Advent Calendar: fixins

Advent Calendar:

Dec 9
Those little crackers with the sugar flowers on them for Christmas. (Florecitas?) Those large tins of Sultanas (knock-off brand of Saltines) that we would manage to consume briskly. (Soaking them in coffee for breakfast) I have a memory of two of those tins out in the PR countryside. Some elderly family lady (probably a Soto), gaunt, in one of those little cotton dresses using those tins, one to wash clothes and the other to cook pig swill.

Advent Calendar: parenting

Advent Calendar:

Dec 7
I never realized it until I became one that a lot of parental teaching moments are done clandestinely and sometimes even without our even meaning to do them. You'll ask your kids what something means or ask them to look something up even though you know the answer, maybe let them make a mistake so that they can figure something out or whatever. If you had asked me who I was most like when I was a kid it would have been my real dad. That's because anyone who saw me would say I was his spitting image. I was dark like he was and my mom had the fair Mendez look. But it's only recently that I've come to see how much I look like my mom, especially around the eyes and how much of her and my step-father's ways I've subsumed. All those years of watching my mom toil away at constructing dresses and making things translated into my love of the arts. From the old man, I got his love of gadgets and his meticulous ways. From both of them a sense of moral indignation if I am right or something stands to me corrected. And, I guess that is our greatest legacy - the things we give to our kids and that our parents left with us - that we are set out on our paths and with a little guidance, sometimes from beyond, they guide our way.

Advent Calendar: family get-togethers

Advent Calendar:

Dec 8
The Alvarez family moved to Irvington when it was the boon docks. It was sylvan and suburban and was the family's first sojourn into real Middle Class life. This trickled down for the rest of of since we were all so tightly knit. We'd have raucous parties and spent just about every weekend "in the country". The house had a basement that was a party room and Tio would always have the latest toy, like a full-sized pin ball machine or a pool table, etc. One year we recreated the Christmas Nativity. Because I was the youngest - and over my strenuous protest - I played Melchoir, the black Magi. Al has the video of it somewhere. It shows Mary (Lydia) dragging the baby Jesus down the stair by his heels.

Advent Calendar: religion

Advent Calendar:

Dec 6
Because you think of Puerto Rico as a Latin country, it surprises a lot of my friends to find out that my mother and her siblings (as well as my step-father and real father) were protestants. Mami wasn't "spiritual". Even if it was just her way of playing along with her cultural background, she professed a belief in all sorts of spiritista nonsense. Her core belief was an abundant confidence in some sort of ethereal goodness and her sence of righteouness. And it was always grounded in the practical. I remember her telling the nuns, "You educate them and their souls are yours." That's how we became Catholics. Our mother sold our souls to the Sisters of Charity. When Sundays rolled around, conflicting with some family junket, she'd meet my protests that I had to go to mass or suffer damnation with the solution: go to confession on Friday. "But what if I die before then?" "Do you think God is really going to punish you for that?", she'd say. "Besides, tell him I made you. Now get in the car." It worked for me.

Advent Calendar: Santeria

Advent Calendar:

Dec 5
Dec 5: When I was a little boy I found coins all over the apartment where we were visiting. "Go put them back," Mami told me almost hush-toned. She was being gentle with me and uncharacteristically reverential. My mother was an amalgam of old and new worlds, especially where religion was concerned and she didn't brook much metaphysical nonsense but she was always, somehow, all about the supernatural. "Those are for good luck," she told me. It seems this was some sort of spiritista stuff and she knew all about it.

Advent Calendar: babies

Advent Calendar:

Dec 4
In the same vein, a pregnancy was always big and exciting news. The Tias were all harpees, in both a good and bad sense, and they were all about a new baby. New babies and weddings, those were the major celebratory events around which our family revolved and each Tia had a special calling. My mother's was sewing and party logistics. For weddings she made everything from the dresses down to the little organza bags of white almonds that they stuck in the plastic swans. But a baby was their own little secret girl doings. They would have had by now their wedding shower. Bawdy little events. By the time of the baby's impending arrival the Mendez coven would be in full conspiratorial swing. One of the things leading up to it would be finding out the sex of the child. The PR version of the ultrasound usually happened as a parlor game at a baby shower but also happened spontaneously, usually a Tia instigating it. The baby's mami would come into the room and pick a seat. Every cushion had a fork or a knife hidden in it. Depending on where she sat, that was the baby's sex.

Advent Calendar: culture

Advent Calendar:

Dec 3
When my mom was a little girl in PR they would peel an orange, trying to keep it one continuous strand, throwing it over their shoulder and seeing what the initial of their future husband was going to be.

Advent Calendar: mom

Advent Calendar:

Dec 2
As a kid I could always get a rise out of my mom. I would make a weird or contorted face and she'd almost automatically make one of those "Your Mom May Really Be Jewish" comments. She'd get all flustered and excited, maybe even slap me. "Stop. Your face will freeze and you'll look like that the rest of your life."

Advent Calendar: matriarchy

Advent Calendar:

Dec 1
A few years ago Lydia and I put together a family page. Some of the things that we said were, well, "unvarnished". In true Mendez fashion Tia Celina was outraged that we had said our grandfather was, well, "not a saint". She was on the warpath and took it out on Lydia, who implored me to change it. In typical Mendez fashion I responded that I was not and that she could kiss my ass. However, after a few days, (also very typically Mendez male-like) and because it was my beloved Tia, I caved in. I changed it.