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My mom and Lily have always had a special bond.  Mom gets all bent whenever I call her on it - and insists that it’s just because she spent so much time with her as a baby - but after viewing my mom’s baby and childhood pictures from the early 40’s, I have the answer to the question. 

Mom, around 5-6 years old:

I have given birth to a carbon copy of my mother.  A tootsie roll loving, hair-bow wearing, spitfire Mexican-colored Mom, Jr.  If I can get over the freakiness of the resemblance, it’s kind of cute. 

Lily, around 3 years old

And another, 4 years old:

So there you have it. Love Thursday is a tribute to my mother and her clone.  They both drive me round the bend, but I love them. 

My aunt and uncle from Michigan were visiting Mike N., Anja and baby Mia last week, and we were fortunate enough to spend some time with them on Saturday evening.  We shoved the girls off on one of their teachers from last year and headed to Williamsburg, where we met up with everyone for dinner.  Mia, of course, was exceptionally well-behaved, and I even let my dad take a picture of me.  My dad, rewarding me for my picture-allowing behavior, did not take a picture of me bending over or chewing with mouth open, which in itself was a miracle. Here’s a few of the pictures from the evening. 

Me and Anja.  Cheers!

Mike N, Me, Anja, and Mia

My Mike holding Mia with Mike the Proud Papa watching

My Aunt Paula, my mother, and Uncle Sal

As I sit here trying to pinpoint one nice moment of my day, I keep thinking back on a conversation I had a little while ago.  Another mother I know suffers from a chronic illness, and small group of people who know her combined their talents and resources to find a way for her to keep up with something in her life she loves to do.  It was one of the most satisfying moments I’ve had in a long time.  When I am feeling tired, or burned out, or just crappy, I always find that I am reminded about others who have it a LOT worse than I do.  Sometimes just having two children feels debilitating in and of itself*, but add to that an illness with no cure and it seems like owning a business, raising my children, and getting through the rest of my life sane is a breeze. 

My Moment today:  being grateful for my health.  I may not fit with the rest of the buxom trophy wives in my neighborhood, but I am healthy and strong and I have a pretty damn good life. 

* yes, people, I do not REALLY consider my children debilitating.  This is called using sarcasm to evoke laughter. 

I’ll take her love scraps any day.  Tonight, Mike was reading her a book, and I came into her room.  She looked at me.  I braced, waiting for her to say something like, “Mommy, go away!” or “I don’t WANT YOU in here Mommy”.  But she didn’t.  She got very quiet, looked at me, then patted the space on the bed next to her very softly and slowly.  At first I didn’t realize she was doing the international sign for “come sit with me, ma”.  Then she moved over a few millimeters, and I curled up around her.  She flattened herself out and put her legs on me.  That was her subtle way of showing me love, and I ate it up with a spoon, then licked the crumbs off my fingers. 

The remnants of last night’s push to get ready for my interview this morning (papers, a clipboard, some stuff I printed out), a few dishes from breakfast (but not many because Mike is ANAL ABOUT THE KITCHEN!), and some birthday party invites on the counter I have yet to RSVP to. 

The house remains pretty clean from my attack on the dirt this weekend.  But, I will admit, the girls’ beds are not made and there is a pile of ironing to do in our bedroom.  The dog is probably sitting with her stinky butt in the middle of our bed (leaving skidmarks behind, I’m sure), and there are probably a number of Delilah-Tumbleweeds breezily making their way down the hallway.  Arden and Lily’s plastic freaky frogs they received this weekend are also in the middle of their bedroom floors.  Ack!  Writing this is making me wish I were home picking up. 

I just finally had a chance to go through Lily and Arden’s daily notes, and I found out that one of Lily’s favorite subs, Marijo, passed away over the weekend.  We knew she was ill, but it happened very suddenly. I am in shock.  Lily loved Ms. Marijo, and had gotten very attached to her over the past couple of months. She was one of those very patient, very cheerful people - and I know Lily was lucky to know her for the short period she did.

I’m just shocked.  I saw a week or so ago, in her normal chipper state. She always had a kind word for me and she loved Lily a bunch.  I found out she was unconscious in the hospital last week.  Then today - the note came home that she had passed away.  Thankfully, Lily hasn’t asked - because of the amount of different teachers they have been exposed to in her room, she doesn’t really notice immediately when one goes away.  However, I guarantee she will eventually figure out that Marijo hasn’t been around, and she will ask me where she is. At that point I’ll have to dig deep to figure out what to say. 

I’m participating in a little contest over at Maya’s Mom.  *The crazy acronym you can’t pronounce above stands for Maya’s Mom Featured Journal Topic Week. We basically will be writing one post a day for one week, based on their Featured Journal topic.  Today’s topic:

I’d Rather Be . . .

I’d rather be in the Coca-Cola commercial where everyone is holding hands and singing, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”  I’d like to be living harmoniously with myself and others.  Unfortunately, that is not happening these days.  Drama, Drama, everywhere!  I could use a break. 

Speaking of my Maya’s Mom friends, I’d Rather Be. . . with many of them right now.  It makes me sad that people who are such an important part of my life now live far away, like San Diego, Texas, Hong Kong, and Australia. 

So that’s two I’d Rather Be.

And a third:  I’d rather be on a massage table right now, getting the bejesus rubbed out of my legs and bod.  Ahhhhhhh.

You know it’s bad when the links on your blog to other bloggers are being read more frequently by friends and family than yourself.  Yes, I have fallen down on the job. I don’t have time right now to keep up with other blogs - let alone my own - and because of this I have Missed.Some.Great.Posts. 

Jennifer, who spent the last 5 days alone with a 2 1/2 year old, had time to find and comment on this:

http://www.finslippy.com/finslippy/2008/01/we-are-all-winn.html

It could possibly be the funniest blog entry of the year.  Of course, it’s early in 2008 - but you must read it if you are a parent.

And I am now shamed into trying to get caught up on my blog reading.  AFTER tomorrow.

I’m talking about Arden - my second-born, my youngest, my blondest, my most challenging.  I think later on in life I will be diagnosed with a ulcer - and I will name it Arden Jr. out of love and respect for my 3 year old. 

Arden. What to say about Arden.  As I explained to Jennifer this morning, the easiest way to say it is, my ego gets kicked from morning til night with Ard.  She has personality pouring out of her, she’s funny and sometimes very kind.  She’s also incredibly hard-headed and feisty.  I’m sure we butt heads because I am also a bit hard-headed, and a bit feisty.  However, I finally know what mothers mean when they say, “I don’t know how to handle my child.”  I usually feel like an idiot when parenting Arden.  Sometimes I get so tongue-tied I can’t even speak.  Like yesterday, when she was wearing her snowboots while she was supposed to be sleeping. She was STOMPING on the floor, as if to say, “You hear that, mommy? I am awake, in my closet, and it’s time to get this party started!”

Last night I was putting her to bed, and Mike had gone back to work. We played for a few minutes, read a long book.  Everything was fine.  Then I tried to get her INTO the bed. She literally took off running.  She loves to scream “NO” in my face, often accompanied with a wagging or pointing finger.  I gave her three warnings.  Then I picked her up, potato-sack over the shoulder style, and put her in her bed. She kicked the covers off. She turned her back to me. She refused to look at me.  She refused to say goodnight. I eventually gave up trying to “love” her, which is so important to me - and left the room.  About 10 minutes later, I tried again.  She allowed me to give her a kiss, but then said, “I want you to leave now Mommy.”  She’s quite articulate when she wants to be.

I have two children who are so very different. Lily is all over you. Hugging, kissing, petting.  She usually listens and she usually isn’t very sassy. Lily has other issues - she’s not perfect.  However, Arden’s issues push all my buttons. And because she doesn’t normally allow me to comfort her by holding or touching her, I am at a loss for how to do it.  I’ve tried spending time alone with her, away from the barnacle known as Lily, and it helps momentarily.  She is very attached to Mike, and will take me as a distant second choice when she has to. 

Why does this bother me so much? Do I have to be the best-loved by everyone in my little foursome family?  Apparently, yes, but there’s more to it than that. 

I WANT Arden to feel loved.  And without being able to express love the way I am accustomed, I fear she is going to feel left out. Right now, she doesn’t appear to care, but I miss her. I miss holding her and snuggling with her.  I miss spending time with her where she isn’t screaming NO in my face or sticking her bottom lip out in a perfect pout.  So maybe it’s all about me.  I don’t know.  I am trying to be a good parent - it’s my job, and Mike’s, to help her learn to temper her expectations.  She is not very patient, and she is quite demanding. Life will beat her down if we don’t help her learn to manage her frustration levels.  By 3 1/2 I was noticing big strides in Lily’s ability to hear the word no, and understanding that her bad behavior would have consequences.  The truth is, some days with Arden, I don’t feel like any of it has done any good.  I feel like a failure during those moments. 

Part of it is purely selfish. My sister Risa will be the first to tell you that not everyone is warm and cuddly.  I love to kiss and hug my sis because she hates it   Perhaps Arden just needs more space than I’m accustomed to.  As a mother who works outside the home, the 2 hours I get with my kids at night are extremely important. Because Arden won’t tolerate just cuddling with me, I desperately miss her.  She is, as I said, a very hard nut to crack.

However, because she’s so particular about who she gives her love to, it really means a lot when she calls for me or needs me.  I am just trying to cherish those moments, and focus on them.  I am also hoping that she will grow out of some of this bad behavior, and very soon, before I have to start naming my ulcer. 

I started Part I of my Grandmother’s life and how she and my grandfather ended up in Detroit from Mexico, not knowing that so many members of my family would become involved in the history-telling.  It seems as though many of my relatives each have 1-2 nuggets of information or funny stories, and it has helped round out the story. 
As I mentioned in earlier installments, my grandmother Victoria met Salvador Najera while working at The Popular in El Paso.  She was 29 when they were finally married.  They honeymooned in Chihuahua, Mexico and visited Salvador’s family.  There is very little information about what my grandmother was doing between ages 20 and 29.  Unfortunately, no one is left alive to clarify this.  My personal guess is that the relationship with the married doctor hurt her emotionally and she took a while to recover from that, or she was holding out for a better marriage match.

My mother is very uncomfortable with the idea that I am going to say “anything bad” about her parents.  However, I believe that in the 1930s, it was not unusual to get married out of necessity rather than true, deep, romantic love.  I believe that at the time (1936), my grandmother’s options were becoming increasingly limited and she decided to marry Salvador.  They had all three of their children in El Paso, and moved to Detroit in 1943.  My grandfather managed to get a job lead at the best hotel in Detroit (the Book Cadillac Hotel0.  It was the only fancy hotel at the time.  From there, he got a job at Ford Motor Co. installing glass windshields.  He worked in the River Rouge plant, and the family moved to Dearborn.  He worked there until he retired, around age 61.  My grandmother also “worked” - as a volunteer at the Veteran’s Hospital. She enjoyed it. 

From the time the family moved to Detroit, my grandmother’s main priority was getting her family out of Detroit.  She saved every penny so that the family could get to the suburbs.  They lived in “Little Poland” - a poor area full of Polish immigrants.  Because the area was primarily Polish, the family stood out.  Obviously my grandparents had thick Spanish accents, and there was tension between the Polish and the Mexicans.  Imagine being a Chinese immigrant and living in Little Italy in New York.  It was a difficult transition for them, especially after living in El Paso which was basically an extension of Mexico. 

A touchy subject in my family is discussing the difference in class between my grandmother and my grandfather.  Even now, my family hears that we don’t “look Mexican”.  My grandmother and mother actually DO look Mexican; what most Americans don’t understand is that there are Mexicans (descended from Spaniards) and Mestizos.  Mestizo is actually somewhat of a slang term used to describe Mexicans whose blood was mixed with other blood.  From Wikipedia: “Under the caste system of Latin America and Spain, the term originally applied to the children resulting from the union of one European and one Amerindian parent, or the children of two mestizo parents. During this era myriad other terms including Castizo (3/4 European and 1/4 Amerindian), Cuarterón de Indio and Cholo (1/4 European and 3/4 Amerindian), were in use to denote other individuals of European-Amerindian ancestry in ratios smaller or greater than the 50:50 of mestizos. Today, mestizo refers to all people with discernible amounts of both European and Amerindian ancestry.”

The Mexicans who descended from Spaniards had different facial and skin tone attributes than Mestizos.  The upper class Mexicans tended to be of Spanish descent - the lower class the rest.  My grandfather’s family was of the lower or working class.  His father was a tailor.  To me, this is fact - not a judgment.  It is important to understand this as it had a profound impact on my grandmother and the way she raised her children.

Whether it was spoken or not, it was apparent that my grandmother and grandfather came from two different backgrounds, and it was a source of friction and miscommunications for many years.  Because my grandmother had been forced to quit school, she poured every ounce of money and time she had into her children, ensuring they received the best education they could get, and going so far as to send my mother to visit and live with Mexican relatives every summer from 16 through 18.  (It is an interesting side note that neither my Uncle Sal nor Uncle Richard ever were sent to Mexico – apparently they didn’t need the culture!)  After my mother graduated from high school, she lived with family there for one year.  In my grandmother’s view, she wanted my mother immersed in her own Mexican culture. She wanted my mother to learn what a Mexican female should be like.  She saw major cultural differences in the socio-economic classes in Detroit and her upbringing; she wanted my mother to know that there was more to life than what Dearborn had to offer.  I personally think it warped my mother (said with tongue firmly in cheek) - she was used to boys serenading her outside her window, wearing fancy dresses, and thinking that a good wife cooks and cleans in high heels with a smile on her face and a cold martini in hand (for the husband of course - ladies don’t drink).  AHHHHH! 

What I remember about my grandfather was his limitless patience, whether it was walking around the neighborhood in Dearborn, fashioning bows and arrows out of twigs, or whittling something out of wood.  He never lost his temper with his pesky grandkids - and of us, there were many.  He was a quiet man.  My dad, my brother and sister called him “Father”.  It was an appropriate name for him.  He enjoyed beer but since my grandmother was so anti-alcohol (grandfather’s brother died from alcoholism), he usually did his drinking in private - generally in the basement.  Their marriage was interesting in retrospect - a study in what worked at the time.  He provided, she took care of the house. They slept in separate bedrooms for the majority of their marriage, but co-existed, for the most part, with minimal strife.  My grandfather was uneducated, and had spent a lot of time being taken care of by his 10 older siblings.  Because he was so quiet, many people thought he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.  He was actually quite the “practical engineer”, as my dad called him.  The fact that my grandfather was uneducated and came from a different class than my grandmother was a difficult thing for her to swallow. She poured her energy into her children and her house.  My mother is fiercely protective of her mother and growls at me like a rabid animal if she thinks anything negative is going to come out of my mouth about my grandmother.  As I’ve said earlier, the truth is the truth - without judgment.  Their marriage was what it was, and wasn’t uncommon at the time.  It isn’t the kind of marriage I would want for myself or my children - but thankfully my mother and her brothers all have strong marriages that have little in common with their parent’s marriage. 

My mother will have to share her own history - things about her first marriage, and life as a single mother in Detroit in the 60’s . . . that in itself is a fascinating story.  But for now, I’m finished, and will continue to edit and add to the entries as I receive more information. 

The pictures below span El Paso and Detroit.  No pictures from Dearborn years remain, unfortunately.  With the help of my mother I have titled and dated the photos to the best of our abilities.  Clicking the “i” in the photograph will give you the specific information.  If you can’t view the slideshow, click the link below to go directly to the photographs. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=sets

Two conversations, had today:

Lily, after learning about Antarctica and penguins:  “Mommy, where is Antarctica?”
“Oh, it’s very far away from here - very far away.”
“Okay. Well, is it farther away than Texas?”  (my sister and her family live there - apparently it’s been too long since we visited!)

Arden, after I’ve tried to cuddle her at bedtime. 
“Mommy, don’t you wub me.  I don’t wike wubbing.”  (I was rubbing her back)
“Wow, okay Arden.  So what do you like?”
“Umm, I wike to eat. Yeah, that’s what I wike Mommy. Eating.” 

O-kay. 

My whole family has gotten in on the fun, and I’m getting emails from my sister, my uncle, my mom . . . even my dad got in on it and was doing a bunch of internet research. I have a friend on Maya’s Mom who works as a librarian (she has a much cooler title than that but I can’t remember it), so I’m hopeful she can also help with the search for details. 

Some things I want to record: 

1.  More about my grandmother’s life in Mexico
2.  The El Paso years
3.  Being Mexican in Detroit
4.  My grandmother and her marriage

I received emails from my Uncle Richard and mother today.  I have broken them down into chunks and combined them, where appropriate, so I can add some of my own information: 

(Victoria) was very secretive about her youth. The period around her age 7 to 18 is a mystery. Sal and I did learn from Uncle Henry that she did not attend school in the states. I believe that she was around 12 or 13 when they relocated to El Paso from what I remember her telling me because I know the boys went to work to help out the family while their father was in San Francisco.  I don’t know too much about what happened to them after that as she didn’t talk about it.  I do know that they had to help their mother a lot as she spoke no English.  Also she had never worked a day in her life so I am sure she was very unsettled by what was happening to them.
Apparently, Victoria’s father went to California for a business deal.  The children were left in El Paso with their mother.  Not attending school was a source of great embarassment to my grandmother, according to my mother.  She was very focused on education and was an intelligent woman.  She was one of the original auto-didactics (I’ve waited YEARS to use that word) and was an avid and voracious reader. 

He also told us that she and uncle Mariano were very smart and didn’t need school. He also made another comment about his twin sister, Alicia that I won’t put in print. (How I miss uncle Henry and his wit). Victoria was very good with math. She could add a column of numbers without having to do it one column at a time.
Okay, if Uncle Richard says so.  I doubt the “good at math stories” only because my mother and I are so horribly challeneged when it comes to math.  We apparently got our math skills from her father’s side of the family. 

She also did all of her math in Spanish and converted the answer to English. We also learned that she dated a doctor who turned out to be married at the time. She worked as a bookkeeper in movie theater for sometime before going to work at the Popular.  The Popular was the big department store of the time and that is where she met our father. Another story she would tell me was that she worked the cosmetic counter. She did have near perfect skin.  She also told us she worked as a hand model.
My entire life, since childhood, I have been hearing my mother say obsessively: “Wear sunblock.”  “PUT A HAT ON!” or “You are going to look like a wrinkled prune if you keep tanning yourself.”  My grandmother had gorgeous porcelain skin . . . my mother swears it was because sunlight never touched her face.  I have a feeling it was more genetics than anything.  My grandmother met my grandfather at The Popular - he was an elevator attendant.  Included in these sentences is a brief mention of the “doctor”.  Although none of us could ever get the story out of my grandmother (she flatly refused to talk about her life between leaving Mexico and before her marriage to my grandfather), my mother’s belief is that the reason my grandmother was 29 when she married my grandfather is because she had a relationship with someone. This someone is probably “the doctor”.  She did not know he was married - from what I understand, he was in the States, but his wife was back in Mexico.  After she discovered the truth, she broke off the relationship.  I will write more about her marriage to my grandfather later. 

From my mother:  Victoria probably met grandpa shortly before they married in 1936.  Afterwards they lived in a small house in El Paso while my grandmother continued to live with the remaining children.  My uncle, Mariano, hated living in Texas and vowed to return to Mexico as soon as he had enough money.  He did so and never returned to Texas except to visit.  He started life in Mexico working for G.E. and worked his way up the ladder until he became quite successful.  He married Carolina Fiero and had their one son, Roberto.  He was the only sibling to return to Mexico after the revolution.  The rest of her family stayed in El Paso, except for her sister, Amalia who moved with her husband to the San Francisco area.

And my uncle:  Pancho Villa during the Mexican war once invaded Columbus, NM. General Pershing was ordered to capture him, but couldn’t capture him. The funny story my mother told me was about Pancho Villa capturing American soldiers and sending them back North across the border without their pants.
My grandmother was FULL of stories.  This one, however, can probably be verified. I don’t want to verify it because it’s just so damn funny.  Those crazy Mexicans!
My uncle again:  Now the part about El Paso connection and I always liked the most….Jorge bought some Overland cars (like station wagons) and was transporting migrant workers to California to work the fields. The Southern Pacific railroad didn’t like this at all and took him to court in El Paso. He lost his battle with the railroad and ended up staying and dying in El Paso. While living in El Paso he bought and tried to run a milk business (not farm). This venture failed; according to my uncle Henry he wasn’t a good businessman.
This fits with what my mom remembers - whatever money was left from the Mexico days did not last long once the family came to the States. 

One of the things I have always loved about my family - both sides - is that out of tragedy and poor circumstances, there is always humor.  You can get a sense of the humor in my uncle’s words, but writing about it makes the humor seem flat and one-dimensional.  My Mexican family is typical in that it was large, full of people with the same name - all very loud, all busting on one another.  In many ways, nothing has changed except the names and amount of puppies we mothers push out.  Thank god for vasectomies or the Pill. The thought of seven children sends a shiver of pure terror up my spine!

Yourself: Master of Sarcasm
Your partner: Studly
Your hair: Static Cling
Your Mother: Master of Guilt and Child Care
Your Father: Wickedly Funny
Your Favorite Item: Peanut Butter and Chocolate - together in perfect harmony
Your dream last night: Um, incredibly weird
Your Favorite Drink: 007 Martini
Your Dream Car: convertible Jag
Your Dream Home: Large airy Spanish Tile Stucco built in the 1930’s somewhere in a hip urban city near the mountains. Not that I’m specific or anything. 
The Room You Are In: Family room.
Your Ex: Complex.
Your fear: My burgeoning ass.
Where you Want to be in Ten Years?: With Mike and the girls, in the spanish tile stucco house, and not in debt.
Who you hung out with last night: My Maya’s Mom friends - virtually, of course
What You’re Not: Disloyal
Muffins: Pumpkin, baby!
One of Your Wish List Items: Wii
Time: Never enough
The Last Thing You Did: Cleaned burned plastic off the glass top range.
What You Are Wearing: A hoodie I’ve had since Lily was born. SEXAY!!!!
Your favorite weather: 68 degrees, sunny and crisp.
Your Favorite Book: Anything by Mary Gaitskill, Margaret Atwood or Milan Kundera
Last thing you ate: PORK!
Your Life: In flux
Your mood: Relieved
Your Best Friends: Jennifer, Susan, Julie, my sister (awww)
What are you thinking about right now: I should be blogging. Oh wait, I am!
Your car: Volvo Mom-Mobile with Bum Warmers
What are you doing at the moment: Smelling wet dog (Delilah had a bath)
Your summer: Sticky.  I LOATE RICHMOND IN SUMMER. 
Relationship status: Fat, happy and married.
What is on your tv: DVR’d Philadelphia Flyers vs Washington Capitals
What is the weather like: Sleeting
When is the last time you laughed: While making dinner. Arden was head-butting me like a freakish ram.

**Oh crap. Just realized I was supposed to answer in one word.  I am verbose. I am a writer.  Give me a break.**

*Edited to add information from my sister - thanks Risa*

Before I start, I want to express some frustration on behalf of me AND my family, and I am hoping you, the reader, will not suffer this same frustration.  My deep sigh of frustration is due to the fact that at 36, having developed an interest in my family’s history, most everyone who can help is either dead or mostly insane.  So please, ask those questions - and ask them now.  My parent’s generation, and their parents, have great stories to tell of how they ended up here.  My mother regrets not asking more questions of my grandmother, though I doubt she could have gotten anything out of the locked box known as Victoria.  She was a very private person. 

This latest kick to discover my Mexican heritage comes from my Uncle Richard’s Christmas gift.  He was given something that would convert his slides into digital photos, so he sent out a bunch of pictures from the early 70’s.  The one set I’d never seen were pictures of a trip he took with his then-girlfriend Sharon and my grandmother to Guadalajara, Mexico. The purpose of the trip was to visit my grandmother’s childhome home.  To call it a “home” is a bit of an understatement - it was more of a compound.  It sat approximately 25 miles outside of Guadalajara proper, and was only accessible, at that time, by stagecoach or private railroad. 

My grandmother’s family was wealthy by Mexican standards, and the Hacienda had a tequila factory on the grounds.  Looking at the pictures my uncle took the year before I was born fascinated me.  I knew that my grandmother’s’ family had “lost” their money, but at the time, I had no idea that the reason they “lost” their money had to do with the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa and an early form of communism. 

First, I’m posting an abbreviated family tree so I can record the names before we lose anymore information:

Mariano Zuniga - married Victoria Hidalgo circa late 1800s
They had 3 children:
Jorge, Luis, Enrique

Jorge Zuniga - married to Amalia Alvarez de la Cruz in 1902
They had 7 children:
Pablo, died as a young adult
Jorge, born 1903 but died as a boy from appendicitis
Mariano, born 1905
Victoria Eugenia, born 1907 (my grandmother) 
Amalia, born 1909
Alicia and Enrique, twins, 1913

Victoria Eugenia - married Salvador Najera, 1936
They had three children:
Yvonne, born 1937 (my mother)
Salvador, born 1938
Richard, born 1942

Turns out that my grandmother’s early life was straight out of a fairytale. It included horses, a beautiful mother, a dashing father, bags of gold coin hidden around the Hacienda, cooks and maids, and of course, lots of time to get in trouble.  After they left Guadalajara around 1917, her life was all downhill - but more on that later.  It does explain why my grandmother was so eager to talk about her life up until the time she was around 10, and was tight-lipped to an extreme about anything that happened later.  From my sister’s conversations with my grandmother: “Also, the hacienda was not the family home.  They had a townhouse in Guadalajara proper and visited the hacienda, which along with a dairy, was the source of the Zuniga’s income.”

I didn’t know anything about the Mexican Revolution - apparently I was too busy being morose and depressed during that high school history class.  Here’s a great article in plain English for those of you who are interested.  Apparently, Pancho Villa visited the Hacienda around 1916 and instead of murdering or pillaging, he took off with some stolen beans and rice.  In my grandmother’s later years, that story changed to include the sordid but funny details that Pancho was wearing only underpants, was drunk off his gourd, and was riding a horse shouting and doing a lot of flag-waving before the bean-stealing incident.  There is no way to verify her underpants claim, but I choose to believe it because it makes me laugh. 

In a nutshell, the poor of Mexico rose up against the rich, and took the land “back” and redistributed it amongst themselves.  Again, from my sister:  “(The Zuniga) estate was not entirely confiscated.  Our Great-grandfather purposefully left Mexico for the US.  In El Paso, he invested in some venture that failed (my Uncle says it had something to do with railroads) and he died shortly after leaving the family in reduced circumstances.  Still, Grandma did inherit money when Amalia died.  The fear of confiscation and unrest appears to be why the family left Mexico at the time of the Revolution.”  My mother’s version disagrees with the inheritance - she thinks my grandmother received some money when her uncle Enrique died in Mexico City around 1950.  When my uncle visited in 1970, squatters were still living in it, and the man who took them out to the property told them that for a while, horses had lived in the main house.  I’ve posted a slideshow below of the houses, and more tomorrow.  It took me nearly an hour and half on the phone with my mother just putting together that very basic family tree.  If you view it in slideshow mode, clicking the “i” will give you information about the picture. 

During a Maya’s Mom Meme, I mentioned that I had broken my back during elementary school.  A bunch of the other moms on the site asked me how, and whether it would play into their fears as moms about things happened to their kids during school.  To this, I reply: YES!  So here’s my story of my brush with death.

I went to school at Pathfinder, which was a very small, very unusual private school.  It was on a very wooded campus in Traverse City, with tons of what seemed like unexplored spaces to roam on recess.  Did I mention how many trees there were?  TONS of trees, just begging to be climbed.  During 4th grade (I think) my friends and I decided to go down to the very edge of our roaming zone and climb some trees.  This was March.  Why did we think climbing trees in March would be fun?  I have no idea, but at the time, it seemed like it would be.  I climbed about 20 feet up a pine tree, and I remember looking at my friend Erica who was also high-up.  We carried on a conversation as we sat in the trees, gently swaying in the icy Northern Michigan breeze. 

I heard a horrible cracking sound, and the next thing I heard was my body hitting the ground.  Not smart to climb trees in the winter.  Frozen branches = easily breakable branches.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, and I distinctly remember looking up into the tree that had, until seconds prior, held me.  One whole side of it was missing branches.  It was a BIG tree, with thick branches. My body had managed to take out a bunch on the way down.  Erica and Allison were screaming and started to run back to the school for help.  I’m sure the campus isn’t as big as I remember it, but it seemed like miles from where we were back to the school.  It was up a very steep hill, so I lay there talking to a boy in my class and trying to breathe without looking like a fish gasping for air.  He was nice and put his coat under my head. 

My teachers arrived.  I think they had called an ambulance, or maybe just my parents.  They put me on a backboard and took me into one of the classrooms, and proceeded to talk about all the people they had known who’d been paralyzed through various accidents.  I wanted to smack all of them.  I was hurt, but I wasn’t deaf.  Note to teachers:  keep your damn horror stories to yourself when children are hurt!!! 

I don’t remember the exact vertebrae I broke, but it was very close to my C4.  I was about 1/4” away from having broken my neck and possibly dying.  I haven’t climbed a tree since. Not a fan.  Especially after I spent the next 3 months in a very attractive back brace, worn outside and on top of my clothes.  Stellar.  As if you don’t feel gawky and weird enough in 4th grade, add a back brace to the picture and you are totally golden. 

So there you have it - my first brush with death.  Parents, tell your kiddies not to climb trees in the winter.  But if they do, hopefully the back braces of today are much better looking than they were in 1979.