Folk Tales

I'm going to try to tell the story of how my parents got together, if you are expecting Nicholas Sparks, forget it, i'm not him and i don't do Nicholas Sparks. 

They are both gone, but i still see privacy issues, and common
courtesy dictates some measure of respect. So what's left? Probably something similar to what you would hear in court.

In 1954 my father is 34, divorced, but sober, and he is painting houses in the valley: McAllen, Harlingen, San Benito; for whatever reason he did not get back into shoe repair when he left rehab. He is earning dollars but he is living in Matamoros; back then, i'm guessing you got 12 pesos for a dollar. My mother has just moved there from San Juan del Rio; she is single, working in a restaurant, and she is pregnant with my older sister, but she hasn't met my father, yet.

I think we need to go back to Durango (that same year), for just a minute. Remember uncle Manuel, my mom's younger brother, who in about 10 years will refuse to let aunt Carmen go live in Matamoros to help mom in the store? Well, he's a college student in Durango, the capital, he will eventually hold management positions in the Mexican postal system; but, now he is a boarder with a family, and one of the sons is Manuel's classmate. I don't know if mom was just there visiting little brother, or she was there working for this family. And what kind of relationship she had with this young man, i can only speculate; i know she goes back talk to him, but by that time he has gone to live in Mexico City to either work or finish his schooling; of course, she had a relationship with the man's parents, but i don't know what that conversation was like. I do not know why mom never, as far as i know, succeeded in contacting this man to at least inform him of the situation; but we know his family did tell him and he denied any involvement.

Apparently, mom gives up on that young man, and maybe for good reason; what could one expect from a man who refuses to take responsibility for his actions. What is surprising to me is that mom is 29 years old at this time. I once overheard a conversation between her and her sister Socorro in San Juan, my aunt was talking about all the men who had courted mom way back when she never missed a dance or any kind of party. It sounded like mom had a few offers back in her day, but was having too much fun to settle down.

Sixty-six years ago when a Catholic girl in Mexico got pregnant out of wedlock, it was a different deal than it is today, it was a common thing to leave town. Even though she was 29 years old, i'm asuming that was her reason not to stay in San Juan with her father, sisters, and at least one brother in the house, to raise her child. So, there was a friend of the family who had gone to live in Matamoros, and mom headed that way.

I think there was another reason she picked Matamoros, it's on the border. Mom had an uncle in California, Ignacio, her mother's brother; we know she wanted to go live with him and his family there, i believe she had an invitation.

Mom and dad met in the restaurant where she worked, they became aquainted, dad found out where she lived, he would look her up. He found out her story and offered to give her baby a name and give them both "papers", the kind used to get into the U.S.

Sounds simple enough, kind of romantic; until we find out that, at that time, he had a relationship with a woman that had produced a child, the first of three he would have with this woman during the next 12 years.

I read a Nicholas Sparks novel by accident once, had a bad reaction, paramedics were called; i had to have an insulin shot. All i remember is a paramedic shining a light in my eyes and asking: sir! sir! have you been reading Nicholas Sparks? It was all very embarrassing.