Para Mi Abuela

Update: I spoke with my father on the phone. According to him, my grandmother experienced a very calm, peaceful passing earlier this afternoon. It was dignified, in one of the best hospitals in the country. Not bad for a little old Mexican woman from Hidalgo, Texas. More than can be said for many people.

She has requested cremation, so she can be buried in the future with her husband, my grandfather, Luis Ramirez.
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For the past couple of days, I’ve been composing a short blog about a kangaroo. It was going to be a funny and (hopefully) interesting revitalization of this dormant website. I am putting it on hold, however, because my grandmother Telby Ramirez is in a hospital in Maryland. From what I’ve been able to gather from voice-and-e-mails, things do not look good.

I am experiencing the initial disconnect with reality that comes from news like this. I have experienced it before. I don’t know what else to say about this right now, other than to repost something I wrote about my grandparents, and specifically my grandmother, nearly four years ago. I’m going to do that now. I hope many people read it, because it speaks a lot about my family, my grandmother, and, I think, life in general.

Friday, November 24, 2006

No cotton for Thanksgiving!

A fair early content warning: I may use the phrase “lo and behold” a lot in this blog. Very Biblical.

Ok, I probably won’t be using that a lot here, but my grandfather sure uses it one hell of a lot in his speech. As you may or may not have guessed, this entry is inspired by this year’s Thanksgiving holiday. Anyone who knows me knows that I spend less time thinking about my family than I probably should. And that goes for my immediate family, let alone my extended family. My parents moved us to Maryland from Texas before I started the sixth grade. By the time I reached the end of high school, I wanted to do mostly my own thing. I did a lot of traveling, met a lot of new people, and lived in a lot of different places. Visiting the bloodline back in the grand ole’ state of Texas, which, by the by, I can’t stand, never held priority for me. As a result, my family and I have become relative strangers to one another.

Is this something I regret? Well, I don’t know. But, after years of insincere Thanksgivings where I half-heartedly spouted off a list of things I was grateful for to anyone who actually asked, I have finally come to one where I can really feel thankful at the end of the day. And lo and behold, it was because of my grandfather.

A word about Luis Ramirez, my venerable grandfather on my mother’s side: he is a smart-aleck Mexican, a history buff, a joker, and a foul-mouthed curmudgeon. Excepting the Mexican part, I think a lot of people see some of these qualities in their own grandfathers. One thing I always knew and never appreciated so much as I did these last two days was this: his undeniable ability to talk one’s ear off.

We got into great conversations about history and war and politics and all of that nonsense, but what really got to me were the stories about my own family. I could probably write a book eventually; I’ll have to get him to spill his guts while I have a recorder around next time, but I’ll share one thing here.

I hadn’t known that my grandparents both picked cotton on the Rio Grande during the depression. Being the smart-ass that Grandfather Luis is, he asked me bluntly in his accented English: “How many pounds of cotton per day do you think your ‘Uela (abbreviated “abuela,” or “grandmother”) pulled?” No one likes showing his or her ignorance, so I just said “I don’t know.” But that’s not good enough for Luis, oooohhhh no! “Take a guess!” he said, “I want to see what you know about your grandmother.”

Well shit, I was stuck. I tried to be smart about it—estimate. I knew that one piece of cotton is very light, a few grams maybe. It would take a whole hell of a lot of them to make one pound. Maybe it was a trick question—I guessed low. “Ten?” This was met with a cackle of derisive laughter.

“Guess again!”

“Thirty?”

“Oy, mi’hito, is that all you think of your grandmother?”

“Well shit,” I say, in his own foul language, “how the hell many was it?”

“Would you believe one thousand?”

I didn’t believe it, and I told him so. He grabbed me by the wrist and took me to the guest room where ‘uela was putting together her puzzle (she just completed it after four days). He asked her how many pounds of cotton she used to pull, and she said without hesitating for a second: “One thousand. By three o’clock.” That’s it. I believed it. I had to; I know my grandmother. She was eleven or twelve years of age at the time. I am still in shock, even as I type this. They had to pull the bulbs, drag them on a contraption that hung behind them back to a scale, weigh it, dump it, and go back for more. Back and forth, back and forth, bending over and pulling cotton for several hours. I asked ‘Uelo (abbreviated “abuelo,” or “grandfather, but you already knew that I’m sure) how much he picked. “Oh,” he said, “never more than one hundred pounds in a day. Got 50 cents for it, too.” She showed him up.

I wish I had a tape recorder these last couple of days. I do plan on getting a lot more out of him though; I would like to commit these stories to real paper. Stay tuned. In any case, that is what I’m thankful for. I’m thankful to have heard some stories and finally gained genuine interest in where I came from. I always had it to some extent, but never to the point to where I was excited to seek the information out. I’m also thankful to my smart-assed Grandfather Luis and Grandmother Telby (‘Uela and ‘Uelo, if you will) for using so much breath on telling great stories, even though those stories overused lo and behold. Thank you!