The names themselves are lovely.
I don't mind that they have been assigned to me because my own name has escaped my grandmother's memory. My abuelita has lost most of her memories.
She has taken to calling me by names other than my own but that is quite all right.
It is a warm Miami midday and in the pool below the lanai a mother calls to her daughter who bears my name.
I say to my grandmother, "They call her Abi, like you called me."
The beautiful smile from my childhood reappears and she says, "that's right," the way she used to encourage me when I was ten years old rolling out tortillas properly from raw dough.
She became nervous when abuelito and Nathan went out for groceries. "Is that one a good man?" She asked.
"Yes, he is a very good, kind man,"I answer. "He will bring grandpa right back."
"Maybe they won't come back." She is resolved to worry.
They say she has dementia but she speaks of her fears so lucidly now: "I'm going to go look for them downstairs."
She insists although her feet are wrapped in bandages. I hold her by the shoulders and ask her to look at my face.
"Don't worry," I say. "I am not worried. They will be here any moment. They will return. Let's listen for the children playing outside or I will put on the music, the canciones, so that you won't worry so much." I place my hands on her shoulders to keep her seated because I fear her feet will hurt if she stands on them anymore today.
She finds comfort in the songs and sounds of her childhood. We watch the traditional dance to the quickened trill and sonorous thrill of the Mariachi version of La Bamba. It is like a secret we keep because it is hardly known since Ritchie Valens' version became popular. We watch rapt, as dancers in large white hats, flowing white skirts and high heeled boots lay a ribbon on the floor and tie it in a bow with their feet as they dance.
The next day a nurse comes for an initial consult and we are all surprised to be speaking in Spanish. We don't speak of it later but we all realize: it is more comfortable for all of us-- abuelitos, nurse, and me--even the Nathan who doesn't speak a word of Spanish seems relieved that we can all communicate, if only we will not pretend English is best. Although I was taught that Spanish is not my first language, should not be my preferred language, and is only an after-thought I shrug off this lesson (I must forget it!) because it is the only place I can turn now that my abuelita has forgotten so much, needs so much.
And I realize that for the first time in my life I need this part of my story; I need this part of my past because she needs us,
she needs us to speak
she needs us to speak for her, and
she needs us to speak Spanish.
She has come so far, through so many traumas that she is trying to forget and now she seems hungry for the sounds and words she used to form so readily--she no longer worries whether she is speaking English correctly. "Speak!" Her eyes cry, "Help me find the words." And so we keep on with our game of charades...
Because her memory is lost but she is not. She is not yet lost. In fact, she has returned. She has come back to her first language, her mother's tongue. This is the mystery of the migrant, the Spanglish which is not altogether a joke: these are not only the words we heard as children but they will forever be the words we loved as children.
Perhaps she worried, years ago, that we had outgrown her calling us corazones. There is a chance she thought we had neglected the traditional songs from Mexico, maybe there was shame in preferring them to English pop. But of all the past pains those worries are now forgotten; and so I confidently offer the old songs as a shelter, the old words as a necessity.
She has returned to a time when she was four years old and in need of a comforting presence, a mother or father figure, a forefather, a mother tongue. I too have returned to my days as a four year old, as I remember my face pressed to her breast and listening to her coo that I am her heart, the whole--not just a part.
It only took a few years for her memories to fade and while they did my little family crossed the country in search of employment. Having found a place to sell myself for a great bargain to an organization in need of my skills I am settling in, settling down and planning the next moves. We packed the belongings we couldn't sell or give away; the photos and books are all that remain of our former home. And then, upon landing here, we connected with the gifts we never expected and made a home, learned a new language and then took a deep breath.
This constant movement from one part of the country to the next, from one language to the next, from one name to another and then back again can weigh on even the sturdiest poet. We are more like migrant workers than we've ever been... and though it isn't very much like migrant work, it's much closer than I ever wanted to be.
One woman, whose name I have been assigned, the daughter my abuelita remembers--she is the woman who is yet to be forgotten by the matriarch of our little kingdom--and she urges me on.
"Live your life. Live in the present!"
And I am forced to remember
even as my grandmother forgets
that the present is a gift.
Remembrance is a privilege, the past will be subjected to our ability to piece it together time and again, the future is beyond my control
but the present is precious and I am filled with gratitude when I realize I have it.
I have a present
to share
with those I love.
