The Reason I Do This: My Abuela

Before I tell you about my trip to Mexico, I want to tell you about my grandmother, Evangelina Garcia, who immigrated to the U.S. from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico with her husband, Enrique, in the early forties. I began thinking about and planning this entry more than four years ago, when she had yet again taken ill. It seemed more serious that time, like she might not pull through. I began to reflect on my experiences with her throughout my life and what she had meant to me. In doing so, I discovered that she had been a huge impetus behind who I am now and, in a way, she has been responsible for many of the wonderful experiences I have had over the last several years. She is even partially responsible for the existence of this blog and, as such, merits recognition. She passed away on June 6, 2012. I only hope this story does her justice.

Much of my relationship with my grandmother was fraught with verbal miscommunication. She only spoke Spanish, and English was my first language. Although I had almost daily exposure to Spanish as a very young child, I didn't really begin speaking it until I was fourteen. 

Moments of linguistic confusion dot my early memories of being around my grandmother. To begin with, my extended family called her Abuela (Grandma) and pronounced it in such a way that I always heard it as 'Uela (which I imagined was spelled "Wayla"). Since I didn't know the word, I just assumed that "Wayla" was her name. I didn't learn that her name was actually Evangelina until I was verging on adolescence. My grandfather, Enrique (aka 'Uelo), was slightly more proficient at English. He was gregarious and sweet and was always laughing. He had thick white hair, was blind and wore big dark glasses. He was also a talented woodworker and his creations decorated my childhood home. Whenever I came to their house, he would pull me onto his lap, run his hand over my face and say in his thick accent, "You are so beeyooteefull!"

Despite not literally understanding much of what my grandmother said to me early on, I learned a lot about her through our interactions. I knew she could cook, even though I was picky and just assumed I wouldn't like her food a lot of the time. Boy, was I mistaken! Her house always smelled like fried meat, tortillas, and the garlands of garlic that hung in her pantry. I watched her make tortillas and coveted the heavy, black molcajete she kept in a low cabinet in her kitchen. Now that was an impressive piece of kitchenware! I didn't actually know what it was for until I was much older though. I remember wondering why on earth she had a bowl with a rock in it in the kitchen. It seemed huge to me when I was a kid and was difficult to lift. It was rough, made of some kind of porous, volcanic rock, and the pestle was shaped like a pointy egg. I liked to roll it around inside the mortar so that it made a satisfying stone-on-stone sound. 

In addition to cooking, she loved feeding people, especially children. While I was often ungrateful about what she served me, I could see how excited she was to serve it. One of the first phrases I learned from her was "¿Quieres?" (Do you want some?). She used to make up silly songs about what she was preparing, with lyrics like "Macalón, macalón..." (a song about macaroni and cheese). My favorite song was the one she would sing when she would make Kool-Aid. She would add the ingredients into a big plastic container, put the lid on and then shake it rhythmically while chanting, "Culei, culei, culei..." The children under her care would look on in anticipation for the sweet drink they were about to enjoy. One of my earliest memories is of one occasion when my maternal cousin Mindy came with us to my grandparents' house. Mindy was still pretty small and was being held in someone's arms at the entrance to the kitchen. There my grandmother stood shaking the aforementioned plastic jug, singing the Kool-Aid song. She paused, smiling at Mindy. "¿Quieres?" she asked her. Mindy started to cry.

She seemed to love children, as if that wasn't obvious by the fact that she bore fourteen of her own, eleven of whom survive. She babysat my brother and I when we were very young and always seemed cheerful when we visited. She sometimes watched other people's children too. I could also tell that she was very proud of her own children and grandchildren. The walls of her small home and every horizontal surface were absolutely covered with pictures of her family, almost to the point of clutter. Her photos ranged from old, black and white images of classy-looking, attractive relatives, to the brightly colored ones of the newest born additions to her ever-growing legacy.

Enrique and Evangelina on their wedding day

Although she loved children, she had a very low tolerance for nonsense, especially when her telenovelas (Spanish-language soap operas) were on. She could often be found her lying on her side on the couch, engrossed in these shows. When someone would get out of line, in particular when children started fighting with each other, she would prop herself up on one elbow and grab one of her dreaded chanclas (house shoes). She would raise it above her head and yell orders in Spanish. Whatever she yelled was unintelligible to my brother and me at the time, but we knew what she meant. Sometimes she yelled a word that sounded like, "¡State!" (pronounced STAH-tay), which we knew meant "Knock it off!" I think she may have actually been saying something like stápate, a Spanglish construction consisting of "stop it" pronounced with a Spanish accent and -te, meaning "you". I never actually saw her strike anyone with her chancla, but no one dared call her bluff.

Her home decor also showed that she was religious. My favorite items in her home were pieces of religious decor because, in true Mexican style, they were brightly colored and sparkly. My favorite object to examine in her house was a small, folding triptych that she had on one of her end tables. I don't remember what it had on it, but I think it had something to do with the Virgin Mary. Before going down for the naps she would make us take, I would see her kneel at the side of her bed, hands folded in prayer. At the end, she would kiss a little gold cross on a chain. It may have been a necklace or a rosary - I don't remember clearly. In addition to being religious, she was also superstitious and had nailed a horseshoe over the front door for good luck.

She was adept at sewing. In one corner stood a beautiful treadle sewing machine. The machine itself was black and gold and built into a gorgeous wood cabinet with decorative embellishments. Below was an ornate, heavy black wrought-iron treadle. I loved crawling under it and rocking the treadle back and forth with my hands to make the wheel spin. When I was older, she also taught me embroidery and gave me an old green cookie tin full of thread, needles, fabric, and an embroidery hoop so that I could work on my projects at home.

While I didn't know much about her history, there was plenty that I could tell about her just by her appearance. I knew she had had a physically strenuous life, probably due to the hard physical work she had done over the years and the number of children she had borne and reared. She tipped back and forth like a penguin when she walked, as if her knees didn't really bend. I loved her long, black hair and I think she did too. She always had it in a braid or in a bun and sometimes braided my hair too. When I was older I resolved to keep my hair long when I was an old lady, just like her. For most of my childhood, she only had one tooth, and later on someone provided her with dentures. She had lots of wrinkles on her face that amplified her expressions of joy and would put the fear of God into you when she was angry. I once saw her cry very briefly, shortly after my grandfather moved into his own place. I knew he had moved, and I might have even had a vague understanding about why, but for some reason felt compelled to ask her about it (as if I could even understand her answer). "Where's grandpa?" I asked. She didn't answer with words, but with a sudden, loud sob, turning away from me and dropping her face into her open hands. I felt terrible for asking. My grandfather passed away in 1993.

Enrique and Evangelina

After I had learned to read in English, I became more curious about my grandmother's language and how to go about communicating with her. I remember occasionally asking my dad how to say different things. The only phrase that stuck was "¿Cómo está?" (How are you?), and I used it every time we saw her during our greeting hug. I started to pay attention to the other Spanish words I would hear and tried to discern both their spelling and their meaning just from context. I was usually way off on both accounts.

Most of the notable Spanish words I heard were uttered during exchanges between my dad and my uncle Frank. Perhaps they stood out because they were said in an exaggerated way and were usually swearwords, insults, or components of dirty jokes. Once in a while I would repeat these words with the full knowledge that I might get in trouble for doing so. I never did, but my dad would visibly tense up, his eyes would widen and he would command sternly, "Don't EVER say that in front of your grandma!" Unfortunately, most of the words I learned prior to taking proper language classes carried this warning. I wasn't the only Garcia child to have heard it either. One summer during a family camping trip I called my cousin a pendejo (dumbass). He asked me, "Do you even know what that means?"

"No," I admitted sheepishly.

"Well, you shouldn't say it if you don't know what it means. And definitely don't say it in front of grandma."

My freshman year of high school arrived and Spanish was finally being offered at my school. I enrolled with the express purpose of eventually being able to communicate with my grandmother. I excelled in class because I loved it, and classmates often looked to me for help with their own work, even the kids who spoke Spanish as a first language. At last I had acquired a few basic phrases that I could use to communicate with my grandma and made a few shy attempts to do so. They were simple things like introducing a friend to her, offering her food or drink, or just getting through basic salutations and small talk. She taught me a couple of words along the way that I might not have picked up given the European leanings of the Spanish taught in most American schools. At one family party when I brought her a plate of food, she asked me to bring her a trinche. I looked at her blankly, embarrassed that I didn't know this word. "¿Un trinche?" I asked, repeating the word back to her to make sure I had heard it correctly. "Sí." I was at a loss, so I asked her what it was. "TE-NE-DOR," she enunciated in a loud, annoyed voice. I knew that word. It meant "fork".

I began to appreciate her sense of humor, which I had never been able to grasp before. One year during Christmas, we were sitting together talking while she enjoyed a beer. She suddenly realized she was missing something and began looking around in her chair and on the floor. "What did you lose?" I asked. Right then she patted her front shirt pocket and a look of relief graced her face. She reached in and pulled out the missing object. It was her dentures. We both had a good laugh. Another time I went to her house for a visit with my dad. As usual, she was watching Univision, the major Spanish language network that broadcasts in the U.S. We all happened to look at the television the exact moment the screen displayed a well-endowed blond woman jogging on a beach in slow motion, à la Baywatch. My grandmother giggled and said something I didn't understand, cupped her palms upward in front of her, and raised and lowered each hand in an alternating fashion to imitate the bouncing of the woman's breasts.

Once I was competent enough to do so, I would make it a point to try to converse a bit with my grandmother every time I saw her. I actually knew very few details about her life and was anxious to find out more, and it wasn't until I was in college that we were able to have a mutually comprehensible dialogue.

Evangelina and her sister Lucita

Unfortunately, my grandmother spent the last couple years of her life in a state of poor health and permanent confusion. Sometimes when I would visit her she wouldn't know who I was and that was really disappointing. But it hurt more to see a woman who had always been tough as nails reduced to a frail, immobile little old lady. As a young child, I remember sometimes thinking she was mean, probably because of her incomprehensible yelling while wielding a chancla. Seeing her in her final years made me wish she was mean again. Despite this, she was still her old self in the better ways, always joking and giving people hell. I could understand her fully by that point and actually managed to learn a lot about her past from listening to her phase in and out of different periods of her life. Her dementia acted as a non-chronological narrator of her history.

Wanting to know my grandmother more deeply sparked my desire to learn Spanish. After a while, I got pretty good at it. About eleven years ago I moved to Spain, where I got really good at it. During that trip I also got my first translation job by accident and, while working on it, had an epiphany that this was what I wanted to do for a living. While abroad I was also bitten by the travel bug and infected with an incurable wanderlust. As a result, I have now traveled to ten different countries, at a rate of about one per year, and have dabbled in the languages of each. I created this blog so that I can better reflect on my experiences and share them with other people. I hope that this work can bring about some sort of understanding, however superficial, between different people and their cultures.