Raquel Martina Martinez

My brother was a year and nine months older than I was.According to my parents he was supposed to be my playmate and my protector.He considered me nothing more than his pesky younger sister whom he could blame whenever we got into trouble with the parents. There were times his protective, big brother nature did prevail and he would rescue me from boyfriends who did not know how to take no for an answer, and I, in turn covered for him with our old-fashioned, unhip parents. People often thought I was the oldest.  He was always so youthful looking and so handsome.  I looked mature at the age of twelve and never outgrew my bossiness.   He went off to Vietnam and I went to college and that was where our paths started to go separate ways.  We both married within two years of each other.  His life was fraught with pain, the after effects of Agent Orange and PTSD. He went through three marriages and struggled to win back the affection of his two sons.  My life was full with two divorces, a care…

I hate horror movies.  I was raised by a grandmother who scared us into obedience with tales of “monstruos, fantasmas, y cuyuis.” (That monsters, ghosts, and boogie men for those of you who do not speak Mexican grandmother.) One wrong move, one tiny bit of rebellion and . . . bam! . . . we were dead meat.  Literally.  El Diablo was always waiting for disobedient children (like me) to make one wrong move so he could close the deal. I did my share of naughty stuff in the daytime to make me worry what might be waiting for my mortal soul at night. There is a good reason I have always slept with a night light.  I was born with an overactive imagination and a lack of mental fortitude when it came to anything that lived and thrived in the dark.    Things with big nasty claws (and in bad need of a manicure) waited for me to fall asleep so they could rip through my mattress and drag me off into . . . wherever spooky creatures drag off big, old marshmallows like me. Things lurked in the dark, wa…

One phone call was all it took for us to change our plans last weekend.We packed the car and off we went on a 1400 mile round-trip visit to the In-laws.HoneyBunch’s mom was turning 86 and we wanted to celebrate with her. For the last thirty-something years since HB left the state of Missouri, he has made very few trips “home,” so his parents made two or three car trips down every year to see him and his sons in Texas. They would come for his birthday, summertime, and over one of the winter holidays.  They would stay for weeks at a time when he was a bachelor.  My father-in-law would help in the wood shop and clean up the yard.  My mother-in-law would clean his house and bake and freeze food for him.   Very few of those trips were ever by plane because my in-laws do not like to fly and because they needed a car for all the “stuff” and gifts they would bring to HB and all the stuff he would send back home with them. Seven years ago, he married me, and I nosed around about his childhood.  …

Nothing done well is done quickly. Or cheaply. Or rashly. Or naively.
I have learned this as I struggle to become a published writer.  I started on this adventure four years ago and am still a novice, but I have learned some things along the way through experience. (Cue: It’s a Hard Knock Life)
1.Never trust anyone who tells you they too have “written” a book over the course of A.the drive home from Grandma’s B.a weekend of feverish inspiration C.a dream they had where God and/or His angels came to them with a command to do so. Even the best and the most prolific writers have to roll up their sleeves and put in time and effort into their writing.
2.A memoir is not a chronological, birth to death (or birth to epiphany) biography of a person’s life. A memoir has purpose and a theme. It’s a postage stamp of a moment in a person’s life; a biography is the US Postal Service – large, boring, and archaic. Other than to record an amazing experience or an amazing life, why else would anyone want to…

I grew up in a culture where the only time a person is permitted to be naked is at birth, in the bath, and in the privacy of your bedroom; at all other times, a person should be fully clothed. We settled this in the Garden of Eden: we wear clothes; angels wear robes. So someone explain to me this rash of successful new TV shows where everyone romps around au naturelle?  I’m talking about the shows on the regular stations, not the ones that take a special subscription and carry an x-rating. Naked and Afraid is not about internal conflict.  It’s folks out in the wilderness trying to survive in the altogether.  I live in the wilderness.  We country folk would never dare to venture out among the biting insects and poison ivy without covering as much skin as possible.  We know better than to encounter a skunk, chiggers, or a rattler wearing only our bifocals. Dating Naked is another such show. In my day, dating was an opportunity to spend quality time with a person we liked and wanted to kno…

My grandmother gave me the best advice when I was young.She said one should live life with no regrets.If I should mess up, I should forgive myself, forgive the offender, and move on. I agree. At the age of twenty-one, I had all these dreams:  I was going to get my PhD in Languages, move away from my home town, and travel the world.  There was no place for marriage or children.  Family would only hold me down. Then I got married two weeks before I turned twenty-three and my life took a totally different detour, several actually.  I never got my PhD, never moved any further than an hour from where I grew up, and my travels have been limited to the contiguous United States, a couple of hours into the “interior” of Mexico, and a nineteen day trip into China to meet a handful of in-laws. Not exactly worthy of one single “Yeeha,” but I have no regrets. If I were to go back in time and be able to talk to my younger, twenty-one-year-old self, this is what I would say: 1. Dream big and don’t be …

In Celebration of John and Bianca Hulsey’s Wedding September 13, 2014 Most of us say we believe in happy ever afters, but happy ever afters exist only in fairy tales and fairy tales are fiction. I prefer to believe in true love. True love is more than just attraction and intimacy.  It is affection and tenderness and kindness. It is holding hands and sharing smiles. True love is unselfish.  It is consideration and caring for the other person more than about yourself.  True love puts the other person’s needs first. True love in not a fifty/fifty proposition; it is both parties giving and doing 100% for the other. It is laughter and conversation because true love cannot exist for long without truly liking each other as well.   It is respect and trust, and it allows for vulnerability. It is confidence and assurance that the other person would never hurt you.  In fact, true love goes to great measure to guard each other from any harm. It is about loving one another when we are not at our best:…

One of the saddest things I saw once was a whole family out to dinner, and both the parents and the two children did not say one word to each other during the whole meal.All four were on their phones, texting or playing games.A toddler in a high chair looked at her family, probably wishing she had a cell phone too. This scene has replicated itself many times over.  Just this past weekend, HoneyBunch and I went out to dinner and the couple next to us spoke more to the waitress than they did to each other.  Neither took their noses out of their phones long enough to make sure they knew the other person. Cell phones are handy little gadgets and I cannot leave the house without mine.  It is as important as my wallet and my car keys and I carry it in my purse, but once I am home I set it down where I can see it or hear it in case someone calls but I am not anchored to it. My kids get upset with me if I do not answer my cell phone right away, but I tell them that I am not leashed to it and I…

1.Do it! 2.Do it now! 3.Do it right away!
No need to thank me; just marry the person you love, the person who makes you feel the most alive, the person who makes you a better you.

One cannot revise a manuscript (go into the belly of the beast) without a plan, a tactic, or training.Writing well is both a science and an art.There are certain skills that are integral to good writing before a courageous writer can take risks and propel forward to great writing. Revision is a scientific, laborious task and must be done page by page.  Step One: Circle or highlight all the verbs on one page of manuscript.  Identify each verb as a passive or an active verb. Step Two:  Eliminate as many passive verbs as possible by rewriting the sentences, using active verbs in their stead. Step Three:  Circle or highlight all adverbs. (Remember not all adverbs end in –ly.)  Can the verb and its accompanying adverb be replaced by a stronger, more energized verb? Eliminate unnecessary or redundant adverbs.  Can any of the remaining verbs (those without adverbs) be replaced by a more energetic or descriptive verb?   Step Four: Circle or highlight all repetitions: verbs, nouns, phrases, etc.…

Years ago, a skunk sprayed our yard during the night and the nextmorning I trekked out to my car to drive to work and unknowingly stepped into the oily residue. I tracked skunk stink into my Jeep and onto the carpet in my office, a room I shared with a kind and forgiving co-worker. It took a week or two and several large cans of Lysol and air freshener to get rid of the smell. Ever since my profound Close Encounter of a Second Kind (I never saw the skunk but it left evidence of its presence), I became a skunk expert. I learned the way of the skunk. My experience imprinted itself into my hippocampus and I acquired a heightened sense of smell.  I can detect a skunk several miles away, outperforming a normal human nose that can only start to do the same at one mile. I have the same uncanny sense about adolescents.  After 30-plus years of teaching teenagers and having raised three of my own, you might say, I have reached the Close Encounter level of a Fifth Kind: I have actually communicat…