Operation Blog Undercover (ABORT!)

 3 Responses »
May 262011
 

The sun wakes me up.

Even with the damned light-blocking curtains in our room, the bits of light peeking through the sides are enough to break into my happy little dreams. I curse myself for forgetting to put on my sleep mask the night before and decide to throw the quilt over my head for a little more time to rest. I’m allowed. My mom is visiting and I know that the minute she leaves, my chances for anything that resembles sleeping in will be out the closest window.

But first I think I’ll check my email. You know, in case an agent has decided overnight that my book is Super Crazy Awesome and has sent a message asking me to call them as soon as I wake up because they are considerate enough to realize Arizona is three hours behind New York? So I reach for the phone on my nightstand and with a precision only a social media addict can attempt, have my email loading before I even open my eyes to focus on what I am looking at.

Blah, blah, new twitter followers, blah, blah, blah, I am now rich because of a dead relative I have never heard of in Zimbabwe and can I please forward all of the necessary banking information to the kind lawyer handling the matter, blah, blah, my mother-in-law wants to be friends on Facebook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and WHAT IN THE HELL?

The fuzziness from sleep is instantly replaced by an overwhelming sense of HOLY FUCK WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW and I resist the urge to reach over to the other side of the bed and backhand the still sleeping Husband because my cover being blown is like, totally his fault. Or maybe it’s mine for actually saying yes when he asked if he could like my blog Facebook page. BFF Mel totally warned me that was a bad idea.

“They’re gonna find you,” she had said.

Who pays attention to that crap?

My mother-in-law, apparently.

Before anyone new here gets too confused, I have a strict Public Blog Policy. In short it goes like this: You are allowed to read if you don’t already know me. That might seem ass-backwards to normal people but when you stop to think about it or stop taking your medication it makes total sense. For starters? My in-laws say things like, “Dangnabbit” and “Dadgum” instead of, you know, real swear words. I usually behave when in their presence or on the phone with either one of them, but here?

Have y’all read my shit?

And once the in-laws get on my little social media bandwagon, all hell (sorry, I mean heck…oh shit, it’s happening already) will break loose because then my side of the very Mexican and You Can’t Say Things Like Fuck family will find out and I’ll start censoring what I write and then things will get all boring for me and for you and I’ll replace posts like this with posts not like this. Obviously, this is a major problem.

Besides, if I approve the request, there’ll be questions about my book and people will assume I like to Share My Feelings with them on a regular basis and I’ll most likely piss everyone off, alienate myself from The Family, and The Husband will just sit there looking confused when I try to explain to him Just One More Time the logistics behind not letting anyone know about my writing until I get an agent, a book deal, and make the best seller lists (maybe even all in the same week, right?) because then I will be established and I would totally be okay with that.

But until then this was all supposed to be my secret word garden. Password: Strangers Only.

Before I start to unnecessarily hyper-ventilate, I blink a few times and focus on the phone screen again. Her name is still there. Shitshitshitshitshit!

“What are you doing?” The Husband is now awake and staring at his crazy wife checking her email on her phone before she has even gotten out of bed to brush her teeth and pee. “You realize that if technology as we know it were to disappear tomorrow, you would probably go clinically insane from the withdrawals within a matter of moments, right?”

I don’t answer. I don’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I hand him the phone and climb out of bed to take care of the morning bathroom routine. As I reach for my toothbrush, I hear him start to laugh. It’s probably a good thing he is still in bed because I am pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stand at this point.

I am proven wrong just a moment later.

“Quick, turn around and give me your best Deer Caught in Headlights” look.” The Husband is standing behind me with the phone, ready to snap a picture.

I turn around, my expression unchanged from the moment I first saw the email.

“Perfect.”

Mamavation Monday: Changing my Focus

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May 162011
 

I learned a new term today.

Behavior Centered Health.

According to Ragen Chastain on Dances with Fat, behavior centered health is a concept in which healthy choices and behaviors are the goal, not a particular size, weight, or shape. I have officially been riding the diet yo-yo since the first time I begged my parents into letting me sign up for Weight Watchers as a sophomore in high school. At 5′ 6”, I weighed 150 pounds and wore a size 10. My ass was admittedly not the issue. My head? Big fucking problem.

I’ve dealt with an eating disorder and a negative body image. I’ve binged and exercised. I’ve lost and gained the same 50 pounds only to gain and lose them again. So why did Ragen’s blog strike a chord with me?

Because every diet I have ever been on, every workout I have ever done, and every goal I have ever set for myself (until recently) has been focused only on the scale and the size on the clothing tag. Maybe that’s why every time I hit a snag on the Path to a Smaller Ass (like pregnancy and the resulting body aftermath) I just plain gave up.

My bottom line kind of read like this:  Why bother trying if I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to be? Why put in the effort for something I could never see happening?

Yeah…I know. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Because every time I ended up giving up on myself. And if I wasn’t trying, I was hell-bent on making it worse. If I can’t lose the weight I might as well have that Twinkie, right? Hello Ben & Jerry. Secret late night binges followed by even more secret late night cry-fests followed by The Hiding of the Evidence at the bottom of the trash can lest The Husband have actual proof of what I had been up to when I was supposed to have been sleeping peacefully next to him.

It would take months (and sometime years) to drag myself back out of the pity party and back to the Land of the Living. Eventually I would wake up ready and willing to Give it My All and Try Again. And everything would be hunky-dory until another snag would knock me back on my ass and into the nearest pint of Cookie Dough ice-cream.

Not very productive, if you ask me.

Then, one day? My head fixed itself. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was the year I spent trying to lose more weight so I could have material for a book only to realize the journey was the destination and not the other way around. Maybe it was my daughter looking at me with the truth that can only be found in the eyes of a child and telling me that I am beautiful. Or maybe it was realization that the scale didn’t fucking matter; how I feel when I eat right and take care of myself does.

So even though I am still in it for health and still strive to reach a lower number on the scale for that single reason, the number on said scale is no longer my only reason for living. Instead, I focus on how I feel. I’m going to keep working out because my body needs it. I’m going to eat clean because my body needs it. I’m going to smile in spite of the scale.

And telling myself that I’m pretty. Because that’s always a plus.

***

What about you? What do you think? Is Behavior Centered Health the way to go?

When Actions Speak

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Apr 292011
 

There are certain pieces of my being that have been ingrained as absolute truth. Always show respect to your elders. You are considered a grown woman when you take your husband’s last name (and therefore are allowed to drink alcohol in front of the aforementioned elders.) And family before self.

Always.

But don’t you dare light up a cigarette in front of The Family. Ever since tio quit 13 years ago, it’s been understood that if you did smoke, it’s a habit that needed to be talked around similar to the way no one ever questioned the frequency with which 10-pound premature babies are born to sons and daughters of friends and cousins not too long after weddings.

“Five months early, eh?” Knowing eyes. Secret smiles. Brand new baby clothes, price tags already removed. Nothing smaller than 3-6 month in the gift bag. “She’s beautiful.”

My father, who gave up his Miller Lite for Lent every year but never made it to church on Easter Sunday because he was nursing the hangover he got started on at midnight, once told me that even after being married and having five girls, smoking was still off limits in front of his father. It wasn’t a habit Dad relied upon. More of a social thing in which he might or might not bum a smoke off a friend and be happy without another until the next cookout maybe a year later. But too many beers on too little food made Dad careless one day. Dad stepped out onto the porch with a friend only to be caught by my grandfather as he was getting ready to leave.

“He never said a word,” Dad said. “He just looked at me. I threw the cigarette on the ground and went back inside.”

My grandfather didn’t talk to my father for a week. My father never picked up another cigarette again.

At least when my grandfather was around.

***

I am standing in front of the courthouse, tears heated with the anger of betrayal falling from unblinking eyes as I look into the storm. My four sisters, backs braced against the reality they are choosing not to acknowledge. They stand close, arms interlocked, lips tight. My cousin stands with them, her eyes focused on her mother across the divide. Occasionally, one of my sisters almost loses control when a corner of their mouth starts to twitch. Even with my eyes trained over their heads, even with my focus directed on blowing smoke into the faces of the women who helped raise us, I understand that my sisters are fighting a battle between tears for what we have lost and laughter in response to my actions.

So do my aunts. They attempt to concentrate their nervous glances on the sky and on imaginary pieces of lint on their jackets,  anywhere but where I am standing while our respective lawyers attempt to make peace before the storm of misplaced loyalties intensifies. We had lost our father. They, their only brother. There hadn’t been time to prepare.

“Do you think he would be proud of what you are doing?” My cousin had asked her mother before court. “Do you honestly believe he would stand back and let you hurt them like this?”

She laughed in her daughter’s face before walking away.

Family before self.

The lawyer told us not to say a word to them. They told us it was better this way.

And that’s just fine. Because with each inhalation, I stand straighter. With each new cigarette lit off the still burning butt of the one currently being smashed out beneath my heel, I redefine the word family. With each unblinking exhalation aimed directly into the faces of strangers we once knew, they can hear it.

We all can.

Fuck. You.


This post was written in response to a The Red Dress Club prompt asking writers to describe an emotional fight. What I have written above is non-fiction.

Pieces of Me

 18 Responses »
Apr 122011
 

Es una manguera. It’s my first thought.

My second? Amazement that I remembered the word at all. Yesterday, I couldn’t think of the Spanish word for “sink.”

My first language was Spanglish. My father and his family were from northern Mexico. My mother, a first generation Mexican-American who had never been taught Spanish. My parents married right out of high school and I spent the first three years of my life living with them in my grandparents’ home.

My grandmother spoke no English. My mother, no Spanish.

Until I was in kindergarten, she was really one of the few people I spoke English with at all. It was English at home and Spanish on the weekends we spent with my dad’s side of the family. By the time I reached kindergarten, my grandmother had passed away, and with her one of the many reasons to think and speak in the language of my history.

My sisters and I grew up up with directives like, “Ninas, portanse bien.” Our elders didn’t fight it when we responded with “Yes, Tia. We will behave”. We felt special at our elementary school in the white suburbs when we would say things like “Guelo” and “Tio” and then explain to our peers that we were couldn’t play with them on Sunday because we had family dinner with our grandfather at our uncle’s house.

No, next Sunday either. Every Sunday was for la familia.

As a small child, Spanish required no thought. I could toggle back and forth between languages with no conscious effort. But Thanksgiving dinners of enchiladas and empanadas only caused stress for those who had prepared the meal as the rest of us wondered out loud how we were going to explain to the kids at school next week why we didn’t have turkey and stuffing like they did.

My aunt taught us to say all of our prayers in Spanish and would kiss us every night during out sleepovers, leaving the room with a, “Hasta manana.”

“Si Diosito quiere.” If God wants it that way. It was the response were were taught and one that even my youngest sisters, who never learned Spanish, can still say to this day with a native accent.

But years passed. Weekends at my tia and tio’s house were replaced with jobs and responsibility. English soon took over my thoughts, making me question every word when tripping over my own tongue in an attempt to tell one of my relatives how school was going.

“Compre una nueva tapa,” I remember telling my aunt once on the telephone. She gently corrected me. I had purchased a new top? Like a T-shirt, right?

“That’s a camiseta, m’ija.”

I didn’t blame her for laughing. It just served as another reminder that my grasp on the language I had grown up with was slowly slipping away.  I thought about a Halloween photo of my half-black nephew as a baby. He was dressed as an Oreo cookie. I wondered, briefly, how many “a-HAH’s” I would get if I dressed my kid as a coconut. It really wouldn’t be worth it unless I got a few laughs.

My daughter looks over my shoulder as I type, sitting on the couch next to her as she colors.

“Mama,” she says. “What’s that? Is it a hose”

For a moment I consider telling her the Spanish word. Manguera. I think about the hot summer days and shrieks of bilingual joy as my cousins and I turned the hose on each other in the  backyard. I think of my father and his unexpected passing when she was just six months old and how she probably would have asked me that question in Spanish if he was still with us.

But he’s not. And I can’t pass on a language my own tongue and brain fight over every time I attempt to speak it. I can, however, teach her what I know, even if it’s only pieces of the language I once thought in.

“Yes baby. It’s a hose.” I turn to look at her. “Can you say manguera?”

She repeats the word.

Pieces will be enough. And I will celebrate every single one.

This post was written for The Red Dress Club weekly memoir prompt. This week writer’s were asked to explore memories triggered by the photo at the beginning of this post.

A Single Breath

 17 Responses »
Apr 052011
 

Breathe in.

Close my eyes.

Memories rush.

A camcorder’s view in my mind’s eye.

Guelo’s house.

It was green.

Detroit.

Summer.

Engines backfiring and Mexican music blaring from the stereo.

A whole skinned goat in a garbage bag.

Shake its hoof.

Say hi to dinner.

Riding my tricycle.

It was red.

Laughter. Family. Love.

Security.

Friday nights and Chinese food.

Fighting for the last shrimp in lobster sauce like most kids fight over the last cherry in a mixed fruit cup.

Sabado Gigante on the TV.

Adjust the rabbit ears.

Guelo has a Buddha belly.

He calls me cabrona.

Always with a smile.

And takes me to Dunkin’ Doughnuts.

I kiss the top of his head.

Plastic on the sofas.

Guela’s portrait hanging on the wall.

So beautiful.

Rifling through drawers filled with memories that go even deeper.

My father.

The glue that holds our family together.

“I’m gonna die young, kid.”

He always used to say that.

I never believed him.

His heart.

My mother’s birthday.

He was only 50.

The glue is gone.

The family is broken.

The first winter’s snow on the day of his burial.

Stay strong. Help mom.

I am the oldest. It’s my job.

Money changes people.

We didn’t believe them, either.

Now we do.

Pictures deleted. Memories stay.

Of family as it once was.

Innocence.

Laughter. Family. Love.

Guelo’s house.

It was green.

Breathe out.

I open my eyes and blink under the harsh lights in the grocery store. I am holding the herbs in my hands, a bouquet of memories. A single breath and I am a child, standing on my grandfather’s porch, smelling the sweet cilantro growing alongside the steps. My mind racing through time and space, bringing me back to the here and now.

I set the cilantro in my grocery cart, cross it off of my shopping list, and breathe in again.

This post was written for The Red Dress Club RemembeRED memoir prompt. This week, writers were asked to write about a sound or a smell that reminds us of our past.

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