Juan of Words

Top 10 Dichos for New Year’s Eve

New Year's Eve in Times Square

If you believe in 2012 time will truly be of the essence, considering the end of the world and all according to the Mayan calendar, then let’s just pretend this Bucket List is sort of a how to guide for putting your best foot forward in the next and final 12 months of life on earth. Think of it as all of the best advice your momma gave you growing up on how one should lead a good life! And hey, if we do live to see another year, this advice might just enrich your life anyway.

1. Haz Bien Sin Mirar A Quien – Do good for the sake of doing it, regardless of who might be on the receiving end of your good deeds. You don’t need to be thanked. You don’t need to be acknowledged. It will all be returned to you in the end. Read More About This Dicho Here.
2. Amor Con Amor Se Paga – Love is paid with Love. There’s no other way around it. If you really want to experience true love you have to learn how to love. How to love others, how to accept love, and most importantly, how to love yourself. Read More About This Dicho Here.
3. Mientras Hay Vida Hay Esperanza – So long as there is life there is hope. The last thing we should ever let go off is hope. There are going to be horribly painful moments in your life, when you probably won’t be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, when life might not even seem like it’s worth living. It is these moments when our faith is truly tested. No matter what the odds, know that tomorrow is another day and that things will inevitably get better.  Read More About This Dicho Here.
4.  No Hay Peor Ciego Que El Que No Quiere Ver – There is no one more blind than the one who chooses not to see. Or loosely translated could also be “you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.” Regardless of how hard you attempt to deny your own truths, or those of others, life always has a way of bringing them to light and making you deal with them whether you want to or not. Remember that age old rule, honesty is the best policy. Read More About This Dicho Here.
5. En Boca Cerrada No Entran Moscas – If you don’t want drama, keep your mouth shut. Nobody likes a chismoso, especially if your gossip is intended to offend and hurt others. Of course life without a little harmless gossip just wouldn’t be as much fun. The key is in keeping it respectful and not humiliating anyone. Read More About This Dicho Here.
6. La Muerte Es Lo Único Seguro Que Tenemos En Esta Vida – The only sure thing in life is death. Sorry, but your momma was right. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, how much fame you might achieve, how luxurious of a life you might lead, at the end of it all you’re still headed towards the final truth we all share: death. Concentrate not on how much you can attain, but on how much you can affect the lives of others and how you will be remembered. Read More About This Dicho Here.
7. Dios Aprieta, Pero No Ahoga – God squeezes, but doesn’t choke (sort of a literal translation). Or if you prefer a less religious interpretation, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. When you’re at the brink of desperation, right about ready to just give up, always remember that life is precious and ALWAYS worth living because you never know what tomorrow could bring. Okay, so this dicho is very similar to number three, but it’s just such great advice! Read More About This Dicho Here.
8. Quien Bien Te Quiere Te Hará Llorar – You are going to cry and that’s okay! Sometimes letting go and just letting it all out is the best thing you can do for yourself. I’m telling you from personal experience, the more you have been holding in, the more relieved you are going to feel when you just stop and allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. It might be a little embarrassing,sure. Then again what’s more important? Peace in your heart and soul or saving face? Besides, it’s not like you can’t go lock yourself up in the restroom and cry your eyes out. Read More About This Dicho Here.
9. Más Vale Tarde Que Nunca – Better late than never. It truly never is too late to right a wrong, or make a change, especially if it means you will be happier. So often we are held back by our own insecurities and excuses, preferring to live with the consequences of our actions and decisions, that when we finally decide to accept that apology or offer our forgiveness we can’t help to wonder why we waited so long in the first place. Challenge yourself. Ask yourself what is holding you back. Read More About This Dicho Here.
10. De Noche Todos Los Gatos Son Pardos – Certainly we’re different. In so many ways. There wouldn’t be enough space on my poor little server to go through all of our differences, and the truth is they don’t even really matter. We are much more similar than we are different. Remember that when someone approaches you for help, when they are too scared and weak to speak up for themselves, when they are hopeless and helpless, when you yourself are under any of these distresses, that on a human level we are all the same. Read More About This Dicho Here.

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Donde Cabe Uno, Caben Dos: Life Lessons for Adult Children

Donde cabe un mexicano caben cien. That was the variation of this popular dicho we grew up with. I think in actually it’s supposed to go something like this: donde cabe uno, caben dos. This weekend while we were working on the house we all lived in for nine years with my parents I couldn’t help but be reminded of this popular saying over and over again. The house has been in the family for a long time and for reasons that I won’t even begin to go into ahorita está en un completo estado de desmadre.

Padre e hijo

Suffice it to say when you get a renter make sure you know who you are renting to.  A lot easier said than done.  But hopefully now we’ve learned a very valuable lesson.

Anyway, when we came back from vacation, from making all of those great memories and spending so much quality time together, we had to face the reality that there was a whole lot of time and money that was going to be required to get this house back into shape.  Estabamos un poco dumbfounded at the bad luck.  I mean we hadn’t even taken a real vacation in years, but as they taught me in French class c’est la vie.  So off we went planning and budgeting to try to make things happen as soon as possible.  The very first thing we had to do was replace the back fence on the property.

Okay.  No problem!  Only contractors want way too much money to put up the fence and I haven’t the slightest clue about how to do it myself.  The last time I tried my fence started out pretty even on one side and progressively became more slanted along the 48 feet of property we had to cover.  By the time I noticed it was coming out crooked ya estaba bien cansado and my response was “oh well, fudge it,” which in hindsight is probably one of the main reasons we’re having to do it all over again… only this time under the supervision of mi papá.  I’d kind of been hinting around about him helping me, and by that I mean talking to my mom about it (she seems to have a way of getting him to do things, lol), without coming out and directly saying “can you help me?”

No sé porqué pero como me daba cosa to ask my dad who’s already in his sixties to give me a hand.  Finally, I just broke down and asked him.  He, of course, said yes.

The plan was that we’d show up on Sunday and knock out the fence in one day.  Go ahead and laugh.  It’s okay.  Llegamos temprano, and we started right off digging the holes for the 4×4’s we would need to put in to support the new fence – after we had already knocked down the old one.  My luck, desde luego, was that out of all of the rainless-drought-inducing days we’d had this summer – and we’ve had plenty believe me – this particular Sunday was the one day the rain would not let up.  Entre breaks in the heavy down pouring we tried our best to get as much done as we possibly could.  We did it… well at least put in the 4×4’s that is, but by the end of the day our shoes and pants were covered in mud, we’d both slipped in the mud trying to work, every single item of clothing we were wearing was drenched in very cold water, including my chones, and now we were facing the dilemma of how to cover up 48 feet of a barren property line.

We figured that one out too, and despite my complete exhaustion at the end of the night when I hit the bed, I was happier than I had been in a long time.  As a kid I’d always been more of a momma’s boy and rarely went out to do real hard labor with my father.  That was my older brother’s job and he was good at it.  Besides when was I ever going to need to know how to do all that stuff?  DOH!  This weekend, though, I really felt like we were making up for lost time.  No pude evitar feeling a little sad about having missed out on all this father-son comradery, but as we were working, having an actual conversation and telling jokes, I couldn’t help but feel a little extra joy in my heart.  I still feel it today, and the fact that we have to go back and work on it some more this week doesn’t even bother me at all.

In fact, I’m actually looking forward to it.

I might not be a kid anymore, but hey… it’s never too late to make up for lost time!

La Vida Es Un Carnaval: Let Somebody Know You Love Them

"Corazón Sagrado" by RAJANBAKYA

Sometimes there are no words that can be spoken, that should be spoken, or even that are necessary.  A deeper connection, innate in all of us, more animal instinct than anything else, I think, takes over and the only thing we are left to do is react to our own actions.

I’ve seen and experienced this heightened sense of human contact on a couple of occasions now and each time it’s left me speechless, in awe of what the mind and heart, el corazón especially, are capable of when uninhibited.  I’d dare say it’s a higher power acting within us, through us, where we are only the vessels to something much more grand taking place before our very eyes.

I’m not sure what got thinking about this now… maybe it is my recently-heightened sense of sensibility, or maybe I’m just thinking too long and too hard again.  I tend to do that a lot, as well as over-analyze situations and experiences to the point of even confusing myself beyond rationality at times, but that’s just the way I am.  I’ve always been that way, and sad as it to admit, I don’t really know how to be any other way.  Por alguna razon así me hicieron…

If I’m completely honest though, it really was one of my sisters that got me thinking about this subject this time.  I’ve blogged about it before, our tendency to just automatically embrace each other whenever we see one another – my siblings, parents, and I (Raising a Bilingual Kid: ¡Saluda!) – but the older I get the fewer words are necessary between us it seems.  Sure they make our conversations more interesting, not to mention actual conversations, but more often than not just sitting in the same house together, laughing together, sharing those little nothings together are enough to reiterate just how much we mean to one another.  There’s a certain sense of peace and happiness, a lifting of the spirit, in that.  I don’t know how else to accurately explain it.

Y definitivamente sé que no somos los únicos.  So today les dedico este post a todos los que como yo comparten este sentimiento.

Life is too short.  Let somebody know you love them!

Further proof of our never being alone, and always a little pick me up for me personally, Celia Cruz’s ‘La Vida es un Carnaval’.  You can’t hear this song and not feel more positive.  Happy Monday!

The Deer We Almost Ate

Runaway Deer

One second we were playing, the next all of us stood frozen at attention, staring in disbelief at what it was we were witnessing.  There in the front yard, just a couple of feet away from us, well, on the other side of the barb wired fence to be exact, leaned my mother as hard as she could against her legs, pulling her body back with more force than I’d ever seen her use.  She was holding a rope in her hands and as my eyes made their way across it, there on the other side stood a full grown adult deer, pulling back as hard as she was, but apparently not as forcefully, because as we stood there in between the screen door, that by this time was creaking from my older sisters having run out of the house to witness what the rest of us were yelling about like maniacs, and the static propane tank that sat a couple of yards away from our pig pens and hen houses, my mother had managed to tie this wild beast against a wooden post from our same barb wired fence.

Before pulling up her handmade dress, just a tad in order to climb back into our yard through the barb wire, and turning back to scold us for not having even attempted to help during her more than three minute struggle with the deer in front of us, my mother let out a smile of satisfaction with herself.  She was proud of what she had just accomplished, and by the look on her face it was clear she was also imagining exactly how we would devour every last bit of meat on that rather plump deer.  We had never seen a venado this close, much less this size and height.  It must have been at least three feet high, four with its antlers, and pretty round around the stomach too.

Who knew what deer tasted like, but it was meat!

The rest of the day we all kept playing around the wild beast, talking about how it might taste in tacos, soup, barbecue, or even mixed in as ham or tosino with our regular eggs and beans.  This wasn’t like the time my uncle had tried to trick us into eating snake – we actually wanted to taste the deer in our front yard.  Bambi the movie had already been released, and we had all watched it by now, but despite that fact none of us really felt sorry for the animal in our front yard.  We were hungry… for something new.  For a feast of our own, maybe not as fancy as our closest neighbors, my cousins and uncles, would have, which for some reason our family was never invited to, but better than eggs and beans for breakfast, with spinach on the side or mixed in with our egg, and arroz y frijoles for lunch and dinner, over and over and over, again and again, everyday of the year.

All of us were practically salivating at the possibilities.

Little did we know that as soon as dad came home that night our gastronomic fantasies would all be over.  He practically leaped out of our house as soon as my mother proudly confessed her shining achievement for the day over dinner.  Yelling like a mad man he paced around the yard trying to figure out from my mother who had seen her drag the deer across the woods into our yard, if anyone had seen the animal tied up against our fence, and wondering if anybody had noticed that there was one less deer in the wilderness surrounding us tonight.  For as much as my mother argued that nobody would notice one more or less deer in all of that monte out there, or that it was only fair for us to keep and eat that animal as compensation for the little money my father earned for all of his hard work, all of fifteen dollars a day, he could not be convinced to slay that beast and stock up our refrigerator with meat for many, many weeks to come.  Instead, despite and over my mother’s yelling súplicas, he dutifully untied the deer and let it run away into the darkness.

The land we lived on was the property of my uncle’s boss.  We were there de arrimados, mojados at that, so my father didn’t want to make any waves, much less be accused of stealing one of their deer, at least that’s what he’s kept as his story until now.  Again, we stood in disbelief, this time as our delectable prey disappeared from our sight.

Every once in a while my mother still sarcastically brings up the deer, and how we would have had so much meat for such a long time had my father not been so scared.  He doesn’t say anything anymore.  Just sits there quietly and let’s her tell her story.

La Vergüenza de Mi Primer Carrito: Viejo y Feo, Pero…

Okay, it wasn't nearly this bad... but it felt pretty close back then

“When the bell rings you better hurry up and make it to the car.  If you’re not there by the time I get there, I’m leaving you!”  That was the constant threat to my younger brother when we’d get to school in the mornings… that is when I wasn’t trying to get him to skip with me just to drive over to Burger King for a breakfast croissant.  I know, por eso estabamos como estabamos, but those little sandwiches of egg, melted cheese and ham were delicious.  My mouth still waters thinking about them.

I never actually had the nerve to leave him behind, however.

The bell would ring and we’d both race to the car like our lives literally depended on it.  We didn’t have time to talk to anyone, say goodbye, or take our time walking to our car like everyone else.  Whatever corner of the school we were in, we’d power walk, sometimes run, as fast as we could, which in reality was more like hobbling, with our jumbo-sized backpacks stuffed full of books – we were both a little nerdy even though neither one of us would have admitted it back then – and try to make it across the street from Eisenhower High School to the apartment complex next door where we’d park our car every morning before going to class.  They had an open parking lot that wasn’t gated and after so many months of our old beat up car being parked there the management probably just assumed it was one of the tenants.  It wasn’t, but it sure did make our lives a whole lot easier.

If we didn’t make it to the car in time, we’d stand against the railing of the nearest stairs, the ones leading to the upstairs apartments, throw our backpacks on the ground, behind the bushes on either side, and pretend we were just chilling, waiting for someone to come by, or just watching the school buses to pass by.  A few times we even waved into the air like someone in one of those yellow buses was actually acknowledging us, saying goodbye back.

Me:  “Laugh… pretend like you’re laughing!”

Him:  “For what?”

Me:  “Just do it… hurry up!”

The school buses had to pass directly in front of where our car was parked in order to exit the school campus and they were all tall enough to let their passengers, our schoolmates, peer directly over the six foot high wooden fence that shielded our vergüenza de carro from them, and the rest of the kids in their own one-solid-color-cars, when they weren’t riding so high above the ground.  What was worse was when we’d make it to the car, jump inside of it, and turn it on, just to see the first school bus driving by in front of us.  We couldn’t get out of the car and run to the stair railings anymore – there wasn’t enough time – so we’d just sink down into the seats as low as we possibly could and laugh our asses off.  All of the drama about the car was really an adrenaline rush.

The car itself was really quite the loyal little carcachita. My eldest sister had bought it for herself after high school and had fully paid it off before she gave it to me.  That’s right, gave it to me!  I didn’t pay her one single penny for the ride even though it was the first car she ever owned and I knew it was always going to be a little special to her.  The hood was a rusted dark blue, the driver’s side door an almost forest green color that looked faded and old, and the rest of the car was a creamy, very light green, almost like a lemon meringue tone that I had always admired… even when the car was not yet mine.  It was a Pontiac, four door sedan, that couldn’t have been younger than a 1991 model, but it got us where we needed to go and it left us both with so many cherished memories in that car.

I was so embarrassed and ashamed in those days that I never properly thanked my sister for the ride.  Thanks, Lola!  For letting me have your car and for giving me this story to tell. Maybe one day I can return the favor.

Los Hombres También Lloran

Y ahora sí, como dice la canción: “y no me aguito… ¡nomás me acuerdo!”

Man Tears by Artemis

In truth, there have only been a few times that I’ve seen my father cry.  A couple of times of joy, another handful of pura tristeza.  He’s always been a man of strength and bravery to me…  the one with arms of steel and shoulders capable of taking on the world.  When I think of him, instinctively my heart goes soft and something inside of me just makes it unavoidable to want to cry, at least a little bit for all the little things I think I know now that I didn’t know back then.

Ahora que yo soy el hombre de la casa it’s easier to recognize the hows and whys.  The things I hated in him once I now see and appreciate in myself.

The same things Edgar will probably grow up hating in me too.

La cosa es, that until I was teenager, I really did believe the myth that real men don’t cry.  That it was a sign of weakness, a symbol of having been defeated, to let even one single tear run down my face.  Even worse, to do so in the presence of others, because it made me look pathetic and stupid to them and to myself.  As far as I can remember though, nobody ever told me that “real men don’t cry.”  I guess I just assumed so because nunca in my childhood did I presence my father cry.  Maybe he did and I just didn’t pay attention… estaba demasiado ingenuo para entender. No sé.

The truth is we do, and sometimes it’s even good for us.  Personally, les puedo decir that up to now there have only been a few times when I’ve literally balled my eyes out, sobbing uncontrollably as an adult for things I literally had no control over.  Those memories are still too painful and fresh to talk about, but the happy tears I’ve shed… those, have left a lasting imprint on my soul.

I want to make father cry again.  Not tears of sadness, but tears of joy, because in the end he was the one that taught me this very important life lesson: que los hombres también lloran.

I hope I can do the same for Edgar.

Los dejo con la canción que fue la inspiración de este post.  Se llama “El Hombre Que Más Te Amo” y la canta Chente.  El otro día la escuche por primera vez en mi camioneta y al escuchar la letra se me salieron una cuantas lagrimillas porque me hizo pensar en mi padre.  Espero les guste también.