1962 Nueva Ciudad Guerrero, Tamaullipas, Mexico.
I can imagine my Mexican grandmother, Ventura Molina Flores, so vividly. She was married at 13, had nine children and was fiercely anti-church but a great devotee of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I have a memory from when I was about seven. She stands five feet tall, at her mesquite wood fireplace, cooking our breakfast and uses her bare hands to turn the tortillas she has just made on the blazing hot comal. After breakfast she stands out in her backyard of chickens, pigs, rows of corn and fruit trees watching patiently as my muscle bound teenage brothers try with all their might but fail to cut the mesquite logs for her to use in the fireplace. Nana, which is what we call her, wears her traditional black dress that all widows wore, pale flesh colored cotton stockings and tan cloth shoes that resemble moccasins. She sees the boys have given up chopping and trots out beside the now sweating grandsons and takes the ax. Next, she expertly chip-chips ting-tings at just the right spots upon the logs to chop them to proper fireplace proportions. All our grand kid eyes are bugged out in surprise.
January 24, 2019, Netflix's "One Day At A Time" Episode 13 "Quinces"
"Quinces" is not the way my coming out would have played out with my abuela. She more than likely would have come after me with her ax instead of sewing me a tux for my quinceañera. The Cuban grandmother character played by Rita Moreno struggles in her three inch dancer's heels to climb her own tall mountain of centuries of her culture's homophobia, but she reaches the top. She chooses her granddaughter over convention. Many tears of joy, disbelief, and wonder flowed at my house.
Does this only happen on TV? Does TV reflect cultural change or does it spark the change it first shows? Yes, yes and yes in the case of One Day At a Time producer Norman Lear, who has broken at least as many cultural barriers in his nearly 80 years of working in TV as my grandmother chopped mesquite logs.
God bless all the abuelas as they stand guard protecting their children in the best way they know how.
Is anything as heart wrenching as a teenager's mauling and cruel self judgment? Eighth Grade made me step back in time into my moccasins, tee shirt and cut off jeans when my world revolved around (some) my family and (mostly) friends.
1968-69 my eighth grade year ranks as the worst year in my until then much loved and secure life. That fall, I got tossed out of a girls catholic school I'd attended for nine years for exercising my writing and artistic abilities on school bathroom walls. And since my subjects were both innocent and came from powerful families, the nuns showed me the door. I never even got a chance to give my reasons for the graffiti: a full-on war had broken out between two neighborhoods. It was rich versus the poor and the victor (the rich) had taken the spoils: the boys in my old neighborhood had left us girls they had grown up with for new girls who owned swimming pools, and whose maids served sodas to visitors. Was I pissed!!!
The spring semester of eighth grade I enrolled in public school where I knew not one person. My mom and I had to scramble for clothes for me to wear. I had no school clothes, only my old uniforms (bye bye) and play clothes. Add to this the general awkwardness of being 13, the onslaught of puberty, the crushing beauty of everyone around you-- except your own--to which you were blind.
I made it to the end of eighth grade in my new school with some new friends to replace my old gang from catholic school and when the next year began, I flew like an eagle, joining clubs and becoming a junior journalist. I ended the ninth grade semester being awarded more recognition at the school assembly than I thought possible. There was a God and she was two people, my Journalism sponsor, Margarita Newton and my Physical Education coach, Gracie Alderete.
The heavy lifting during this hard time came from me, however. Losing like a cocoon the protective environment of my old school, where I had made merry mischief since kindergarten was harder than I expected. I cringed to think what people said behind my back, but thank God that I had no actual proof or even an idea, because there was no social media to document the gossip and rumors.
Watching Eighth Grade makes me think how much harder it may be to grow up today because of the the additional pressures of images and text to tell you exactly what everyone is writing and saying about you --or not writing and saying.
Today the Los Angeles Times reported on toxic masculinity.
Always the late bloomer, I've
just realized that I've lived all of my life, save for the first three
years, without a father and thus, outside of the standard, mainstream
brand, under-the-nose patriarchy.
My dad died on my third birthday. I'm told I was the light of his life and that I was a very happy baby girl. What his loss meant for me was clear from the start: I missed out immeasurably from his absence. I lacked his approval and affection, his support in all manner of experiences. Perhaps the most important was the hole he left in our family, leaving us without a counterbalance to my mother, left alone to juggle roles of widow, mother of five children. Mama was thrust into a role of leadership that her traditional Mexican culture had sorely under-prepared her for, providing her with sewing instead of school lessons.
What hadn't been clear to me were what advantages came with being brought up fatherless. From my earliest memories, I grew up in a tribe full of brothers, neighbors and uncles, who I studied carefully, learning about their strengths, weaknesses and character. Think of the church and its teachings then add in the mostly manly representations in movies and TV and my heaping plate of male culture was lacking nothing. On the other side of the equation, there were the amazing teachers --all nuns or old-school women teachers that I had until high school. And, back at home, on the main stage, my mother's example, keeping it together for the family despite many, many challenges. My lone and imperfect parent, who for better or worse always knocked herself out for us was my biggest teacher. And she taught me a gal did not need a man to do what needed doing in this world.
1. Go Your Own Way. You may as well follow your bliss. The regular rules do not apply in the absence of a husband and dad. Outside, the patriarchal culture sits like a fog bank safely outside your living room window, but inside, the coast is clear. Keep building the world you want to live in.
2. No patriarchy, no problem. My own agency and accountability served me more than being dependent on approval stamped legitimate by tradition, society or culture.
Fireworks are illegal in the city limits and that is why the Woodlawn Lake Park Rangers quickly patrolled over to any arriving visitors at the park to inform them of the rules. We all know the rules. Following them is another story.
It was an hour before midnight and we strolled with the dog at the dark and empty park to walk off a delicious dinner celebrating decades of friendship. The light fog rose on the streets and under the lamps suspended water particles mixed with fireworks' smoke and debris from hundreds--no, thousands--of yards and driveways surrounding the dark, lonely, law-abiding island. All around on the West Side there were youngsters, hipsters, dudes and dudettes, grandpa's and abuelitas setting off cohetes, fireworks--tradition and sheer fun silencing the law.
Back on our Woodlawn Avenue porch near midnight, the explosions registered in regular rhythm from miles around. At the stroke of midnight the thunder roared without a pause and the light show expanded its panorama. We looked in each direction and the heavens were painted with flying light spectacles rising, exploding and drifting downward. It was hard to hear each other talk or glimpse even a quarter of the night's lighted splendors.
Several cars stopped on the street near us to take in the free light show and sit out the fever-pitch of explosions. Up the street a group of people squatted in between the street and the sidewalk to shoot their contraband fiery missiles and add their flares and explosions to the giant night sky canvas. They, and all of us gazing at our human-made-stars-of-only-a-few-seconds.
My thrifty mother's voice in my head asked, "How much money went up in sparkle and smoke tonight that could have paid for house paint or porch repairs?" Not the point. A better
question might be: How many of us need to launch our dreams and hopes for
the new year arriving with our own bursting, booming mark on the sky?
