My Mom, the American Hero, and (today) the Birthday Girl
The last few weeks I have been thinking about your journey through life, Mom. I know that there are lots of things I don’t know about you, lots of things that happened in your life before I existed (time existed then?). But what I do know about you plays in my head like one of your favorite movies, Forrest Gump. I imagine you as a child, living in incredible poverty. I imagine you as a preteen in all of your defiance, living with someone who was more of a drill sergeant than a nurturing grandmother. And then I imagine you making a journey that took you far from home, far from any semblance of the life you knew. That’s where our story as a family begins in this country, and where you start to become not only my mother, but my American Hero.
I have always asked you a lot of questions about your arrival to this country. It’s probably because I have a hard time picturing you ever being out of control and out of your element. My regal mother, made to feel an outsider? It’s upsetting. But it’s true. You moved from the ranch to a sleepy seaside town. From what you’ve told me, you were shocked by all of the white women running around in sports bras and teenagers driving and subsequently wrecking brand new cars. Ronald Reagan just became President, Hall & Oates and Blondie were dominating the charts, and you were getting ready to start high school in the US without speaking a lick of English. People underestimated and dismissed you, but you worked and you worked and when you got tired you worked some more. You mastered the language, passed the California High School Exit Exam (which is no easy feat), and you became the first person in our family to graduate from high school in this country. I can’t imagine the level of pride grandpa had when you wore that cap and gown and got that piece of paper.
As a young woman, you helped agricultural workers navigate the maze that is the naturalization process, all the while your own status as a resident was hanging in the balance. You sat in a room and translated for men with rough hands they had from working in the fields. You sat across tables from the same force of people that could have detained you. How brave are you, lady? Seriously. You went to trade school, and got some business savvy under your belt. You started establishing your independence. You got a car, you got your own studio, you got a perm, and you started living your best early 90s life. In this era of your existence, I imagine you in some sort of spandex awesomeness in the club dancing to Bell Biv Devoe and Janet Jackson.
And then yours truly came along. You became a single mom, and your biggest point of pride in the early days was being able to take care of both of us without the financial backing of anyone else. We had each other, we had our one-bedroom apartment, and we had our health. You raised me in a community of other strong women, and I never knew what hunger or feeling unloved felt like. I remember being afraid of you when I was young because you seemed so serious. Only now as an adult can I understand that you were probably tired, tired from working so much, tired from being stressed about money, tired from being two parents in one to a rambunctious kid who asked a lot of questions and watched the news too much.
That unfaltering hustle you have, that you’ve always had, propelled us into a new tax bracket. You managed to find time when you weren’t working to study for the citizenship test, and in 2000 you became an American citizen. We moved out of the apartment and you bought your first home, right down the street from the brand new high school San Marcos was building. The first few months the house was full of dust from contractors modifying the fixer-upper into your image, and from the construction of Mission Hills. For the first time in my life, I had my own room. I still slept with you for the first few months because I didn’t know any other way. But eventually, I got accustomed to having a space of my own to clutter and for you to reprimand me about (I’m really sorry about that).
You saw me promote from middle school, held my hand when I came out at age 16 and tried to protect me from homophobia, and made sure I graduated from high school. You helped me finance my college education, and you were there when I crossed that stage. Along with various regalia, on graduation day I wore a cap with your high school portrait pasted on it that proudly stated that “this is for you, Mom.” And it was. Graduating from college was a testimony to the work that you put in 21 years before I was ever born. That degree is yours just as much as it is mine.
I jumped the nest and moved across the country. You have fielded calls from me droning on and on about politics, despite the fact that you have always stated matter of factly, “I am not political.” I stopped believing that when a wealthy man with all of the resources on the planet lamented to the world that your country of origin wasn’t sending it’s best to the US. That it’s sending criminals, rapists, and sure maybe some of these people that are being “sent” over are okay people, but not really. While I watched this celebrity speak, and declare his intention of running for president, I was nauseated. He was talking about our family. He was talking about grandpa, grandma, and your siblings. But most glaringly in my head, he was talking about you. He was talking about my idol. I got angry. And you got angry too.
For a year now, our conversations have evolved into you talking to me about polling you heard about, about PBS specials on the candidates you watched, on stories you had never previously shared with me about being undocumented, about being a woman of color in this country, about “becoming” an American. We even Facetimed as you made your first campaign contribution ever, 16 years after you became a citizen (I’m sorry you keep getting spammed!).
Can you believe that in 50 years you made it out of abject poverty, to the US, to independence, to comfort? Donald Trump and the likes of him are furious that someone like you can do in half a lifetime what they haven’t managed to do in centuries. What these people don’t realize is that you are the building block of this country, Mom. You are a manifestation of what this country has sought to embody since its establishment: exceptionalism.
So on this, your day of birth, I wish you all of the flowers, godiva chocolates, and love. Thank you for being a light in the lives of all of the people who have known you, and thank you for being political. You are my hero.
Audrey
