just a few pesos.  People even place orders with her now!

That mentality of utilizing every last thing, wasting nothing, is embedded in our genes.  Until a few years ago I had rarely ever bought anything just for decoration or to have.  If it did not have a purpose, I did not need it.  Still, even though my wife has introduced the concept of decorative items, I can’t bring myself to buy a brand new pair of jeans for $60.  Instead you’ll find me at the clearance section of most stores rummaging through sizes to find a descent pair on sale for no more than $20, and that’s pushing it, or at what my own suegra refers to as Our Macys – second hand stores, which may I say are so hugely underrated, doing the same thing.  In our home, paying full price for anything is to be avoided at all costs.  And yes, maybe it is just cheap, but it always feels great to buy things below their retail value.

It’s not just me either.  Weekends in my neighborhood, mostly Mexican, are truly a free for all with garage sales opening up as early as Thursday and running through Sunday afternoon, almost always selling out of all but the least desirable items.  No deed restrictions, thank God…and one of the main reasons it’s easy to call my barrio home.  There is something about knowing that you can take a few of the things you have but don’t need and selling them for a few bucks when you are strapped for cash that makes us feel productive, savvy, smart – luchistas. And what is better than being luchista, a fighter who never gives up.  The same applies to giving away what others could use better than us.  It just feels good.

Gracias Sra. Lopez for the validation!

No Sólo De Pan Vive El Hombre

Not Only From Bread Does Man Live

On growing up bilingual, bicultural

Marching!  Huaraches instead of tennis shoes.  All white pants and a long-sleeved button down collar shirt of the same color.  A simple red bandana, wrapped around the neck, slightly twisted into a single knot.  No belt.  No socks.  Just a cream colored hat, not exactly vaquero style – a child’s hat made of straw – sitting at the top of my head.  Boys dressed just like me, little girls wearing small A-line skirts in different shades of red, most of them in deep vibrant reds, evocative of passions and emotions too profound for any of us to comprehend.  In waves of movement, all at the same time, we were marching, chanting the few words we did know of the Himno Nacional.

Mexicanos al grito de querra!…something, something, something…

Past the arroyos of drinkable water, the concrete-paved cancha of so many bailes, my grandfather’s house, my grandmother’s, those of mis tios y mis tias, past the tanque de agua, the remolino of early morning corn churning, all in unison, singing all the way, families at their doorsteps, watching us, singing along, celebrating the independence of a country foreign to us.  The dirt roads full of rocks, sandy and dusty, much more inconvenient than the sidewalks and manicured lawns we were used to.  We’d only arrived a few weeks earlier, enrolled in a school where attendance was optional even for kids as young as ourselves.  If we didn’t want to go we just didn’t go.  Choosing instead to roam up small hills, down trails of dirt, running from one side of the rancho to the other, carefree, and free, truly for the first time.

En el otro lado we had rules.  If we didn’t follow them we were paddled, written up, sent home on suspension, punished more at home, then sent back for more learning.

For the marching though everyone went to school.   It was an obligation, a privilege almost, for everyone to gaze upon us, their little soldiers.  A reason for pride in a place where so little was ever easy.  Lyrics surpassed us, escaped us, especially my brothers and I, the chicanillos, more americanos than anything else, a novelty really for the rest of the kids who marveled at any of our utterances in another language.  We were anchor babies, born to parents of illegal status, naturalized only by default of our birthplace, foreigners to our family in Mexico, burdens, outcasts, novelties…but we were unaware and in our ignorance reveled in the dualism of our existence, blissful at how lucky we were to experience true freedom for a few months every summer, afterwards always heading home to the luxuries of running water and electricity.  Mexicanos.  Americanos, even if only by default.

Those years were magical – way more important than I ever realized.

El Que Busca, Encuentra

He Who Seeks, Finds

No feelings were harmed in the writing of this blog.

Or so I am hoping…after months of agonizing over my personal battle of the bulge, embarrassing side effects and all, including increasingly larger love handles (a.k.a. lonjas or lonjitas) and diminishing levels of energy, I’ve decided to get off my butt and do something about it!  More accurately, after having the youngest of my four sisters bet me that I would not be able to lose weight again.

Again because six years ago this same battle was fought and won by me, hands down…Back then my weight was just five pounds more than what it is today, although the distribution of fat was not as proportional as it is today, thank God for that, and I was in much worse overall shape.  Still, through a self-paced regimen of better eating and constant exercise I managed to lose exactly 100 pounds in 12 months, which I kept off for roughly three years, until I began gaining again for some reason.

I think it was too much for too long – running five miles a day everyday of the week but Sunday – and in the end I couldn’t keep it up, I became too comfortable, trusting that the weight would just stay off because I had lost it.  As I began giving myself more leeway to eat what I wanted when I wanted the pounds just started packing back on.

Today, for the most part, aside from my bad habit of smoking, I feel pretty healthy, capable of doing just as much as the next guy, roughly my age and strength, yet I realize doing nothing means only one of two things: keep gaining weight or eventually hear the bad news from my doctor that I’ve got Diabetes, high cholesterol, or something worse.  So even though I’m now in my early thirties, not in my twenties, and my body cannot party or take as much as it used to, try as I may to prove otherwise, one way or another the 20 pounds at stake will be shed over the course of the next 90 days.

But never fear.  I am not giving up on my tortillas, carnitas, pan dulce, and other favorite platillos just yet – only figuring out how to cut back in order to have my cake and eat it too…no pun intended.

Deséenme suerte – ando buscando la manera.

Dime Con Quien Andas Y Te Dire Quien Eres

Tell Me Who You’re With And I’ll Tell You Who You Are

To this day my mother still tells the story of how each Sunday in that modest church in the Valley, where so few people lived in town that everyone came to the same mass, regardless of whether we were white or brown, spoke English or Spanish, cleaned houses or owned the land, I’d leave my family in the last row of pews, all six of them in their nicest clothes, which many weeks were pretty much the same pair of jeans, buttoned down shirts, and dresses for my sisters, to join my always sharply-dressed, impeccably golden-haired classmates from elementary school at the front and center of our church.

From there I’d turn and look at my family all those pews away to the bashful hand signaling of my mother telling me to come back to her while trying even harder not to be noticed.  Blatantly refusing I’d simply turn my head and look forward, glancing back only every other few seconds.

Up there I felt important – like I was a part of something bigger than myself.  No golden locks on my head, no pale colorless skin on my arms with a few freckles here and there, no blue or green penetrating eyes staring out at the world, regardless of how much I may have wanted any or all of that back then.  My clothes were simple, in no way fancy, not in comparison to ruffled dresses, colorful ribbons, and khaki slacks, polished shoes and matching dress socks.  Everything seemed so perfectly coordinated.  A far cry away from the hanging clothes in our back yard, fading away with every sunset.

I liked it…better than the view from where we were anyway.

A trip to church at our house meant rummaging through piles of blue jeans searching for a pair with no holes in them, or at the very least with a very few amount, sitting through at least ten minutes of my mother trying to tame our stubborn hair into submission, cloths full of soap and water to the face, scrubbing every last bit of sweat from the tiniest of crevices, even after we’d taken a bath.  If we tried to be sneaky and walk out of the house with our favorite pair of blue jeans, inevitably with many holes in them, we were marched right back inside to change.  It was never a matter of choice.  It was an obligation, for families, all families, to gather in our Southern church and listen to the word of God.

Years later I was the bashful one.  Feeling less significant than my Caucasian-gringo friends, the carefree child in me gone, no longer in the Valley of our beginnings, now in the slums of our new city of opportunity, my skin and accent my most embarrassing flaw, cause for anger, justification for stupidity in thought and action, parents who spoke no English, Que Desgracia! But they were mine, and I was theirs, more then, than ever before.

It wasn’t the gavachos, or the gangbangers after them, the wannabe cholillos of my youth, the dorky friends I’d skip with, or the neighbors’ kids who would get in trouble with me that ever defined me.  It was me and the personal journey of self-acceptance that we all have to go through…I hope.

Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres – me no think so!

Una Vez Al Año No Hace Daño

Once A Year Does No Harm

Camino a San Luis

Bags packed, to the brim, no real luggage, just cardboard boxes and duffle bags, stuffed with clothes, shoes, even a few toys; stacked inside, underneath our feet, on the roof, tied down with little more than twisted rope.  In the white and blue zebra suburban with no air conditioning, a crevice of space was always left in between our luggage, just big enough for the seven of us kids to take turns resting on the 12-hour-plus summer trips from Houston to San Luis Potosi.  We really couldn’t sleep back there, but it was always a little slice of heaven to be able to stretch our legs.

Up front, mom and dad, talking all the way, laughing, carrying on, entertaining us with their stories, yelling at us when we got too loud, hurrying us every restroom stop, keeping tabs on who was next to get some rest.  When he’d get tired she’d pour cold water over his head.  Her job was to keep him awake.  In the middle seat, my two eldest sisters, both too young to drive, but old enough to keep my mother company when she was trying to keep herself and my dad awake.  In the last seat, the one nearest towers of luggage, used to prop ourselves onto comforter and pillow, the rest of us taking turns laying down and sitting in between our sisters, playing, fighting, awing at the majesty of the Sierra Madre and all her splendor.  When we’d get to the rancho this seat would come out to make room for the many cousins, aunts and neighbors who’d squeeze in shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee on our trips into the tiny town of Cerritos, about an hour’s drive away down a nothing-but-rock-and-dirt main road.

Sedans and basically anything smaller than a truck could not make it through the mountains from Cerritos to El Sauz so our zebra was a symbol of success, proof of our American Dream come true, never mind the fact that it was purchased cash, used, beaten up, without air conditioning and on its last wing.  To them it meant we were americanos from El Norte, you know the ones with the green dolares.

We were like celebrities when we’d show up.  Tell me something in English!  Teach me!  Wow those shoes are nice!  What does that mean?  What does this mean?  How is it living in El Norte?

Much too young to understand, fibbing became our pastime: in America our life was grand; we could afford anything we wanted, our tiny apartment was huge, and why not?  At least there we didn’t have to carry water in tin pails over our shoulders like a herd of bulls just to take a shower; we had running light and water almost every single day of the year, we didn’t have to chop down shrubs and weeds with pitchforks and the like, we had color television, a Nintendo system and our cooler full of food.  Still the people made it fun.  Sitting in pitch dark, cold air at our face, tales of la llorona, witches and ghosts, fireside laughter, chocolate-sweetened coffee, sweetbread, sweeter smiles, so many cousins, so many friends, really a magical time, for all of us.

The happiest moments, always our arrivals – cousins jumping in excitement, us bursting at the seams, screaming out of joy, so excited to jump out of the zebra and start running all over the place, and grandma always waiting, full of kisses and caresses.  The saddest: our departures.  Tears running down our faces, waves goodbye through the zebra’s windows, promises made to each other, sadness riding from San Luis Potosi to Houston, comforted only by the idea that next summer we’d be back.

Lo Prometido Es Deuda

What’s Promised Is Debt

IOU

It is!  No matter how we paint it.  There is something about making a promise that makes our word official.  A challenge almost to the authenticity of our intentions:  whether we are genuinely committing or merely amusing ourselves with false words.  And truth be told, there is nothing worse than feeling we’ve been lied to, taken advantage of, ridiculed and made to feel like a fool.  To the extreme that very rarely will someone who engages in making false promises be taken seriously, by anyone.

On the flip side there’s is also nothing worse than not being able to keep our word. 

No eres hombre de palabra / You are not a man of your word! How many of us have not felt the sting of that statement?  Yet the reality is, be it by circumstances within or beyond our control, on certain occasions we just aren’t able to follow through with the things we’ve committed to, no matter how much we may or may not want to.

So many times the intention is there.  Just not the ability or capabilities to make something happen.  When I grow up I’m going to build you a huge house somewhere, One day we are going to be rich, I promise never to fall in love again, Life is never going to change me, a few of my own many unkept promises throughout the years.  The latter the most ridiculous of course because time and age are ruthless and relentless in provoking transformation.

Years, if nothing else, inculcate shame; experience, pain; obliging in us the sense to know that false words are little more than weapons.  Weapons that in the end, no matter how we choose to use them, hurt us more than anyone else.

Dame Pan Y Llámame Tonto

Give Me Bread And Call Me Dumb  

BaldoComics.com

We were just stupid in those days.  Like ‘laugh out loud’ stupid or ‘rolling on the floor laughing’ stupid, or even about to ‘pee in my pants’ stupid.  Everything was possible to us in those days.  And no, we weren’t actually dumb enough to believe we could do anything we wanted to, but we knew for one reason or another, a las buenas o las malas, we could almost always make things happen or get a hold of the things we wanted, just because.  We weren’t gangsters or wannabes like the other kids walking around trying to look all hard with their pants down low and their shoulders all tilted down to one side, but just by default because of where we came from, how we talked and the way we dressed, people were scared of us – probably not even scared of us, just more cautious about their surroundings when we were around.  They’d clutch their purses closer, stare at us every few seconds, or just make it clear we were not welcome in their environment, which always made us want to stick around even longer.

Harmless really is what we were.  Too cool to ride the yellow bus all the way to middle school so we’d take the metro transit buses instead.  Yet not cool enough to know what to do other than ride the metros back and forth to Paul Revere Middle School.

In all honesty, I was the most pathetic of the bunch.  My pants didn’t sag any lower than my waist.  I could barely squeeze into them.  My shoes were winos like everyone else’s, but my flat feet made them look more like tamalotes as my parents would say, their excess skin always slouching over the soles of my shoes.

My cousin Ruben was the looker of the bunch.  The one all the girls always wanted me to inform them about.  Tell your cousin I said hi.  Give him this letter.  Does he have a girlfriend? His eyes were green, almost hazel, light skin, tall as me, but slender, and always dressed in nicer clothes.  His polo shirts added definition; mine defined embarrassing rolls of fat along my upper body.  Frank, better known as Football Head, literally had a huge head that was shaped like a football. His shoulders were broad like a linebacker, more muscle than fat, dark brown skin, dirty-looking black hair covering his eyes.  He was the crazy one of the bunch, always up for whatever, louder than all of us put together, and he lived just down the street from Ruben’s house, with a whole other half dozen of loud and dark, broad-shouldered brothers and sisters.  Our neighbor was Francisco, my brother’s best friend, who for some reason we called The Rat.  We all lived several blocks away at the Bali Hai where it seemed everyone from our rancho ended up.  That’s how we knew Francisco.  His parents were from the same place as ours, and that made him like family.  Dark and slender, with beady eyes, he looked like Master Splinter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I guess is why we’d call him The Rat.  Francisco was calm and collected, always smiling no matter what, and wherever he was my brother was always close by.

My brother, he was the badass.  An inch shorter than me and about 50 pounds lighter, he was always the one plotting, thinking of new ways we could all get away with something.  Even before anyone else knew what he was thinking I could always tell when he was up to something.  Usually on our walk over to the bus stop, he’d start getting that smirk on his face, those giddy eyes full of mischievousness, telling me in their silence to keep up.  The sad part was I could never keep up.  Not with his long and fast steps, or their inside jokes and friendly insults, most of the time I’d just pretend I knew what they were talking about by laughing, which always seemed to work.  In our barrio of Eses we were just like everyone else.

Because of my size, stocky and tall – compared to them anyway – I commanded a certain level of respect in our circle.  Man I bet Juan can do that.  Don’t mess with him.  He’s all calm and shit, but wait till he gets mad… They were my friends and for them I would have done anything.  We were transforming from boys into men together, counting every hair on our chins, fibbing about the hairs growing out of the other parts of our body, literally bubbling with pimples, some of us more than others, my brother especially, and yet we were just stupid kids trying to figure out who the hell we were.  None of us knew.  We couldn’t have.  But it didn’t matter.  The only thing that really mattered in those days was that we were inseparable and having a blast.

We would have all the rest of our lives to think.