This was originally written in late January of 2014 in Spanish. It can be found at http://gocho-gringo.blogspot.com/2014/01/hacia-el-vientre-de-mama.html
This is a real translation, not Google.
Every day I eat lunch with my coworkers. It’s an absolutely incredible group, fun but dedicated, cynical but optimistic at the same time, vapid yet profound. We talk about everything and we talk about nothing, about our dreams and our lunch, about the future of education and the meaning of selfies. I know, from my wife, that not all jobs are like this, and every day I thank God that He has surrounded me with such a group of people.
The other day my coworker was talking about her conversations with her sister and I asked her how frequently they talked. She said they texted each other several times a day, exchanging pictures of their kids and whatnot. Then she said that it wasn’t like that with her brother, and she thought that was strange: when they were young, they were super close but now not so much. I laughed and I assured her that it was just a guy thing, that I didn’t talk much with my family either even though I consider us to be close.
“Yeah, I get it,” she said, “and for me, it isn’t that big a deal, but it drives my mom nuts. She’s always calling my sister and me asking about him, if he’s okay, asking why he doesn’t call her back. Poor woman.”
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My mom died on January 20, 1996, a sunny but cold Saturday, that fucking cold that we’ve had recently. She’d gone to play racquetball and collapsed during the game. My little sister, 13, saw her fall. They did CPR and all that shit but nothing, after an hour she was dead. My sister called us all hysterical and we went down to the hospital and I still remember my dad’s reaction when the doctor told him they couldn’t do anything more. My dad broke down crying, something I had never seen before; I wasn’t crying right then, but many tears were in my future.
The first hours were blurry, the following days, surreal, the nights unbearable. Everybody came to help: cousins, aunts and uncles, friends, acquaintances, even strangers. But the person I most wanted there wasn’t.
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My brothers and sisters are very good about remembering the date. I am not, for some reason. And it’s not because I don’t know it’s January 20; I can write the date down 100 times during the day and not think twice about it. This year it wasn’t until I read something my sister had written on Facebook that I remembered what happened 18 years ago. Upon realizing this, my reaction was more of curiosity than sadness, something that made me question my humanity. I don’t know if it means that I’ve recovered completely from that huge blow we suffered, or if it means that I need the rest of my life, maybe longer, to do so.
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My mom was the best of all of them. I know everyone says it, and it’s true every time: For every person Mom is the one that really understands you, who knows all your strengths and weaknesses, who knows immediately when you’re lying and when you aren’t, when you’re really happy and when you’re just putting on a mask so that the world can’t see your pain. With Mom there are no secrets, or if there are, you just think there are: your Mom knows the truth somehow. Every time I put on that mask, my mom took it off immediately. Since my mommy left, I don’t let anyone, not my brothers or sisters, or my dad, or my wife, not even myself, take that mask off.
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I often ask myself what my life would have been like the last eighteen years if she were still with us. She didn’t want me to go to the University of Iowa, and I went. When I told my dad I wanted to live in South America at age 19, he didn’t bat an eye: “Go,” he said. I’m pretty sure Mom would have felt differently. Thinking about that conversation I had with my coworker, I realize I talk with my dad about once a month, two at the most; I don’t think we’d know what to discuss if we talked more. My dad has been good about that: he never tried to be our Mom, even when Mom had gone. He knew it was impossible.
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18 years with her, eighteen years without her. Wonderful symmetry, huh? My mom saw me grow taller, go to school, learn to read, play baseball (Moms are always the best fans, right?), get good grades, start thinking about girls, drive, have my first girlfriend, shave. My mom didn’t see me graduate from either high school or college, dance salsa, speak Spanish, teach, grow wider, buy a house, get married, become a father.
But the thing that really sticks out is that as I live without her, I realize that while I enjoy my life and I live it as well as I can, I don’t live it how I could if she would have stayed with us a few more years, a few more months, a few more days. Because the thing is, that I’ve had this goddamn mask on for eighteen years and I don’t know how it will ever come off, until one day I am again at her side, in her arms, in her womb.
