Swapping names...

Hmm.. I don’t think I have much to write about lately… at least not about life in Juarez, which has been so wonderfully uneventful. I love being lazy…
I did have a fun conversation with Dad about our last name the other day, though. I knew I have a “false” last name already, but the story hadn’t been explained to me before. As it is, my family is split into three. But to make things a little less complicated, the point of this story is that just a couple nights ago, I discovered that my grandfather is actually my great uncle. I never met my biological grandfather! ...This whole thing cleared up so many questions for me… My dad has my great uncle’s last name because Dad was adopted by my grandmother’s brother after her second divorce, and our last name is not even my great uncle’s last name either. The last name is originally my Dad’s grandmother’s second husband, who gave his last name to my grandfather (the man that Dad calls Dad, since he raised him) so that my grandfather could take a job in the customs agency. My dad’s original last name is Romero. Very Spanish. Too Spanish, at some point in the very near Mexican history. And my biological grandfather’s name is Antonio Romero.
Crazy stuff. I am so glad I can freely say that now.

It seems there is much traditionalism in my family’s blood… and yet there’s also that innate rebellious tendency. My paternal grandmother comes from an old family of politicians and landowners (which was the same thing at the time). And yet it seems to me that as their offspring (all of them!) came of age, they tried to get away from the political and social restrictions of being a part of an old family, went north and forgot the southern parts of Mexico, and married (and re-married) outside their social class. I think it’s funny that as they rebelled, they did so in a very traditional way! Dad converted to Methodism. My aunt raised a politician… and each of my dad’s brothers (really his cousins) who are not in politics or customs are in trade (a vestige of the landowning times, in my opinion). The result is a wonderful tangle of a family that I swear could be the center of some book … on any topic of your choice. We are all free thinkers, and yet so traditional. We all have an inclination to either the arts and the spoken word or the commercial world. And we all read at least a book or two each month. We are all so much alike and yet we are all so very different. And I think it wonderful how a person’s family has such a great effect on that person’s character and personality… even if they’re not even aware of it…

Last time I visited Grandmother I ended up writing a lot of her stories, and after my conversation with Dad, I practically forced him to dictate to me the story of his family -up to what he knows, which is his grandmother’s life. I’m afraid that all of this history will die in one of the many dark holes of my mind ...if I don’t write these stories down. The history of my family, of where I come from… and such fascinating stories, so many explanations to so many questions cannot just be forgotten.
So that’s the story of how my last name got changed.

Funny how I corrected everyone at SMU for fear of turning into Ms. Cruz...