overdue entry
I'm thinking of asking my mother to have an autobiography written about her life, dictated by her of course. When I went to visit her in May she related many stories to me I'd never heard before. Her life is so fucking interesting! Not even 'cause she's my mom either. Like, you ever read about what some immigrants had to go through to get to America? That's my mom's life story right there. I've wanted to write this entry for a while but I wanted it to go with me uploading pictures I took when I was there with her. This is, by far, my favorite set of pictures, and there ain't a single person in them.
When my mom saw me snapping away at all the stuff in her place she turned to my brother and remarked about how alike she and I were. I hadn't put it together before then but... my mother has about a dozen photo albums, full of pictures. She's the only one on her side of my family with any pictures older than the late 80s. Black and white pictures. Pictures of herself pregnant with my brother Tyrone, pregnant with me. Pictures of me being held as an infant by my grandfather Dionisio, who was my father's father, that my father doesn't have. (His nickname was Nicho, and he loved my mom, probably more than my father did.)
My mother had a blanket with a tiger on it. A huge blanket she'd throw over her bed... that I believe ended up (somehow!) in my brother's house (when he had his own). I want that blanket. If I ever see him with it, I'm stealing that shit. Cold-blooded.
Anyway... tidbits about my mom I can remember (I swore I'd write this fucking entry before I forgot shit but oh well):
+ Beginning at age 15 my mother held at least two jobs. Into her thirties she worked as many as four.
+ The first time she came to America, as an older teen, a lawyer whose house she used to clean told her that he could guarantee her citizenship if she carried on an affair with him. She was terrified, and two days later she'd found her way back to Panama.
+ A few years after she'd come back to America but still undocumented, while she was cleaning the home of someone, an officer knocked on the door. Instead of answering it she told the home's owner she was sorry but she had to leave, as she'd be deported if the officer found her there. The names and faces of many of the agents sent by immigration to make arrests were known to those who cleaned homes in the area. The owner pulled her into a small laundry room, told my mother not to make a sound, took a towel from the room and closed my mother in. She then completely undressed, wrapped herself in the towel and answered the door. She held the officer at the door, fielding insults and threats (You do know you can be arrested for harboring a criminal, ma'am?) while my mother stood in a room she could barely turn around in, sweating like a pig. Eventually the officer was rebuffed, and my mother stayed in the United States.
+ Once while on a trip to Panama with one of her best friends, my "Aunt" Eunice, who's since passed away, my mother made multiple stops down a block giving homeless people money. Eunice turned to her annoyed and told her, "You can't save everybody, y'know?" My mother replied, "Well, you know what Eunice? When I get back on the plane to New York, they can starve again."
+ When I was about 6 years old, only months after we'd moved to Florida, my mother and I went to some fast food place with my aunt Marva and her family. While we were eating a homeless man wandered in counting change in his hand. My mother took a dollar from her purse, put it in my hand and told me to give it to him. My aunt expressed apprehension and my mother ignored her completely. When I got back to the table my mother told me never to be afraid of another human being, no matter their condition or attitude, and to be as generous and kind as I can be.
+ One day a few years after I was born, on her way home from work on a train in NYC, a homeless man approached my mother and asked her if she knew him. She immediately recognized him as her older brother. My uncle Rodolfo had been living on the streets of New York for nearly a decade, suffering from schizophrenia, completely abandoned by the U.S. army's Veteran's Association. My mother took my uncle home with her, beating him about the brain with questions he couldn't answer. It would take more than another decade for the V.A. to help my uncle but my mother took care of him then.
+ My mother decided that it had been time to ween me from the bottle when I threw my last one out of a car window one sunny day in New York. "Wave bye to the bottle, Roli!" she said while laughing. Her friend driving wasn't nearly as amused as my mother and I.