Last night Mom and I talked about my sister’s many beaus. And their spirituality. And male spirituality. And our spirituality. It’s funny how the most meaningful talks I have with my Mom usually take place at random places and unexpected times. She and I were waiting in the car for my Dad, who had been inside the church for like 30 min, supposedly picking up my little siblings but really mingling with the church members and with the pastor.
My Dad misses being a pastor very, very badly. Once a pastor, always a pastor :) ! Hehe… Especially if “Once” lasted 20 years or so. I am amazed at him… and I do wonder .. or I wish, really, that he’d just go back to leading a church. The church needs him, and he needs the church. And yet there are other things in his mind right now, and in his heart. I think he has stepped out of his youth’s idealism… he remains a dreamer, but he’s become an unnaturally well adapted, unconsciously practical man. He realized that his family needs him too… and he wants to provide us… and Mom, and himself… with stability …with a safety net. His ministry as a missionary to Anapra provides everything but safety, especially financial safety, but it does provide stability. And he’s been able to knit a safety net out of that stability. Or Mom has… :P She’s always been the financial wiz.
But I can’t help my own idealism. Forget stability and the safety net. We can take care of ourselves… we’ll take care of you, it’ll be our turn! Go after your dream! Do as you've wished! Hehe… since you do know your own heart… unlike us…
But that’s how my talks with Mom happen. The mystery that is my Mom will never quite reveal itself to me… but I think such is the nature of Moms in general. It’s probably the wisdom of experience that differentiates them… they have a knowledge of reality that one can not truly understand until one experiences life as fully as they have. My mom is the type of person that would say that Dad is not giving up his dreams, that he has been searching for –or has found!- a balance between his dedication to his ministry and his love of his family. That it is not good to throw practicality out the window, nor is it good to forget your own ministry. That my Dad has in the end built his ministry and evolved through it, while taking care of us. All I know is he simply didn’t stop loving the pastorate. But she’d be right that this love still leaves an immense space in both their hearts for the missionary field…
…the wisdom of experience…
One of the most important parts of my experience at SMU was Q, who has of lately made an alliance with the evil patos and has conceived a machiavellic plan to conquer Mexico :P . He doesn't know I too have an evil plan to conquer the USA. So far his plan has worked. My family loved having him around and getting to know him. He thinks they’re very noisy and chaotic, and they think he’s very quiet… and I think they’re both right :D !! I have to admit it was amusing to see their reactions to each other. But it was also a learning experience for me, just as it was last time he came to visit me at home. I think Q is right that we are after all from very different cultures. I’ve come to know his culture very well, way before knowing him… but I’m glad that he’s getting to know mine as well. I had forgotten how different our social rules are… the rules for what’s appropriate, friendly, respectful… funny. None of which you broke, sweety. No worries. But I could see you were trying to figure it out. I think I still forget sometimes, and I end up getting too close to people, hugging them too hard, kissing faces I shouldn’t be kissing. Or not being friendly enough… lol… But I'm so amazed at how well you did. And there’s always that friendly, amazingly universal set of family rules. She loves us. We love her. She loves him. We love him. And nothing can go wrong. And if it does, it’s never important enough.
We had a blast. The first night, after the airport mess, Dad and I took Ryan to the taqueria my family takes me to whenever I come home. I’m usually starved from the trip and starved of my own culture’s food, and tacos always sound great. We thought it’d make him feel better. And he hadn’t eaten much that day either. My family has eaten tacos at El Cuervo for 3 generations now. I l-o-v-e the place. Great service, great salsa options. Always good tacos... I always have orejones. Q had tacos de carne asada.
The next day we all just worried about the luggage, ate Carne Asada (Tamaulipas, my dad’s birth state recipe) and watched TV. I think Q and I went shopping, and then to the movies that night. Saw the 007 movie. Too cheesy, I thought. Too long too.
The day after that was the 31st. We woke up early to go to church, where the lady introducing guests made three unsuccessful attempts to say Q’s name right… never quite got it, but at least she tried. Everybody was happy to have him visiting. My family and I also became official members of the church that Sunday. After the service we had lunch at the restaurant of the Hotel Maria Bonita. Jokes were made about my latest living room walls paint job looking exactly like the restaurant’s walls. Not funny. LoL. But goooood Mexican food. Also the same hotel where we had my Grandparents' 50th anniversary. We came home and we didn’t find the little purple suitcase we were expecting, but we soon received a call that the luggage was on its way. WOOHOOOO!! The luggage was here within the next hour. Q and Dad were ready and set… but the girls… we had to get ready. So Q and Dad talked while the rest of us got ready. Mom and I got things ready to take to my uncle’s and then we left! We got to my uncle’s place a bit late… but not too late… everybody was eating! Perfect timing if you ask me. My entire family was there, and most of them had already met Q, but I introduced them all, just in case. Q did a good job of remembering my uncles and aunts' names. It’s close to 50 of us! We ate (ham, turkey, 3 different salads, spaghetti, calientito, cake, coffee, and dulce de bomobones, etc) and then we played pool. The Cruz men were making jokes about Q being a sneaky player bc although at first he was just getting the hang of it, he made a few pretty impressive shots at the end. They were joking about him having faked it at first. My cousin Angelica and I played against two grown men and beat them… though neither she nor I knew how to play. They insisted on us sinking the 8 ball “indirectly,” mainly because although these were all informal games, they had been doing it that way during the games before ours, but also because they were 3 or 4 balls behind us :D. Aaaand it hurt their parrandero self esteem. Muajajajajajaja. I got bored of that last ball, though, so we lost on purpose : P After that we took pictures… pictures… pictures… pictures… my grandfather and my uncle Daniel talked to Q and I for a bit… and then it was close to 12 o’clock. Dad, as the minister in the family, gave a small talk about Psalm 90.12. “Enséñanos, Señor, a contar nuestros días, de tal manera que traigamos al corazón sabiduría.” In my very loose translation, it is a prayer that says: “Lord, teach us to count our days in such a way that we will bring wisdom to the heart.” After Dad talked, my Grandfather, as the patriarch of the family, was the first to talk about what the year had meant to him and his family. He told us not to forget that God is the giver of all. Then aunt Sandra, then uncle Daniel, Mom, Misael, and aunt Bety and her father and sister… We took a bit too long in thanking God for our family and for the way we have been able to go through my Mom and my Grandmother’s illnesses, through an armed attack, etc, so the clock hit 12 before we even finished. It is our tradition to have a toast before 12, and to try to eat 12 grapes during the first 12 seconds of the year –one for each month. If you finish your 12 grapes by the last time the clock sounds its bell (or what do you say the clock does?), then you have accepted God’s blessing for the year. In other words, you’ll have good luck for the entire next year. It’s a fun game. Q got all of his grapes in in 12 seconds, though it wasn’t the first 12 seconds of the year. We didn’t do that this year. We were all praying. After the last person finished thanking God for the year, we prayed. We prayed for our family, for the year to come, and we thanked God for all he gave us.
This year, Davidito was born. Mom had her last surgery (we hope). Grandma’s surgery went amazingly well. I met Q. I graduated from college and got a scholarship to Harvard. My cousin David is coming home from Orlando. His sister Luz Rocio has started to reorganize her life around the family, and she has started to pay attention to her spirituality.
We also had bad news. My sister and her husband lost a baby… but the Lord has renewed Sarai’s motherhood. I wonder if she has made the Biblical associations of her name. We are expecting again :) !! And we will celebrate Davidito’s first year of life very soon. Fer will have to wait 2 years to finish college. He might have to go to court… but he went home to Guatemala and filled his heart with his culture’s history and with his family’s love. And I know he will be ok. He will pursue his dreams and the happiness he deserves. Janie also had a tough year… though she’s proven to be tougher than life, and has in the end achieved her goals. She has learned to love and forgive and to follow her dreams. 4.0, people! Even though she also has a full time job and a family to take care of! B’s family suffered a great loss… but I hope that they have felt each other’s love in dealing with their loss… that they have stayed united as a family… and we pray they will heal, and that their joy too will be restored.
Even in what went wrong this year, I see hope. And I am grateful because my family and I, we are not sheltered daughters and sons of God. We have been allowed to build our own strength. And yet we have been taken care of, even through the difficulties. May the Lord hear our prayers! He has heard our supplications. Amen.
The first day of the year came with its due laziness. I woke up pretty late. Dad told us of the possibility of going to Paquime, so Q and I went to get him a permit to leave the city. After that we came home, and Sarai and Andres took us to Anapra. I’m afraid it overwhelmed Q. I've told him that for me visiting Anapra is such a different experience… I see in Anapra the growth it’s been through, not the extreme conditions of poverty. I hope that makes him feel better: it is much, much better than it was 6 years ago.. and it will keep getting better. We have some paved streets now. And light, and electricity, and water. We’re still waiting on a swage system, but I’m sure we will keep growing. And the school is so pretty! It needed a good cleaning when Q saw it, but it’s just so amazing to me.. it already is the best looking school in town :D !
Jan 2 we were supposed to go to Paquime. My Dad had problems getting a permit for the car, though, so he wouldn’t have done it anyway. But we didn’t go because it snowed on us. and gosh, did it snow! So my family, Q, and two neighbors the age of my little siblings went to el Chamizal, a huge park right in the border with el Paso… and ah… the fun. We took pictures and even got the kids on camera. The girls made a snow man and snow angels on the floor and the guys attacked the girls’ work of art… Mom, Q, and I walked to the Museum of History that’s in the Chamizal. I was very disappointed. It’s too small for all the history it could hold, it’s not well taken care of, and Mom was mad that they didn’t even have a working restroom. Oh well. After that we went to Paliz, a flauteria right next to the Benito Juarez stadium… great food! The place has been there for over 50 years… a city-wide traditional place to eat at.
My Dad still didn’t want to travel the next day. Instead, my little siblings, Q and I went to the Museo de la Aduana, and also to the city market to pay a quick visit to my uncles and my grandparents. This museum is amazingly different from the first one we visited. I’ve been there a few times before, and I was hoping they’d be showing a movie they have about the Mexican Revolution.. they only show it on Saturdays, but we still got to see a lot of stuff from both colonial times and from la Revolución. They also had a collection of Chinese Art, and a small exhibit put on by the Cd. Juarez Braille School for the Blind, which I have to admit I didn’t know existed. In the central area there was a display of an artist named Cuevas, who turned out to be from Juarez and also a very famous artist… but still not the artist I was hoping for. Q and I went out for coffee that night. We stuck to the familiar coffee shop in Misiones because it was still cold and the roads were still a little snowy, but we still had a lot of fun. I got a yellow Chabacano tea though. It should have been red.
Finally the next day we went to Paquime! We woke up amazingly early that morning and traveled 3 hours or so to Casas Grandes. I hadn’t been to Paquime before, and I was soooo excited! I was also very sleepy, though, because I had stayed up the night before working on a job application that I should have turned in waaaay before I even came to Juarez… but that’s a sad story… the good part of it is that we got to Paquime and the museum was gorgeous and the place was amazing! Q says that it is much like the places he has visited before in the states, and Dad explained that the Indians in Mexico and the Indians in New Mexico were the same, of course, since there used to be no border in between. We had a lot of fun exploring and walking around the city, which turned out not to be as big as I expected (I have to admit I was glad, though… it was a walk as it is). We took pictures and made questions and formulated silly hypothesis about life back then .. and we had a blast. On the way back home we stopped by a town nearby where a school of some sort was built by Mormons. My first impression of the sight was not necessarily good… it seemed so very strange, and soooo out of place! … but it was also very beautiful. Shame on me. Gotta to accept them good, hard working migrants :) ! One has to admit they are good for the economy :) they do wood and cattle, and they have learned the less expensive American way of building houses. Very beautiful, big homes. They also insist on being called Mexican, which I think is very nice, and very practical. I like their practicality. We also saw huge Mexican haciendas and big houses, most of them inhabbited by the owners of the apple industry, famous for their trunkless trees (bush-like trees, so it is easier to keep trees warm during winter and the fruit close to hand during harvest time) … two of their kids on 3 wheeled motorcycles (what do you call those, again?) were driving around, using normal traffic road space! So dangerous… and then we also saw the more humble peasant houses, always more numerous, but also somehow always more beautiful. After that we had lunch at a restaurant with good enchiladas and then we drove back home, where Dad grilled gooood juicy burgers…
On the fourth… what did we do on the fourth? I have a feeling we vegetated in front of the TV all day. Davidito must have come to visit, like he did most of the other days. I think we ate Lasagna. I made a cake. OH! And my Dad bought a Rosca de Dia de Reyes, the story of which we explained to Q, and my aunt Marisela and her family came over to celebrate. My aunt and her husband are in the process of adopting a child… It was nice to hear a little bit about it. The day after that my parents took the kids to get enrolled in school, and Q and I went to have breakfast at Sanborns… though not before having our own little fax trouble. After breakfast –long and placid—we walked around the book section and then headed to the market to do some shopping… which really ended in my uncle choosing a very nice looking Paquime pot for Q’s D&M. we're sad it didn't make it... My grandparents invited us to their place for some buñuelos, so we stopped at home for a quick lunch and to see my sister’s baby’s party stuff, and then we met my parents at my grandparents house. We made buñuelos and had dinner there …and poor Q was sick by the end of the night… So he and I left a little early to come back home and get him some medicine and some very needed rest.
The next day I took him to the airport… despite my many plans to kidnap him! Jiji… we’re not that terrible : P Q got home safely :) and luckly his luggage did too :P
