Anger

today ray and the kids and i took a road trip to yuma, i was so afraid to leave for what seemed like an eternity away from Phoenix.  the thought of something happening to my mom and me not being near enough to come to her in time is something that had me worrying extensively.  the thing is though, that life is so short that it makes sense to live it.  i saw a sign on the drive there, it said "feed your body well, it is where you live" it was an advertisement for organic food.  i didn't eat well today though, i ate crappy, and that's not like me as of the last year or so.  I just feel so very angry about my mom.  it just doesn't make sense to me why she had to get sick.  out of all the people out there that this could have happened to, why her? at times the pain i feel gets translated into an urge to fix things, to do right, to eat well and to take care of myself and my children, and then there's days like today where I just want to quit...i just want to say "fuck you cancer, I'm not afraid of you, i'll do what I want!!" and yet that's exactly what I don't want to do...I want to have this experience be motivation for myself and family to do something positive, to live a healthy lifestyle not just for a year, but permanently.  I realize there will be days where I fail, but I'm committed to keep trying

t r y i n g

to just put in the work and try to live a healthy and productive life, i owe that to my momma.  we had breakfast at cracker barrel.  She loves that place.  I was thinking how nice it would be to be there with her.  ray emerson loves it so much too.  he loves looking at things and playing with the gadgets they have in the store while he contemplates a way to get us to buy him something.  he was so grumpy today, parenting is definitely not easy.  he screams and rages at times in ways that seriously makes me want to lose my cool, but i know its just not what i want for him.  i don't want to compete with his anger and be tough on him.  i want to have a relationship with him, where I'm his safe spot, not a person who controls and makes him afraid.  i'm working on it.  one thing that worked today is just letting him be angry, giving him permission and the space to hate me and everything around him and then allowing him to jump into being happy as soon as he was ready.  i assured him that we loved him and to let us know when he was done being angry.  we didn't lecture him as to why he was mad or why he shouldn't rage, we just worked on rewarding that he was ready to be happy.  i think cancer taught me that, i feel like we all need space to be mad sometimes, even if it's not pretty.  life is not always what we expect or want, and realizing that sooner than later is important

when i was little it always took me forever to find a way to be okay again.  i knew how to get good and angry but i had no idea how to come back from it.  sometimes things my parents said, the way they reasoned with me, or just in having space to think about things, made me realize i was wrong  and though i wanted to be okay again, i just did not know how to do that, how to go from having been at one end of the spectrum to the other.  sometimes my mom would just hug me and that would be just what i needed, but as i grew up, it did not get easier, others didn't know to hug me and help me cross over to being okay.  i had to learn eventually that happiness is just a choice.  you just have to decide when its time to let anger go...

i'm trying

Birthday Mornings

Today is a special day.

For the last thirty years my sisters and I have developed a sort of refined tradition where we wake up early morning, rush to the grocery store, and buy whatever flowers, balloons, and birthday cards we can gather.  We search the bakery section for a cake that might have the already imprinted letters of "happy birthday," pickup starbucks or make some coffee and blast into the journey of waking up our beloved family member to "surprize" them with our bday wishes and gifts :)

I put surprize under quotations because frankly, after doing this year after year, most of us 'know' to lie and bed, waiting patiently for everyone to arrive, we keep our eyes closed pretending to be asleep and then try with our best acting faces to look unaware and unexpecting...

Well today, March 4th, 2011, is officially my father's 50th birthday!!
But, sadly, it is also the first year that i was unable to make it to wake him up :'(

I don't know how others feel about birthdays, but in our family...they are HUGE deals! and living in Tucson, last year in Bisbee, it has been extremely tough to keep our family tradition alive.  Needless to say..i'm a bit bummed about it...i love my dad sooo much!

I still remember being 9 years old and trying to orchestrate with my sisters the order in which we were going to enter my parents bedroom.  I would carry the cake, yesica might have carried our gift and jazmin the balloons and flowers, little Emmy would follow behind us with his own handmade bday card...

It didnt matter how tired we were, or how much sleep we had, we had to wake up every year on that birthday morning, and do this...

sometimes we would play a special song in the background, other times we would make WAY too much noise, most of the time one of us would argue with each other "shut up stupid, go get the cake idiot..." etc. but you know these are our memories.  Our family, like most, or like all is far from perfect, but we love each other like crazy, and no matter how many years go by, no matter how different our lives have become, no matter how much we all have changed, no matter where we live, I KNOW that every birthday morning, our hearts are not with us, our hearts wake up next to that person, that one person that we love so deeply, that person in our FAMILIA.

TE AMO PAPA.

sucede que tu amor es como el viento,

como el aire que respiro

nunca nos damos cuanta de lo que siempre hemos tenido

como un pajaro

que acaba de nacer

sus alas se estrechan

y aprende pronto a volar

bajo del siempre el ha estado

en silencio y en fortaleza

sosteniendole sus suenos

apoyandole sus alas

bajo sombra del ayer

sin reprochos

tu me amas

y me ensenaste a levantarme

cuando torpe yo cai

tu promesa

la has mantenido

siempre a mi lado,

ha estado un viento,

un aire,

un amigo,

un hombre,

            mi papa.

ahora yo...

te dedico una promesa

que no importa el tiempo, ni la distancia

aunque mi cuerpo estubiera ausente

            mi corazon siempre estara

           junto de ti.

levantandote cada manana

como los pajaros

que tanto cantan

con su ruido,

yo estare.

y que recuerdes siempre,

nuestros viajes a celaya,

nuestros recuerdos

las alegrias y peleas

nuestros triunfos y dolores

que sigamos siempre, asi

queriendonos

        cada

                  dia

                        mas...

Going Home

The month of july was crazy hectic and yet so amazingly beautiful...so much has happened that this post will probably be all over the place, but that's ok...

rambling is good from time to time..(so i tell myself)

Anyway...

Bisbee weather was absolutely amazing for most of July, flowers started blooming once again, and then of course the smell of rain against the dirt is so absolutely unforgetable...my favorite part, however, is the deep greys and blues that dress the sunsets and skyscapes in the afternoons...i wish i could cherish each and every one of those moments and or put them in some sort of scrapbook to take with me no matter where I go...I suppose there's always the camara...but though I'm fond of photos I don't believe that even a photo can capture the gracious beauty of experiencing it all...for one i think our senses simply don't function as well in isolation...i.e. you can view a beautiful image..but to couple that vision with sound and smell..and even taste..it's something different...perhaps only the mind can store it away in a place where maybe memory alone can find it...but with time memories fade...and then they're gone

oh i don't know..i've been feeling kind of melancholic and lethargic...so i guess the weather is a good place to begin...and then of course there was mexico

with that alone i should be super happy...but everytime something good happens, there's always it's counter opposite, and then there's you...in the middle of it all...

i had the most amazing trip...i took a one week vacation to my hometown (Salvatierra, Guanajuato, Mex) with my family.  It was super fun...but most of all it felt like a relief...a sort of going home feeling for me...

though i now live in the states...i'm not sure I will ever feel like this is my home...my home is salvatierra...

no doubt about it...

yet i don't know why..i mean..i've lived in arizona for most of my life...i only lived in guanajuato till I was eight...i'm now 30...so you do the math...

yet still..i just feel more alive when i'm there...it's the food, the people, the colors, the streets, the smells, and the green, oh man the richness of the green pastures down there are just unreal...i guess that's why i love bisbee...it reminds me in subtle ways to being somewhere different...and yet it's not enough...

anyhow...we drove for about 24 hours until we arrived at our destination...this is a picture of the road there...

 

strangely enough..i believe this is the one and only picture I took...i kept relying on others in my family to take picutres...i so regret this...but anyway...the minute we got there I instantly felt like crying...i was so emotional..i just love the streets of salvatierra...life seems so simple there...

anywho..i tried to make the best of the time i had there...we arrived on a friday..and spent the afternoon with my aunt alta and my cousins, then of course, we made our way to the portal to eat some largas....hmmm...largas!

Largas are these large and particularly thick handmade tortillas (kind of like a huarache...if you are familiar with the term)...you fill them with a variety of foods..from beans de la olla to zuchini to cactus to pico de gallo and/or rajas (strips from a chile poblano with sour cream and onion) and for meat eaters..there's of course lots of choices such as steak and other items...at the portal near the town park or jardin.  The jardin's are very popular in central and southern mexico..it's like a plaza or piazza in italy, they usually sit at the center of the town and typically near a church, there people tend to gather and eat ice cream from one of the many vendors, they also sell cake and other yummies...well in Salvatierra..right across the jardin, is a portal where food vendors gather..and there's anything you can imagine..from largas to enchiladas to tamales to pozole to atole and bunuelos (a sweet desert that will kick your socks off) to hamburgers and also jello with eggnog...yup jello..lol..

So as you can imagine the smells that radiate from the portal captivate and lure you in..pretty much every night...:) and we of course..took full advantage....strangely enough, however, though we ate soooooo much..we actually lost weight...mainly because the food in mexico is just so much fresher and beyond that I think its because you walk everywhere down there...

So as I was saying...we got there on a friday and then spent all of saturday preparing for my cousins wedding.  The ceremony was beautiful with the exception of a bit of drama in the middle of it all..but oh well..the important thing is that the drama did not involve the groom and the bride...so i think that's all that matters...on the contrary their love held on strong throughout the night...it was beautiful...and fun...

We also were lucky enought to make it to the beach...we went to Ixtapa for a couple days and it was so perfect.  My favorite thing to do at a beach is to eat french fries with lots of ketchup while under the influence of a rum and coke...it was a todo incluido deal..i.e. all inclusive hotel..so you could eat and drink as much as you wanted.  In the evenings..they had some amazing shows...with wonderful dancers and singers..and lots of laughing..my dad actually got on stage our last night there and entered some crazy contest where he pretty much made  fool of himself...we cheered him on as much as we could!

And then, as our week vacation came to an end...my husband got sick...it totally sucked because we spent the next day or two indoors..but in a way..it was good to sneak in some rest...after a hectic and exciting few days.  I think it was the cheese in a chile relleno. Unfortunately, some of the cheeses that are unpasteurized can make you sick because they carry bacteria we arent used to unless we lived there...it's the well known travelers diar..ewww! i will not type that word..but you know what i mean...;)

Our last day was pretty magical...Ray surprized me by booking an amazing amazing hotel in the middle of mexico city, with the most amazing panaromic views you can imagine...it was literally a condo...with two rooms, two bathrooms, modern furniture, 42 in LG TV, the works! They even had a brownie waiting for us...in the room...it was so amazing..did i mention the word amazing?

and then just like that...our vacation ended.  So yeah.  That was my vacation. 

We flew back in lieu of driving because my family stayed back an extra week and we needed to get back to Bisbee.  We flew into Hermosillo, the plane ride was a breeze but it was once we arrived at Hermosillo that the problems began.  A crazy cabdriver completely drove us to the wrong bus station..so we missed our bus back to Naco.  Fonally at around 4pm, after putting up with hunger and the unbearable heat...we took a seven hour bus ride back to Agua Prieta, and then Ray's mom generously picked us up and took us back to Bisbee...whew! we were t i r e d! and so relieved to be back....but amidst it all..in the silence...i began to miss salvatierra, my home sweet home.

Beginning

I don’t know why but for some reason I’ve always had a problem with beginnings. Like time, it seems unclear and many times arbitrary where one chooses to put a start and an end to things. At any rate, most things need to begin somewhere or at least be titled or indicated as such in order for that which unfolds to make sense.

So, this is the beginning of my blog. I wanted to “begin” reflecting or at least recording some of the reflections that I find interesting. There is no good reason for why I want to do this, other than perhaps my own desire to take a picture of things that have no beginnings or ends but rather are a part of this life that is continuous, erratic, and full of possibilities, limitations, and most of all contradictions.

I’ve always enjoyed journaling. It began for me at the age of ten or eleven when I began reading Judy Blume books such as “Are you there god, it’s me Margaret.” I remember spending night after night recording memories, snippets of my days such as “I eat gravy for lunch, it was grows.” When I go back and read some of the things I recorded, I can’t help but laugh or cry. I’ve always been a melancolica. I’m guilty of holding on to useless notebooks and reminders of things from my past. No se porque, but it’s a habit I don’t find a reason to abandon.

My old journals are filled with grammatical mistakes, spanglish entries, typos, and doodles. And it is these ‘errors’ that most accurately capture who I was and whom I was becoming. I realize now that there is something to be said or understood from what one chooses to talk about, from the stories one remembers, or the memories one chooses to recollect.

I’m hoping that in this blog I can continue to record these little remnants of my soon to be past so that one day I can look back, reflect, laugh, cry, and perhaps learn a little more than I know now about life and how I chose to situate myself within it.