We Weren't Born To Follow

I was born at a very young age. At least, that is what people tell me; I don't really remember. I was born 8/8/80. I wanted to be born in 88 to make it complete but my mother didn't want to wait. It's not that I don't have a cool birthday. It just could have been cooler but I guess I compensated by turning 8 on 8/8/88. Even at birth I was always aiming high. 

I am a real bastard. My parents were never married. Well, they were, just not to each other. My mother was a young divorcee with a 6 year old son seeing a man who at the time had 3 daughters but no sons. They had been friends and now were busy conceiving me. Well, I guess conceiving me wasn't the goal but the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. My mother did not tell my father she was pregnant and disappeared out of his life when she found out he was still married despite being separated. Among my early memories is  my brother's dad, my mom's first husband, would come to visit him and I would go outside to say hi thinking he was my dad. His ex and him did not interact. Well, he knew I wasn't related and did not engage me besides basic courtesy. I wondered why my father didn't love me but never asked anyone.

I was born in Mexico which frankly makes me embarrassed to be writing all of this in English. But while I speak Spanish and my heart beats in it, my education has been in English and my mind betrays my heart. I was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. I’ve been told I grew up poor. Funny thing though, I never realized it until I wasn't. Christmas was when you got new socks. Growing up in a rough neighborhood where everyone had dogs and/or window guards and broken glass along the fence despite how little we had, that was normal. It would be a long, long time before I realized this was to protect people not contents. 

My Abuela and other older ladies from the neighborhood always tell stories about my charisma even as a kid. There was a time I had potato chips and after one round of sharing with them, I declared "why should I keep giving them chips; I'll run out and they'll get fat?” or the time when I was hemorrhaging from my nose and while everyone else was worried I piously spoke up and said, "don't worry, Jesus will get the pipes to stop flowing". I had a big head literally speaking, arrogance would come not too much later. Apparently when I was learning to walk I would fall because my head was too big and would get swells…my Abuela couldn’t stop laughing when she tells this story. She’d calmly smiled and said to be careful with the brain and thoughts in it. I still have bumps as my forehead seems to have horns or at least my brain seemed to be pushing its way out. 

My mom was a single mom. We lived with my grandparents at 358 Martirez Agradista, Colonia Villa Nueva. It was a complex on a corner in a typical Mexican neighborhood. Quite an extended family living there. While I lived there, there were as many as six of my grandparents' twelve kids and fifteen of their grandkids living there. I don't remember once in my childhood ever being alone.  I didn’t know it wasn’t normal that dinner was sometimes tortillas or salt. I didn’t realize not having your own room or bed or normal sleeping spot was not. Depending on how many of your dozen aunts or uncles were staying over you fell in the pecking order determined where you slept.

Even as I talked too much, I listened a lot. I liked how smart and funny my grandfather was with his little sayings like “I take it one day at a time, I get tired if I do two.” His financial advice still guides me “If it’s about money, don’t worry about it, we don’t have any.” 

I was an extremely religious and spiritual kid. We went to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Always studying my church lesson and memorized the weekly verse without any prompting brought joy. Very early on I was involved in any program to be upfront. In fact when I was six years old there was a declaration that I wanted to be a pastor, a dream that lasted for almost 20 years. I was sure the call of God was in my life. Was this true or the fact that I am a ham led me to always want to be upfront and the church was the venue of choice in my upbringing? 

I was always nerdy, liked learning. I learned to read and do basic arithmetic before I ever went to school, running my own experiments. The world was such a big place and I wanted to absorb it all as quickly as possible. My family invented a game to send me away once they were weary of my questions but overall they had great patience. School was the place where my ego was blown up. It didn't take long to discover that I absorbed more information and processed it faster than most people. I was labeled as having great promise and believed it. There was an opportunity early on to skip a grade that my mother deferred to me. I didn't want to leave my friends perhaps an issue I still have with attachment, something I want to get good or better at constantly. Even as a child, it seemed to me there were lots of people who had lots of affection for me and I struggled to feel it back. I learned early on to pretend. I sometimes wonder if this is universal but I've learned to accept that's unlikely. And yet I always want to be surrounded by people. Some days, I'm the loneliest friendly person you're ever likely to meet.

In childhood, I was not a disciple to athletic pursuits. I liked them but no more than reading, no less either. This has, I've discovered, been a huge problem in my life. I never had much consume too much interest, instill my passion to pursue diligently. Except for religion, God. This however may well be due to my mother's intense piety as a guilt reaction to poor choices she had made. Or because religion was (is?) just the end all be all. I mean both of those options full heartedly. A few things stick out to me in my time in Mexico. They are just moments grabbing my attention. I had a dead dog once because I think someone shot it. I remember being happy after leaving the dentists office because I was going to get an icepop. I remember one Christmas where I really got what I wanted; a He-man doll which I lost the next day. I remember piñatas, candy, games, a huge boulder in my grandfather's house. I started a couch on fire because I was playing with matches and was trying to cover it up by hiding a lit newspaper under a couch. I think I don't remember more because I don't speak in Spanish enough and the memories must be connected. The big moments were my great grandparents and grandparents. They were always sages, dispensing jokes or wisdom but always coming across with gravitas. They were bigger than life, they were simple people with big hearts, sharp wits and a wealth of experience that was deeply carved into their faces. I know now that life was hard then, that my mother struggled, that my brother was growing angry and bitter. I know now that there was and is some serious tension in my family. I never even noticed that then. 

But I will say this for growing up in Mexico in the Adventist church. They were conservative and straight forward. For all their faults and which ones they embraced secretly, there was something strangely comforting about this world of black and white, of right and wrong. Cards, dancing, swearing, movie theaters: these were cardinal sins. I was committed to never breaking any of them.