Change

1. I rent a plot in a community garden. I grow vegetables now.
2. I'm on  an eight week vacation.
3. I started going to son jarocho classes where I learn to play the jarana.
4. I like coming here.

Danzón

The telephone call came Friday night, about the time when most of the seagulls in Oxnard had returned home to Anacapa Island. Our cats knew something was wrong. V had been expecting this call since he came to live in the United States. We packed our bag quickly.  The cats just stared at us. V, who rarely wears anything, but tennis shoes, told me, " I think I'll wear my brown shoes this time."  We spoke little on our three hour flight to Mexico City.  We sat with a handful of memories of her and let our airplane food go cold. Most of my memories of her are hand-me-downs from V's recollections. I replayed over and over the time she sat down with V to teach him how to write silla and mesa.  I thought of the photograph she gave me where she's standing so proud next to her little boy whom she had dressed like a German little boy from the mountains. V didn't have a smile for the camera. Last July, V asked her to dance danzón at La Ciudadela. He took her by the hand, and  even with her bad knee, they danced slowly to the nectar of music. 


Perhaps every son should dance with his mother at least once. 

The Bad Catholic girl

When I did my First Communion I got an attack of the giggles.
I was nervous. The priest gave me an evil look and didn't give me the body of Christ.

You and Whose army?
You and your cronies.
You forget so easily.
We ride tonight.
We ride tonight.
Ghost horses.
Ghost horses.
 
When I finally stopped laughing. He came back and gave the left overs of Christ.
 

I miss you, blog.

Facebook is a plastic keychain of a motel room. Sometimes it feels like a Charles Bukowski ham sandwich at a Greyhound station in Los Angeles back in 1987.  Vic tells me you get out what you put in.

I have a great deal to learn.

Facebookeando

Yeap.

I arrived.

....and this was their reaction:

First Day Of School

1. A student had an epileptic seizure within the first three minutes of school.
2. A student burst into tears uncontrollably after seeing a seizure for the first time.
3. Eighteen students looked at me thinking: Can we trust you?
4. A student told me in a scared, quiet voice, My daddy died last year.
5. My principal told us she is going to change our mascot from Cougars to Cyber Cougars (we are a technology school...whatever that means). I googled Cyber Cougars and I got escort dating services, playboy clubs, porn...

........

5. My husband sent me this text message at lunch: Te amo harto, harto, hartisisisimo 

I know I sound corny and mushy, but I'm gonna be okay.

Sniff.

School

There's a place where I don't listen to punk rock or say the F word. I don't blog there. I don't text there. I get excited about fractions and solid figures at that place. I don't worry if I look dumb for singing about a baby beluga or apples and bananas.  I even smile when a little face recognizes a long vowel. Yeap, I like that place.