Dear GoGo

For my lifelong friend, Gloria: March 6 was your son’s birthday. You were so young when you had him, yet you were sure of yourself, so strong, and so tender with him. And not too long after that, you had your daughter. Just watching you taught me so much about how to be a parent. You truly adored your kids. You have no idea how much I respect you.

I have been trying to write about you, but it is hard. There is so much to say. Today I was thinking about when you were pregnant and no one was supposed to know, and we were at my parents’ house for about a week. You had to throw up every morning, which would have been a sure giveaway in that small house, so you told me to blast their music loud before you went in the bathroom. Luckily, that was normal for my parents! You and I laughed about that, then and many times later.

And I was thinking about when I went with Gilbert to see you and the baby after he had just been born. You had been so nauseated throughout the whole pregnancy that you ended up at the same weight full term that you had started at, and you were anemic. But there was no weakness in your love for that baby boy of yours.

I think we handled ourselves pretty well all those years, really. We weren’t scared of much. Don’t you think that we were brave, now that you think about it?

I think about how you used to take care of Justin when he was little and I went to my college classes or work. He called you GoGo because he couldn’t pronounce your name. And when you turned the corners so sharply in your Nissan Pulsar, feeling like a racecar driver, Justin made little high-pitched, tire screetching sounds (“errrrr”). We shared a wall, you and your family over on one side of the duplex building, me and Justin on the other. And we shared countless meals. My chorizo and eggs or assortments of vegetables or canned soup when I was a week from payday with $14 left. Your never-ending quesadillas with those Embasa green chiles that we packed the salt on or the arroz con leche. We were always telling our kids that the day was another party. We’d say, spread out this blanket on the living room floor, you guys!  Fill up the little pool on the lawn near the front door! Or we’d take the kids to the tennis court at the 5^th Street East Park and ask them to get the balls for us when we missed, but we missed so many that they went on strike real quick.

When I married and had the twins, how many times did I call to ask if you’d come over when Matt was at work and they were both crying to be held? They knew, too, if I tried to hold them both at the same time – they knew it wasn’t the hold they were looking for.  You or Ana would come over and everything would be alright for all of us. We’d each hold a baby while we talked. Without you, I could have never made it back to college when they were three months old. And I was never the same after we moved far away.

You have always had such grace, and I have always been the one who laughed too easily and reacted too anxiously and dramatically to be truly graceful. How many times will I hear the story about how I went to start the car to give your mother a ride to work in my teens and the ignition sparked and I instinctively took my foot off the brake with it in neutral, opened my door and rolled myself out onto the lawn while the car just rolled right down the sloped driveway into the street with your mom in it? Such a brave deed, eh? Well, luckily no cars were coming, as we always say at this part of the story. But man, was she mad! She got out and came over to yell at me, “Pendeja!!” She was shaken up. Panicking as the car she was in rolled backward, she simultaneously feared that the car would run me over!  But such good instincts I had – I could have been some kind of warrior, except the troops would probably go over a mountain in a bus while I jumped clear. Sorry! I meant to be a hero!  My instincts just got the best of me! (Well, and I hate wars...)

Oh, but you're the one who has gracefully walked into frightening situations matter-of-factly and talked me and others you love through pain, confusion, and difficult decisions. And you can make me laugh without having to roll out of cars. Justin says that you have just the right amount of sarcasm, not in an annoying, jaded way, but just the right amount of edge with a meticulous kind of logic. He says he remembers a time when Don was a teen and you knew that he was smoking. He had gone to a party and come back reeking of cigarettes, and you said in that low-key way, "I know you're smoking." He said, "No! The mom there smokes!" And you said, "What did she do - sit in your lap?" 

When your kids had kids and you were in your 30s, you helped them learn how to care for their babies, and you took care of those grand kids while their parents worked and studied and lived through their own difficulties. I remember talking to you on the phone during those years and if things got a little wild, you'd say, "Well, we've got romper room over here..."  You took things in stride. 

After your marriage ended and you made a life with a new partner, you taught us all again that we are all capable of change, growth, and new ways of holding onto our lifelong relationships. You taught us by insisting on your right to care for yourself and for all whom you love. And you brought another wonderful, strong person into our lives. 

Happy Birth-Day.....