Posts by Alexandra:
The Treasured Memory
April 30th, 2012
A Favorite Bedtime Story
I often wonder about what my children will remember from their childhood.
Any sweet memories I have of being little all involve my abuela. My grandmother is the one who raised me and when I think of the days of being a small child, it is her face I see and her voice I hear.
Bedtime was a favorite part of my day; my abuela made it that way. As it grew dark outside, my grandmother would gather my younger siblings and she’d set us all in one bathtub to soak while she’d watch over us and sing a sweet Spanish song.
She’d help us dry off and get into our pajamas, and when we were ready for bed, my grandmother would have us stand on our beds as she’d tightly twirl a blanket around us. We’d giggle as we’d be wrapped up tighter than a moth in a cocoon.
After we were washed and dried and wrapped, she’d lay us down and begin to tell us a story. Since my grandmother came to this country when she was almost 60-years-old, all of her stories were richly Latin.
There was one tale in particular that I begged for each night. I barely remember the full story, but I do remember how I loved to hear my abuela tell it. It was about a little frog who lived in a stream and a little girl that came to the river to wash her family’s clothes.
I always imagined myself as that little girl. This little girl thought herself very ugly, and each day as she’d wash the clothes, she’d cry over her misfortune of not being born beautiful and her tears would fall into the stream and be carried down the river.
One day this little girl’s tears made their way to the frog that lived in the water. This frog also felt he was ugly. He was so moved by the little girl’s pain and understood her unhappiness so well, that he made her beautiful. When the little girl saw her beautiful reflection in the stream, she was so happy at how lovely the frog had made her that she picked him up in her hand, and not caring that he was ugly, kissed him.
Her kiss turned him into a handsome young man and together they were happy and never lonely again.
Making Memories
I have such a rich, full memory of these times with my abuela, and it’s that reminder of how only 15 minutes in a day can turn into a memory my children will talk about fifty years from now, that keeps me from never saying no when my youngest asks me to sit and read with him.
No matter how busy I am, how many dishes there are in the sink, how many baskets full of laundry to be folded, I never say no.
Living On Latin Time
March 28th, 2012
Why Latinos are Late
Is it true? What they say about Hispanic Time? You know the joke: What time is it when a Latino arrives? Late o’clock.
If you are Latino, if you have friends who are Latino, if you are married to a Latino, I’d bet money you’ve heard anything from whisperings to chidings spoken out loud regarding Hispanic Time.
Hispanic/Latino time — or Cuban Time, or Mexican Time, or Colombian Time, etc — is the tongue-in-cheek saying given to the late arrival time of our people to social gatherings.
For work, business, meetings, school functions, committees, we are professionally prompt and on the dot.
But, invite us to a party, a wedding, a celebration, and let’s just say that chances are good we won’t be the first ones ringing your doorbell.
I don’t take offense when I hear joking about this late arrival time and Latinos. Within my own family we will jokingly ask before we meet somewhere, American time or Latino time? This is our way of asking Do you want me there at 6:30, or around 6:30?
The reasons for this cultural characteristic have been speculated about for years. I feel it’s expected of me to arrive late at a Latino event. I don’t want to arrive on time because I know my hosts will expect me to arrive at least half an hour later than requested.
Research into why there is this occurrence of arriving late in our culture leads to explanations of European background, Mediterranean roots, living in the present, not fully adopting the American lifestyle of “time is money”, and “the early bird gets the worm.”
I have read the proposed theories, detailing how Hispanics value peace more than stress, or how the Spanish language and it’s verb structure create a lifestyle of living in the present. For me, it comes down to doing what is politely expected in my Latino culture.
Why I am Late
I feel my hosts need the time to prepare for my arrival. I don’t want to catch them before they are ready or make them feel rushed. The arrival time of 30 minutes later that I give them is like a safety net that I silently provide for my friends. I want them to be relaxed and ready for me. In my eyes, arriving later than requested is the considerate thing to do.
It makes my husband and his German family crazy that I aim for a late arrival on purpose. They can’t understand this. I have been told by my husband how important it is for him to arrive on time for anything. I hear him, I really do. But I can’t bring myself to do it. The way I see it, to show up on time puts me at risk of finding my hostess in her slip and hot rollers. With not a smidge of lipstick on.
But I’ve figured out a simple way to work around my husband’s German punctuality and my Latino Time.
I tell him an arrival time that is half an hour later than we’re actually expected. When we pull up to our friend’s home, he smiles thinking we’re wonderfully prompt, and I am able to breathe deeply, relieved we won’t walk in on anybody in their boxers and A shirt, dancing in the kitchen to Pitbull.
Latinaness
February 11th, 2012
Latina Like JLo
On my last birthday, a friend gave me a wonderful pair of earrings. I was grateful and appreciative that she thought of me and remembered my love of earrings when she came across this pair she thought I’d like.
As I was opening her gift, something slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it, and I could tell that she immediately knew it might not have been the best thing to say. We know each other well enough and what she said did make me laugh, but still, the weight of what she was saying remained thick in the air.
Just as I pulled the last piece of tape off the gift and went to open the box, she blurted with excitement: “I just know you’ll love them. They’re by JLo!”
That stopped me in my tracks. There was so much about this that was funny. First, that my loving friend would think that if it’s by JLo it meant I would automatically love it because, well, I’m Latina. Second, the very moment she made the JLo comment, she began apologizing one hundred times in a row. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry…
I told her all was fine and put her at ease. And the truth is, I did love the earrings. And I do love most anything by JLo.
Do I love JLo everyday? No. Is everything in my closet and jewelry box by JLo? Again, no. I like variety as much as any other woman.
But Not Latina Enough For Some
Then, the weekend I was writing this post, I followed an online comment thread about a YouTube video that someone had put up. It followed the theme of the popular meme of “What XXXXX Women Say.” You know, the ones that have been going around. In this case, the video was about Latina women, and what they say.
Some of the comments people left on this YouTube video were from those who thought they had to put this out there to the performer: “”You don’t sound Latina.” and “You don’t look Latina”; ”You don’t act Latina”; and “Latinas wouldn’t say that.”
All that, despite the performer having Latin roots.
Someone once told me they were surprised to find out I was Hispanic. Their reason? “You don’t wear leopard spots ever.”
How many leopard spot-wearing days a year do I need to be Latina enough? Two times a month? Is that enough leopard spot-wearing to be considered Latina?
As an American with Colombian roots, the question comes to my mind: What is Latinaness? And I pose this not for the non-Latino population to determine, but for us to discuss amongst ourselves.
What makes us who we are? And why does it sometimes seem that our harshest, most intolerant critics are those among our own ethnicity?
What makes us Latina enough to be accepted by our own cultural group? What is it that the critics within our own cultural groups want to see? What would make us Latina enough for our own people to accept us?
Latina Enough
The barbs that sting me the most are the ones that come from my own people, with words of judgment, non-acceptance, and closed doors. (At least my gift-giving friend thinks me Latina enough.)
I want to say to these people, my own people, I don’t fit into the American culture, and you make me feel as if you can’t accept me into your culture based on standards that you determine.
Where would you like me to belong? Because I want to belong with you. You. Where my roots begin, where my heart lies, where my identity is grounded. Please, I may not be exactly like you because I am born here, or have lived here most of my life, but I want to be one of you: you’re my people, and I love you.
The Soft Resolution
December 29th, 2011
Pedro Infante, Mexican actor and singer, regularly heard in my home.
During this time of year, when we make our lists, assess our lives, set our goals, I have decided to focus on what I have come to call a “soft resolution.”
A soft resolution is one that I know I’ll keep. It’s not a hard hitter. Not one that will get me closer to any of my professional or educational goals; but a resolution that will help me fill in the soft parts of my life that have been mistakenly left to chance.
The soft parts of my life are my children, my family. I feel like time is running through my hands, and my children know so little about me. They know me as their mother, I have been with them more than any other person they know. And though they see me daily, they know so little about me.
My soft resolution this year is to help them get to know me better through the music that has been important in my life.
I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. My mother and grandmother played the records they brought with them to America from Colombia so much of the time. I remember coloring and playing dolls while Pedro Infante, Guillermo Portables, Lupita Palomera played in the background.
Their music always made me feel at peace, and like I belonged. When I was away at school, or at a friend’s house, I always felt as if I were stepping in on someone else’s culture. But when I was home, and this music played in the background, I felt solid in who I was.
I want my children to know about the music I grew up with and how it made me feel. I want them to know this about me. I want them to hear more of this music, more often. I want to bring this part of me into their lives softly. I’ve played some of Infante’s songs in the car a few times, to some pretty amazing reactions.
My three boys liked it. Not for long, never longer than one song at a time; but they liked it.
They say it makes them feel good, and like there’s a part of them in that music that they forget they were about.
I know just what they mean.
We Remember It As “The Biggest Holiday Ever”
December 15th, 2011
Alexandra and her brother, Pachito.
Magical in My Memory
My brother and I sat on the thin carpet, mouths open, eyes wide, giggling with our fingers in our mouths. It was Christmas Eve, and my entire family was sitting around our tinsel covered, brightly lit Christmas tree.
We watched as together, my mother and father pulled out what looked like the world’s largest box from behind the tree. My mother read the tag on the enormous present and my brother and I jumped up, clapping as we heard the words, “para Alejandra y Pachito, del Nino Jesus.”
In our footed pajamas, we tripped over our three other siblings and began to rip the paper that covered our gift.
“Guarden el papel!” Save the paper! my thrift minded grandmother shouted from somewhere in the background.
Her words fell on deaf ears, for we noisily tore at that paper for what seemed like an eternity. When all traces of gift wrapping were tossed aside, my brother and I jumped up and down with a joy that I am still able to feel all these years later. We had gotten it! The little spotted rocking pony that we had wished for every time we had seen it, visit after visit, at our neighborhood hardware store, was here! And it was ours!
We pulled our little bodies on board, and one behind the other, we rocked and rocked and that pony squeaked and creaked as we imagined it flying us over fields, while we held on for all we were worth.
These are the technicolor memories I have of a Christmas Eve when I was barely 3-years-old. It was the first year my father was in this country. While I was preparing for this post, I emailed my older sister to see if she had any details to add. My sister is eight years older, and she would have been 12-years-old that Christmas.
Sister Remembers Differently
Typing with excitement over the memory I hoped to share, I asked her, “Do you remember that Christmas that Pachito and I got that rocking pony we wanted so much?”
“Oh. That awful Christmas.” Her response stunned me. “Yes, yes, I do. You two had to share a present. It was Daddy’s first year in America, it was awful…we had nothing.”
I sat at the other end of the email, the wind knocked out of my memory.
“Are we talking about the same Christmas? It was wonderful. Daddy was here, we had the pony, we had the chocolate cake with pink frosting at midnight…”
“No. Don’t you remember how cold we were? Your pajamas were too small. We all had to share gifts. No one else got presents except the kids.”
“But we were so happy,” I insisted. “Daddy was dressed up in a suit and tie, and mama had on her flowered dress, and ‘buelita was cooking.”
“Daddy always wore a suit and a tie.” My sister’s email became an explanation. “Mama was pregnant and had on her only good maternity dress. And ‘buelita was always at the stove.”
Still The Best Christmas
After our email exchange was through, I sat and thought about how differently we remembered this Christmas. My sister, being older and able to understand the situation we were in, saw that Christmas through the reality of what it truly was: a struggling one.
For me, being 3-years old, I remember receiving the one thing I truly wanted. And I remember my favorite chocolate cake in the middle of a table covered with a poinsettia tablecloth. And I remember my handsome father finally being home with us.
I think of this brown pony Christmas, and it was the perfect Christmas. I didn’t notice how many presents were under the tree, I don’t remember cranky parents or long lines or fights at stores for gifts. I remember this Christmas as being magic, with a twinkling tree, and an enormous gift for my brother and I to share. And riding that pony together made it so much more fun than riding it alone could ever feel. I had my partner for our adventures.
I was a child, and my heart was bursting with the brightest, shiniest Christmas that I could imagine.
Introduction to Thanksgiving for the Non-American
November 21st, 2011
Our First American Thanksgiving
It was yet another bewildering holiday in America for all of us, my newly citizened family of eight in the late 1960′s. We were all in the kitchen, assembling the ingredients that we had seen portrayed as necessary in our local Food Store ad insert for an American “Thanksgiving Holiday.”
My siblings and I had talked our mother into buying everything advertised in the color newsprint pages for that week. There was the large shrink wrapped turkey, the crinkly bag of Brownberry Ovens stuffing, boxes of orange Jell-O, purple cans of Prince brand yams, bakery fresh pumpkin pie, the cellophane bag of fresh cranberries, and the pop-top can of French’s deep fried onion rings to place on top of the not-to-be-missed green bean casserole.
We were all ready to get busy in our American kitchen. Why? Because we knew all of our friends from school would be doing this. We had heard them talk about this all week. Our reason for all of this food preparation was to be able to go back to school with matching stories of eating too much pumpkin pie.
We were “assimilating” into our new culture. This was what my siblings and I wanted more than anything: To have an American Thanksgiving. All that our Spanish-only speaking mother and grandmother understood about this holiday was that we had two days off of school to stay home and eat.
A day off of school to stay home and eat? It made no sense, but that is what we told my mother and grandmother they had to do that Thursday in the last week of November.
We Didn’t Do This in Colombia
My two brothers, my three sisters and I were all eagerly shoving black and white sketches from our school textbooks depicting the First Thanksgiving into my grandmother’s line of vision.
“See, Abuela?” we told her rushedly in Spanish. “See? Here are the Indians sitting with the Pilgrims eating turkey and corn and cranberries and we have to make all this here today in exactly the same way. It’s what they do in America.”
“Si, Si…” my grandmother said, doing her best to try and please us. But I knew by the sound of her voice that she had little idea of the purpose of this day.
“I will make this turkey, and the other foods in the pictures. Though we never ate like this in South America. A turkey is very expensive in Colombia. And I have never seen cranberries before. I think a chicken would be better. What do you think of two good chickens instead?”
We all listened, aghast. Did our grandmother just suggest two chickens in place of a Thanksgiving Turkey?
“No, Abuela! It MUST be a turkey!”
She rolled the 12-pound bird over and over on the kitchen table. “I wonder for how long I shall need to cook something this large. If I divide it, and quarter it, it shall cook much faster, and then we will be able to fit it into the oven…” she pondered aloud.
“No! Abuela! No!” we all cried with alarm. “See! See this picture here! With this American family?? The turkey is all in one piece! And it’s dark brown! You cannot cut it up, Abuela, it must be served whole!”
“I see, I see,” she said, pressing her lips together. “Why don’t you, all of you, go and decorate the dining room table the way the Americans will do today. I shall see what I can do”
We widened our eyes at this marvelous suggestion! Yes! Yes! We would decorate the dining table the way the Americans did! Quickly, we ran to the front room and laid out that day’s newspaper. We would get ideas for decorating from the paper. We laid down on the floor and pored over that day’s ads, scrutinizing each picture showing a typical American family. Studying and majoring in all things American, we were determined to spend the day as Americans would.
We turned the paper’s pages, and stared. Then, then we slowly, one by one, realized something about our family. No matter how much preparation we did on this day, we would never be like the pictures in the paper. Did we actually think we’d be just like that family in the ad insert? The pictures we had been looking at were so far from what we looked like and lived like. The mothers in the pictures showed a woman, checkered apron tied at the waist, entering the dining room to beaming smiles, while she, radiant and proud, carried an oval platter displaying a steaming, perfectly golden brown turkey. A turkey that had been left whole.
We were not this family. We would never be this family. We were who we were.
We could hear our grandmother clattering in the kitchen as she tried to re-arrange the shelves in the oven to fit the 12-pound bird. We all knew what we had to do.
A Tradition of Our Own
One by one, we went to her. We watched as our beautiful grandmother struggled with how to know what to do with a bird this large. We put our arms around her, smelled her delicious smell of comino and aji and cilantro that always hung so comfortingly around her.
“Abuela, ” we all said. “Why don’t you make the turkey the way you know how. It’ll be good the way you know how.”
“Verdad, ninos? Can I?” she asked us in Spanish.
“Si, Abuela, make it like you know we like it,” was our reassuring reply.
“Bueno, si, I will.”
We leaned on the kitchen table, surrounding my grandmother as she rubbed the turkey in comino and tomate. The air began to smell familiar, and the holiday began to feel like our own.
And, so, on that Thanksgiving Day so long ago, while other families dined on perfectly golden whole birds, behind the door at this address, was possibly the first ever sliced and quartered arroz con pavo.
And that felt right to us. It was who we were. We were no one else.
Really? You Don’t Look Spanish
October 19th, 2011
FYI: Sofia Vergara really is a blonde. (via ABC.com)
“Really? You’re Spanish? You don’t look Spanish.”
I bit my lip and counted to three — half wanting to laugh, half wanting to “get all up in your grill” to the person commenting on my appearance upon first meeting me.
Umm..because you mean I’m not writhing against a wall, steam pouring out of a dress stretched over my skin, while I lick my lips and wink at anything having a pulse?
You mean like that?
What surprises me, in this day and age, is how Latina women as a group are dumped into the same hot sexy soup as Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Modern Family star Sofia Vergara.
Don’t get me wrong, I am proud to be part of a group of women who are thought of as some of the most beautiful on the planet.
But we are not all alike.
We are not all brown sugar skin, coal black eyes, with hair that shines like a lake in moonlight.
My father, who was from South America, had blonde hair and green eyes. My South American mother has skin so white she can’t step out into the sun for longer than three minutes or she is sunburned. My own hair has natural reddish highlights and two of my children have green eyes. My third has eyes so blue I actually gasped the first time I saw them.
While on Twitter a few weeks ago, I kidded someone about sneaking her into a Latino event I was invited to.
“Yeah, except I have blonde hair and white skin,” she answered, “they’d know I didn’t belong there.”
“That’s no problem,” I tweeted back. “My niece has blonde hair and white skin. We’re not all dark. Some of us are light. Some of us are medium. Some of us are dark.”
I waited a few minutes, I didn’t get a response back.
I tweeted again, “Just letting you know, we’re all different. As different as all of you are. No hurt feelings, just letting you know.”
Maybe the no response back was due to being embarrassed, but I meant no embarrassment or public scolding. I saw the opportunity to bring something out in the open, and I decided to act on it.
Latinas, we are all as different as you can imagine. We have eyes in every color possible, hair in every texture there is, skin in as many tones as one can think of.
We are as individual in our behavior and personalities, too. We are not just simmering sexpots with only one thing on our minds.
I love that we are seen as passionate, soulful, larger than life women. It’s the fear that that’s the only way we’ll come to be seen that saddens me: we are so much more.
So very, very much more.
And FYI: Sofia Vergara and I both are Colombian. But, why does it surprise people that we don’t look more alike?
The Miracle Eyes of Jesus
September 22nd, 2011
“I don’t know,” I shook my head, whispering, “You go, you’re the oldest, and the boy.”
I was speaking to my older brother, Pachito. He was 6, I was 5. It was night time, and I didn’t want to be the first to cross the darkened dining room to get to our beds. To do that would mean we’d have to pass what hung on our wall, the picture with the All Seeing Eyes of Jesus.
Like in all good Hispanic homes, we had a giant heavy framed portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus nailed to the middle of the wall in the dining room. The belief is that to the home that hangs this particular picture of Jesus, of el Sagrado Corazon, eternal protection is granted. Better than any ADT electronic home security service, and with no hefty monthly fee.
It was this portrait that my brother and I had to pass each night to get to our rooms upstairs.
For those who are unfamiliar with this depiction of Christ, it’s the one where our Divine Savior is offering up His red beating heart to us, dotted with drops of blood from where it has been pierced by its own tiny crown of thorns, cupped in the creamy white palm of His hand.
Stephen King has nothing on my childhood.
Nuestro Senor was just fine during the day, when surrounded by daylight, family, friends. But at bedtime, Our Lord’s eyes followed us everywhere, with that live heart in His hand. One of the bravest things my brother and I did every single night was to dart faster than field mice across the black dining room, past those All Seeing Eyes.
I would bet that every Hispanic reading this, those who grew up in a typical Spanish household, knows what I am talking about. Those Miracle Eyes of Jesus, the eyes in that portrait that followed you everywhere.
I am not one who likes to encourage stereotypes, but one thing I’d place bets on is the strength of a Hispanic home’s faith.
There is a seed of truth to the jokes showing signs of the cross being made in the air as our children leave to go somewhere, or our Abuelas whispering novenas when life calls upon them to do so.
We are a praying, worshipful culture. The memories I have of growing up include the peaceful murmurings of my Abuela as she passed the pepitas on her rosary. I’d sit on her lap, with my head against her chest, and listen as she’d softly say the words to each bead as they’d pass her fingers.
My grandmother had a collection of rosaries that I found more beautiful than any jewelry box full of necklaces. And as numerous as her rosaries were, even more infinite were the names she had for Our Lord and Savior.
I would look forward to my ‘Belita’s morning prayer time, always excited to see what she would call Jesus today. It was like a new chapter in a book for me: how would she call upon Him this morning?
There was Mi Paz, Mi Creador, Mi Senor, Nuestro Senor, Mi Alma, El Eterno, Salvador, Senor de Senores, Quien Brilla desde Lejos. All so beautiful, but the one she used that gives me chills to this day was Dios Todopoderoso. God Almighty, when translated into English — but, oh so much more in its native tongue: God Who Can Do All Things, God All Mighty, God All Powerful, God All Able. Never was the expression, “loses a bit in translation” more aptly applied than to this.
Ultimately, what my brother and I would agree upon in order to escape the all powerful gaze of Dios Todopoderoso, would be to run across the room, together, holding hands. We’d make it to the staircase, stop, and out of breath with giggles, we’d both turn to the portrait, wave and say “Good night, Jesus!”
We made it to our beds and slept like rocks, believing there wasn’t a burglar alive who was fool enough to break into a home with the Sacred Heart of Jesus displayed right in its center.
And if a bad guy did make the unfortunate mistake of picking our house, we knew that one look at The All Seeing Eyes of Jesus, and he’d be jumping right back out the window he came in from.
Medical College of Abuela
August 22nd, 2011
The Colombian Bandana Cure-all
“Oooooh, I don’t feel good,” my 5-year-old sister moans in the middle of a stifling summer afternoon, 1973.
My eyes widen with alarm.
“Shhhhh!” I direct her. “Shhhhh! If you’re not quiet, she’ll hear you!”
“Ooooh, but I really don’t feel good,” she continues, bending over at the waist, holding her stomach with both hands.
“Well, you’d better think hard about what’s going to make you feel worse: Being sick or getting tied down with all those bandanas!” I whisper ferociously to her as I stare right into her brown eyes.
I see by the open mouth that is now slowly playing out on my younger sister’s face, that she gets the point I’ve been trying to drive home.
“Oooh, yeah — the bandanas. I think I’ll be alright.”
The Medical College of Abuela: the textbook of cures for what ails you, according to the hispanic grandmother who raised us. To this wonderful woman, the answer to all physical complaints was a brightly colored bandana, tied around the offending site of the affliction.
Headache? Tie a bandana around it. A stiff knee? Tie a bandana around it.
The bandana was only the vehicle to deliver the dispensed-at-home pharmacological compound from the Medical College of Abuela.
Our grandmother would fill the bandanas with what she had been schooled in, tailored for what you were suffering from.
If you were complaining of a stuffy nose, she’d shake some rubbing alcohol from the bottles she seemed to have stashed everywhere, into the palm of her hand, wipe her hands down with the bandana, then tie that red scarf around our face, much like Butch Cassidy must’ve done to his children.
No wonder I have a hard time remembering parts of my childhood: If the fumes didn’t knock you out first, you’d soon feel your nasal passages clearing.
A headache meant just one thing: a bandana filled with orange peelings, tied excruciatingly tight around our temples. I’ve written before of what a hit this remedy made us in our middle class American neighborhood.
Retaining the Magic
There wasn’t a thing that couldn’t be cured by my Abuela’s bandanas.
Upon her death in 1982, as my sisters and I helped to pack up her room, I found the famed bandanas, neatly folded in a pile in the corner of her top dresser drawer.
Would they still hold their magic?
If I held these tightly folded red squares of cloth to my heart, would they ease the pain?
As I pressed them to my chest, they did.
Do We Have To Be Perfect To Accept Ourselves?
June 30th, 2011
Ed. Note: This essay is part of the series, Accepting the Self: Latinas on Body Image. To enjoy the full series, please read the introduction.
If women were to be asked the question, “Would you like yourself better if you were your idea of perfect?” would the majority reply yes?
Sadly, I think they would.
There is something about the idea of being physically perfect that makes us think it would bring us happiness. If we were our ideal weight, toned, perfectly breasted and perfectly legged, then our troubles would be over
In my culture, a womanly figure: round, curvaceous and bursting at the seams, is what is prized. I have always been the opposite: boyish in my appearance. Though my mother meant it as only teasing, my tender adolescent ego was bruised often by her comment of “larga, flaca, y amarilla,” when I’d walk by. Read the rest of this entry “
