Mexico and the USA: My Motherland and Fatherland

By Aurora Garcia

The USA is the country where I live. While the United States is not my motherland, it is the country where I have lived the longest and the country that gave me a new life, and a son. It is not the country where fate would have me be born in, but where I actually and consciously chose to become a citizen. But of course without renouncing to my Mexican citizenship.

For the longest time I rejected the idea of acquiring a new citizenship. I felt like a traitor. I don’t know when it started to grow into me. At first I thought, well, nothing will change the facts. I was born in a house with the scent of Lime and Plumeria. I grew up in a home where I would quietly stare at the clouds and the leaves of the Lime tree. Nothing could erase the memories of the smell of my mother’s cooking or the smell on a rainy day in my beautiful homeland, and the games and the joy. This love will remain untouched.

When I came to the USA everything was new to me—the smells, the places, the language, and the people. I felt so alone and out of place for the first couple of years. Then I don’t know how or when it started. I began to have a sense of belonging. I learned the language, studied, worked, had wonderful friends, and all of a sudden, I didn’t feel like a traitor anymore. I understood. I was no longer confused. For the longest time I’d had a fight within myself on where I belonged, and which country I owed loyalty to. Then one day, out of the blue, it came to me, and I clearly understood that there is no reason to choose. How can you answer to the question, who do you love the most, your mother or your father? Both, and you don’t have to measure it, you don’t have to explain it or compare it.

I know the feeling of my attachment to the US started before I had my son, but it became stronger after he was born. All of a sudden we were creating memories together. His childhood moments were so different from mine, but equally beautiful, and I immersed myself into it.

Mexico/USA! Yes, I own one of each flags, but I don’t display them everywhere I go. It is my belief that you mostly carry those feelings within your heart. When I lived in Mexico, I don’t remember ever displaying the Mexican flag other than at appropriate ceremonies and at institutions, and in a very respectful manner. These beautiful countries mean and represent much more than their politics and their unfortunate situations. They represent the smells, the laughs, their beautiful scenery and their natural resources. These countries are the people who don’t make the headlines, but instead keep a low profile and spend their time raising a family and working hard.

So, let the eagle continue to devour the serpent and ask for divine power for that eagle to wide spread its wings. And let the stars shine brighter and us not be blinded by the glow, but instead hold on to some of that light. There is plenty love, space and time for everything and everybody.

Copyright © Aurora Garcia. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Aurora Garcia is a nonfiction writer and essayist who was born in La Piedad, Michoacan, Mexico. She moved to California in 1989, when she was 14 years old. This is about the time when she began writing, but throughout her teen and young adult years she kept her writing to herself for fear of being exposed. Although fluent in English and Spanish she instinctively writes in Spanish, as it is her native language. Aurora lives with her husband and 12 year-old son. She loves life, nature, art, music, and diversity, admiring the contrasts and richness of her homeland culture, as well as the beautiful language that Spanish is. Aurora believes her passion for writing was inherited from her father who wrote songs and poetry.

The House. Death. Dad. Thank You.

By Diane René Christian

The photograph is of the house that I lived in with my father for 8 years. The house itself was originally an outbuilding to a main house but somewhere along the way the property was divided. At some time or another the building was used as an art studio. Before I lived in the house a dear friend of my grandmother’s resided there. Her name was Mildred.

I have vague memories of Mildred. I liked all of my grandmother’s friends so I am sure I must have like Mildred too. Mildred had polio (I believe?) and, in the midst of my parents’ divorce, Mildred passed away. She was sans kin and the house was left to my grandmother who subsequently gave it to my father and me to live in. I was thirteen years old.

What I do vividly remember about Mildred was her things. Mildred was a hoarder and nearly every inch from floor to ceiling was piled with her hoards. She was particulary fond of TV shopping but she never seemed to get around to opening the boxes. When we combed through her things, after her death, many of the boxes were still sealed. All of her wares went into an estate sale and it was quite a site to see those wares spread out and filling a banquet hall.

During the cleaning of Mildred’s house, as we prepared it to be ours, we unearthed a soiled canvas painted by the artist who some years earlier resided there too.

The house is 560 square feet. When you walk in the door you enter a garage which holds an unfinished bathroom with one exposed wall. When you walk up the stairs you enter a space that would hold a dining room table and six chairs max. But, there was never a dining room table but instead two recliners and a TV. Behind the recliners are a miniature stove, sink and cabinets. That is the sole living area.

My father and I each had a bedroom but originally our rooms were one. My dad put in a dividing wall making two perfectly even small rooms. I remember when the rooms were still one.

Before the room was converted we went to visit the house with a few of my dad’s friends and their three sons. One of the sons was a boy that I was sure that I was 'in 13 year old love with’. His moppy blonde hair and searching eyes and lean strong boy body were impossible to resist. We swam in rivers together and explored trails and forests and by him I felt understood.

Fortunately he deeply admired my father. Unfortunately he listened to my father’s warning to never lay a finger on me. Only once did he break my father’s rule. 

While my father and his friends were discussing how to rehabilitate our new home the kids entered a room that was to become two bedrooms but still remained one. We went in and for some reason we decided (probably because the house had a touch of a spooky feel) to hold a séance.

We sat on the floor in the dimly lit room and we all closed our eyes. Somebody started the séance and then I felt a hand grab on to mine and squeeze. It was his hand. He kept his hand inside of mine until we were all to open our eyes and then the hand was gone and it was like it never happened. But, it did. My body remembers it well. It never happened again.

Our house and the main house shared a driveway. As I grew up and grew into new relationships with boys I never let them into our home until they really knew me and things seemed serious. I am ashamed to admit this but I would stand at the end of the driveway and allow my date to infer that I was coming out of the main house. Most people assumed that our house was a garage. Indeed the realtor who has our house listed right now describes it as.

Tax Records call it a one story bungalow. I would consider it a converted barn or garage, dating back to 1929. Great potential as an artist’s studio. Enter from the rear into what appears to have been a garage.

If I could go back in time I would wait for every date by leaning against our house and take them inside to meet my Daddy.

The last time I saw my Dad he was sitting in his recliner upstairs. I kissed him goodbye and walked slowly down the stairs staring at him and him staring at me. I said- I love you Daddy. I will see you again soon.

He smiled back and I kept walking until I reached the door and made it outside. I nearly fell to the ground as a wave of fear gripped me and gobs of tears split my eyes. I must have known. Maybe he knew too.

Days later Dad collapsed on Gram’s floor. He wasn’t breathing.  At the hospital I spoke to a kind doctor who requested that I cease life support efforts for my father. She told me that he was gone and if he somehow came back... he wouldn’t really be here anyway. I said – Ok. You can stop.

I don’t really know how I said anything coherent at all but it was clear enough for my dad to be pronounced dead.

My Dad kept my bedroom exactly the same as it was the day I moved out in my late teens. It stayed that way until I cleared my childhood space in November of 2009. I was 37 years old.

I remember when I was teenager and I was going to the bathroom in the ‘garage’ bathroom with one wall missing. There was a spider that emerged but it wasn’t an ordinary spider it was a hairy spider of nightmare proportions.

I screamed to my dad upstairs that he needed to come down immediately.

He remained upstairs and screamed down at me- You need to take care of this yourself.

And I was furious. My dad was my hero. He was my rescuer. Why wasn’t he helping me now?

I managed to circumvent the spider beast and I found a broom. I whacked and whacked the broom and the spider alluded me until finally I dealt it a fatal blow.

I swept the beaten spider into a dust pan and plopped it into a Ziploc bag. Even in shrunken death it still seemed sizably frightening.

I put the sealed spider next to the kitchen sink and wrote a note to my Dad.

I did it.

And the next morning I found a written reply from my Dad.

Good for you.

 My father was not a verbal man but he always signed his letters to me xoxo- Dad.

xoxo to you Daddy. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Copyright © 2010 Diane René Christian. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Diane René Christian, author of An-Ya and Her Diary, is an award winning short story writer turned novelist. She was raised in Pennsylvania and spent her childhood years playing in the fields of Valley Forge Park.  She now resides in the Pacific Northwest with her two daughters. Visit her at http://anyadiary.blogspot.com/