Afraid of the Dark

I’ve always had an overactive and vivid imagination, and am easily affected by all I see, hear, and read.  I pretend bravery in the daylight but am defenseless at night when shadows grow eyes and claws, and the Cucuí (the boogie man) waits for just the right moment to pounce on the unsuspecting.

As a child I begged for a night light but was told my fears stemmed from my naughty nature – the guilt from all my sins accumulated throughout the day and manifested itself in my dreams.  I was told to pray for forgiveness and maybe God would keep me safe throughout the night.  I should also consider changing my ways.

Even then I knew that my fears were not because I was mean to my younger sister or from all the sass I was storing to unload one day on my elders.  My nightmares came from the world around me – in what I witnessed in my family and in the nightly news.

I realized early that children are not immune from torture or death. I saw that many married couples lived together but not exactly “happily ever after,” and very few adults can be trusted.

My fears and nightmares were not because I lived a sinful life, read a disturbing book, or watched a horror movie. 

My nightmares are based on reality and all the night lights on earth cannot keep them at bay. 

Breaking Up with Baby

He cried that first day for five solid hours, from the moment his Mommy left the house until he tired himself out fifteen minutes before she returned.  I never told her because she was having a difficult time separating herself from him. I didn’t want to upset her more. 

He didn’t exactly cry – he screeched and wailed.  The neighbors probably thought I was torturing the little three-month-old, but I spoke to him in a soft reassuring voice and held him the whole time.  He missed his Mommy so much and felt abandoned; I was not going to reinforce that by laying him down in his crib and letting him cry it out.

I told him then that he needed to trust me.  I would feed him.  I would change his diaper.  I would love him so much that one day he would love me back.  We would have our own private language and jokes, we would become best friends, we would miss each other on weekends.

The rest of the week went a little better.  He cried only half the time, but then we came to a weekend and the following Monday we were back to square one. He and Mommy had been together and here I was again – the mean, old Grandma. I came thisclose to quitting, but if I did, Mommy either had to postpone her dream of college or Baby J had to go to a daycare. 

I was exhausted.  My arms hurt.  My back hurt.  My nerves were frayed. I constantly needed a nap. This grandbaby was different from the others I helped raise, so placing him in a daycare would have been disastrous.  

 I made my son and daughter-in-law a promise – to give them free babysitting at their home for one whole year and I try to keep my promises. 

Trust develops in baby steps. He tested me and I persisted. He continued to wail, and I continued to hold him and love him. He was fed. His diaper was changed. I loved him when he wasn’t very lovable.

The crying finally abated and one morning he met me at the front door with a smile, anxious for our day of fun to begin.

Today he is a happy child.  He is cute and funny and well-grounded. He is curious but trusts only his family – Mommy, Daddy, brothers, and Grandma.  He is independent but also understands the word “no.”  

Our year is coming to an end.  Mommy is already planning next year and so am I. He likes to learn and needs to be around other kids his age. The life I placed on hold is waiting for me and I need to get back to it.

Babies grow exponentially in their first year, so I have seen him go from a helpless little one to a confident toddler. We have been in each other’s business for the past nine months, so we became best friends. We have our own private language and jokes. We have shared thousands of hugs and kisses, laughs and games, secrets and special moments. 

His memory of our year together will fade with time, but both our lives changed for the better because of it.  

Cheeto Dreams

The bag of Cheetos in the pantry sings its siren song.

There is no way to sneak a handful without it leaving guilty orange stains on your fingers, under your nails, and stuck to the inside valleys of your teeth.  You suck the evidence from your fingers, but first, since no one is looking, you pry the sticky mess from between your back molars and the inside of your cheek.

You know they are not good for you, but if powdered milk, powdered eggs, and powdered potatoes are allowed to exist, why not a corn puff covered in powdered cheddar cheese? Why not count it as part of your daily calcium intake?

You’ve tried the puffs, the balls, the X’s and the O’s.  They come in white cheddar, baked, natural, and flaming hot, but since they were first created in San Antonio in 1948, and you are proud of your heritage - you are a purist!

Only Crunchy Cheetos for you!

You follow a sacred ritual.  You inspect them, looking for those rare Cheetos that look like famous people (so you can sell them on eBay and get rich and famous), then you eat all the big ones first and save the small, broken bits for last.  

If you are in danger of being discovered, you skip the ritual and upend the bag, gobbling all the evidence in big mouthfuls before some goody-two-shoes (in a size four dress) comes along and saves you from yourself and your overactive imagination.

You hide the empty bag at the bottom of the trash can.  You scrub your hands and check your teeth; you make promises to yourself not to do that again.  No one will ever know your guilty secret, but wait!

Was that a bag of Oreos hiding behind the steel cut oatmeal?

Quick.  No one is looking. You need something sweet to offset all that sodium but be careful. There is no way to sneak an Oreo without it leaving its calling card on your teeth and announcing what you have done.   

Lactose Intolerant

Mom didn’t breastfeed any of us, so we were raised with formula.  She says I was a fussy baby.  My stomach muscles would cramp after each feeding, and I cried constantly.

She didn’t know if it was because of the milk substitute or from hunger, so after trying several different formulas, our family doctor suggested evaporated milk. That went okay for a while until someone accidentally fed me a bottle of it undiluted and I went into convulsions. Next, he suggested goat’s milk, but she felt sorry for me and that was that.

In between all of these attempts she would feed me rice water or oatmeal water, old remedies suggested by my grandmothers.

She started me on cow’s milk early.  I was close to my first birthday and it was a little easier on my stomach than the others. Besides I was old enough to supplement my nourishment through other foods.

She continued to foist glasses of milk on me throughout my childhood, and I refused to drink them unless they were camouflaged with chocolate or strawberry flavoring.  There was no fooling my stomach. It continued to rebel – cramps, bloating, diarrhea, gas.  I was the life of the party.  

For years everyone thought I suffered from a “nervous stomach” just like my dad, but it wasn’t until recently (after decades and decades of suffering) that I learned the truth – I am lactose intolerant.  

There is nothing sexy about a person who is lactose intolerant.

I don’t know if it could have been prevented if I had been breast fed as a baby and slowly eased into cow’s milk, but then my dad suffered from the same symptoms and my grandmother breastfed him as a baby. Either way, it is what it is.

I eat foods rich in calcium and take calcium supplements.  I eat yogurt and lactose-free milk, but even those sometimes give me symptoms.  My stomach can tell immediately if the cheese enchiladas or the drive through ice cream cone is made with real milk or some sort of synthetic.

I crave real cheese and ice cream. I eat them knowing the consequences - none of them are pretty nor polite – so I adjust my schedule and make sure no one is around to suffer with me (except for my poor, dear husband. Sorry, babe.)  

Rebel Without a Driver’s License

My Dad liked buying second hand cars from his friends at the office.  In 1961, he came home with a used Oldsmobile.  It was to replace the 1950, dark blue Ford he had driven for the last eight years. 

He decided to sell the older car since we had no need for two, but Mom asked him for it. Dad nixed the idea because she was pregnant and she didn’t know how to drive.  He didn’t want her behind the wheel.      

That was all Mom needed to hear. She called two of our aunts and they made secret plans behind Dad’s back, a secret everyone knew about except for him.

The aunts took turns teaching Mom standard shift while Dad was at work during the day, and in a few weeks all she needed was practice. That and courage – courage to pass her driving test and tell Dad what she had done.  

One weekend a month, Dad would take all of us to visit his mother in south Texas.  Nothing kept us from making the monthly trek, but Mom was hugely pregnant by now and used it as her excuse to stay back.  She complained about the one-way, four-hour trip and insisted he leave her at home to “rest.”

We all begged to stay to take care of “Mommy.” He suspected something was up but could never figure it out. We were not about to snitch, so he gave up and every month chose one of us to go with him.  He rotated among the three of us, and the other two tried not to look too happy.  

Dad was gone from Friday night until late Sunday, so that left plenty of time for mischief. Mom would wait a couple of hours after he left (just in case he returned because he forgot something or was checking on her) before grabbing the keys to the old blue Ford.  She would yell for us to get our shoes and off we went. She’d buy our silence with joy rides about the neighborhood and greasy hamburgers and thick milk shakes from the closest Dairy Queen.

She never did quite get the hang of the standard shift, but that did not keep her from attempting to cross two very busy streets.  Our car would sputter and die or jerk and whiplash while cars honked and people yelled bad, angry words at us.  We would squeal with delight as she gripped our lives in her hands.

Persínense, she yelled as she eased up on the clutch and stomped on the gas.  We cackled with laughter as we frantically blessed ourselves with the Sign of the Cross.  Lean forward.  She shifted into second and we would bend at the waist, honestly believing our skinny little bodies helped propel that old tank to safety.

I don’t think Dad ever learned the whole story about how Mom learned to drive, but she got her driver’s license and the old blue Ford. Years later when he had his stroke, she became his chauffeur and he bought her a brand new car for her efforts. No more old, second-hand bargains.   

If there is a museum for old memories, that old blue Ford is parked right there, front and center, a symbol of my mom’s determination and independence - my rebel without a driver’s license.