Half lives
Writing by treason on Wednesday, 29 of March , 2006 at 5:17 pm
I’d mentioned a couple days ago that, when I was working in Silicon Valley, my Central American coworkers didn’t display flags or bumper stickers on their vehicles. I actually saw a car today that had a Costa Rica sticker on it. And that made me think of something.
When I worked at that company, I was dating someone who was born in Los Angeles, but raised in Costa Rica. His father was a successful tailor in New York, but he didn’t have much contact with him. His mother had pretty much raised him by herself: He spent his childhood in Central America with her and some aunts, then he and his mother returned to California and settled in the Bay Area.
Our relationship was serious enough that the word “marriage” came up in conversation. It was great when we were dating because he’d take me to little taquerias that non-Hispanics might not frequent and he’d order in Spanish. We’d get some amazing taste treats at these places.
People would always look at him when he’d say he was Costa Rican. “You don’t look Costa Rican.” He was six foot four, had green eyes, and very fair skin. In fact, I’d joke that I would have killed for his peaches-and-cream complexion - and I’m pretty fair myself. People would also question his heritage because they couldn’t detect any dialect. I’d tell them, “Wait ’til he’s really tired. You’ll hear it.”
So, looking at him, a person would see a tall white dude who was smart, funny, played trumpet in a jazz band, had a cat named after his favorite musician, and loved Vietnamese food. He drove a white 1971 Corvette. In high school, when he won college scholarships that were intended for specifically Mexican-American students, he accepted them.
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“They offered them, so I took them.”
“If I’d been offered a scholarship designed for children of Sicilian mothers, I wouldn’t have accepted it.”
“Why not?”
“My mother’s family’s from the Abruzzi region of Italy. They’re not from Sicily.”
“That’s silly.”
“No, I don’t think it is.”
“If someone offers a scholarship, you take it.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I would. I did.”
And that was a problem that came up often in our relationship. My Italian mother had taught us that if it’s the hottest freaking day on record and someone offers you an ice cold Coca-Cola with a lot of ice and you want it more than anything you’ve ever wanted in your life, you smile and say, “No thank you.” As a result, we hated socializing, but people always extended invitations to us and loved having us in their homes because we were so polite - and we didn’t eat or drink anything. My mother prided herself on having children that would never even think of embarrassing her in front of other people. It wasn’t that we were perfect — we just didn’t want to die before we reached adulthood.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, never said those three little words. No, not “I love you” - he never said “no thank you.” People would offer to pick up the check and instead of grabbing it first, he’d let them treat. His explanation: “If they didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t have offered.”
Our mothers were very different. His lived in a small subsidized apartment with her parrot. She fed that bird everything - including chicken. She’d invited me to dinner one night and she was very sweet, very warm, but she was uncomfortable and seemed a little shy. A woman in her sixties, who’d spent most of her life in America, and she spoke virtually no English. She watched a lot of soap operas on the Spanish station and she didn’t go out much. She worked at low wage jobs with other Spanish-speaking women and kept in touch with relatives in Costa Rica. She’d visit them often.
Her son would have liked it if she had mastered English and sought higher paying jobs. She was afraid to move out of her comfort zone, so she stayed at the same job for years, making the same salary. He had told her that I liked the Cubs, so she made me a gift. A cloth doll in a Cubs cap and uniform. The workmanship, the delicate stitches, the attention to detail - I was speechless. Her son explained that she liked to sew, so she’d sit and stitch and make dolls while she watched TV at night. He said: “I told her she should sell them, but she won’t. She doesn’t think anyone would want to buy them.”
She was a wonderful woman and a talented one, too, but she was living a half life. Her only joy, her only connection to the outside world was her son. She had cloistered herself in an apartment with her parrot and the only other people in her life were the women she worked with.
I used to talk with people who moved here from other countries and ask them how they managed to learn a language as difficult as English. “I watched a lot of TV!” It made me wonder how my grandparents learned it. Television didn’t exist. And my friend’s mother only watched the Spanish stations and related to people around her who spoke Spanish. She had shut herself off from a life that was possible - a life her son was fully enjoying, but she couldn’t.
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