Years ago someone told me I was such a juxtaposition. He was referring to my ability to be quite earthy but also quite spiritual--within the dichotomous perspective of the Western mind, such makes me juxtapositional. Little did he know that he spoke of me in my most elemental form when he tagged me as being a juxtaposition
My existence is juxtapositional. There is the blood of the Spanish conquistador and the blood of the Indio running through my veins. Therefore, the concept of being both saint and sinner (a Lutheran theological tenant) is not at all foreign to me.
Mestizo-American. Chiricahua-Spaniard. I call myself Latina to identify with the oppressed. If I called myself Hispanic, I'd identify with the oppressor. Hispanic. There is a way to say it that makes me smile (I admit it): His panic. His Panic!!!
Mexican-American. Latina. Chicana.
In the mid-sixties, my youngest brother was called racist epithets at the Catholic grade school. I was fifteen and I questioned the nuns about this. They told me that while they could tell the children to stop, they preferred the children learn tolerance by learning to empathize with my brother and "his problem." I wanted to pummel that nun with my fists. I went home and told my mother to withdraw him from that school. She did. This is basic physics: for every action there is a reaction.
Action: My oldest brother went first. He was bi-lingual, but spoke more Spanish than English. When he started school, he was placed in the slow track, declared intellectually deficient.
Reaction: After him, my mother and father determined not to teach their remaining children Spanish. They wanted us to have a chance at the American dreams. And, to a great extent, this has happened. A couple of us attempt to toddle forward with elementary Spanish.
Chain Reaction: At one point I decided there was no need for me to relearn Spanish. I already spoke the tongue of one conqueror, wasn't that enough? But then three years ago I did an language immersion in Mexico para dos meses.
Spanish is the language of my abuelas. It was in Spanish that they prayed their novenas. With words of Spanish, they cradled my heart.
One of my abuelas fled Mexico as it was being torn by war. She brought with her the whispy dreams and strangled talents that survive violence. In this country she made a new home for herself and her children.
My other abuela was Chiricahua. She claimed Mexican citizenship to avoid the reservation. One of the only times "passing for Mexican" I have ever heard of... Amazing.
My one abuela taught me absolute strength could be had simply seated in a chair. It was in such fashion, this abuela held court. All of us -- her children, her grandchildren, her in-laws -- would stand before her in a receiving line. She sat as a queen with her thick braids coiled upon her head as her crown, and her full bosom and generous arms serving as her majesty. We came offering her dollar bills, packets of cigarettes, an occasional flask of whiskey, a brooch, or wrapped sweet candy. Food, drink and burnt offerings brought to the goddess.
My Chiricahua abuela taught me life was a uniting force and that even a fly had a life force as she carefully shooed flies out her kitchen's back door. I once killed one and she made me feel I had somehow taken the coward's way, the easy-don't-have-time-to-be-bothered way. This abuela taught me to address trees as brothers, to speak to seedlings freshly placed into the earth. This abuela's tortillas were thick and warm, more like flatbread than tortillas, well suited for sopping juices from the pots atop her wood burning stove or smearing with butter cream.
I do not ever remember seeing my abuelas together. Era como si la reina y la madre naturaleza estuvieran bajo un mismo rostro, la abuela.* Perhaps, (and I certainly hope), they come together in me. Now that I am an abuelita, they remain my model. And I have chosen to use the cement of passionate, abandoned love for my grandchildren as their glue.
I thank God for the opportunity to love the lives of my grandchildren...
* It was as if the queen and mother nature were of the same face, the grandmother.
