Last Trip to Leon

Dad made several trips to Leon, Guanajuato, the footwear manufacturing capital of Mexico. He bought his lasts there, for the shop and to sell to other boot makers; they are made of mesquite wood. Lasts are also made of plastic, but i've never tried them. 

In April of 1985 mom accompanied dad on one of those trips; the proceedure was to give Santos, the last maker, a deposit, and he would make the run, which is 36 pairs, he would take about a month to complete the order. So they drove down to Leon, paid, and for four weeks they traveled Mexico. I don't remember where they went and who they saw, but dad might have dropped mom off in Durango and gone on his own adventure.

That year i was actually working in a shop in Wichita Falls, owned by a friend, but i took time off to keep dads shop working. When they came back from mexico with the lasts, i went back to work with my friend. In October, i left for good because dad gave me the shoe repair business, so he could concentrate on boot making.

Two years later, dad had placed an order of lasts and had a daughter from his first marrige to get the money to Santos in Leon, so all he had to do was pick them up. Mom must have enjoyed their last trip, because she decided to tag along again and, somehow, i got roped into going with them. It may have been that mom talked me into it because those long hours of driving were weighing heavy on dad. So, we closed up shop for over a week, and off we went. It doesn't take a week to get to Leon and back; what happened was that we first went to the state of Puebla, which is just east of Mexico City, to visit a family friend. From Puebla we made our way north to the colonial style city of Leon; we spent the night there in a fancy old hotel downtown, i think it was the Rex. In the morning, Mr. Santos met us out front in his little pickup truck and we transferred the   three large bean sacks from his truck to dad's Ford f150 with a camper shell on it.

My objective here was not to reminisce about that trip, so i wont go into all the details; i will say that it was an enjoyable trip for me. It did surprise me back then that i had enjoyed it like i did; it would be the last time i would travel with both of them, i was 26 years old. My point in all this is that mom and dad were different people in Mexico.

Mom never really learned much english, she understood a little and spoke less. Dad never got involved with anything besides some church activities.
They never got involved in our school or had any kind of parties, and we didn't go to many places; dad was against getting involved in what he called "worldly things". In Mexico, though, they stayed in nice hotels and ate in cool restaurants; they knew where to shop and how to deal with merchants. I remember following mom around in a downtown area, can't remember what city, we went down this side street with rows of shops until she found the one she wanted. The door was open and it  was a small room full of herbs, small plants, dried flowers, and different colored powders in open sacks; the old gentleman there was a yerbero, someone that deals in herbs and teas. Mom was doing some shopping and the man turns to me and says: can i interest you in anything?, i said i was good, thanks. He reaches out with his hand, bends my right ear painfully forward with his thumb, pushes down on my nose with his middle finger, and tells me that i suffered from chest pains and a dark outlook on life; i was tempted to say yes just to see what he would sell me for that, but i just stared at him and said: not really, no. I should have asked if he had anything for a bruised ear.

Mexico was just a better experience with people who knew how to deal with it. And it was great to see them in their own element and striking up conversations with people everywhere we went.

A Celebration of life

Before i continue with the life and times of mom and dad, i suppose i should write something about dealing personally with their Aristotlean bifurcation. I'm not sure what that means, but i got the term "Aristotlean bifurcation" from a friend who likes it and wants to popularize its use, so i thought i'd help him out. I think it might actually be apt because it sounds like the culling of a philosophy by one person in order to throw at another person to argue a point, much like monkeys throw their poop.

I'm getting near the end of my parents saga, or at least, what i dare to tell, and the fact that i have yet to inject any personal feelings regarding their shenanigans, should be a clue in itself.

I don't blame my parents for anything, except maybe for sheltering us a little too much. I don't remember even resenting not having birthdays or Christmas celebrations growing up; but when Trish and i started popping out those babies, and she coming from a Catholic family, i started experiencing my first real celebrations of those things. I realized then that it would have been nice to have those memories with my family growing up. But then it got to a point where Trish and i were celebrating 6 birthdays, 4 major holidays, 4 minor holidays, and 2 anniversaries a year; i think that's just too much celebration. You think that's just 16 days out of the year, but if you factor in the planning, preparation, and execution, well.... 

Trish thinks i suck at celebrating and i think she blames my parents for that.

I think that when you grow up without traditional celebrations, you learn to appreciate that every time you are able to jump, roll, crawl, or just fall out of bed, it is the ultimate celebration that is life.

My parents gave me a gift: the meager, but happy, childhood that i had. Is my happy childhood null and void because i find out mom and dad had a wacked out disfunctional side?

I was not apathetic, but i didn't start drinking, or feeling ashamed as i learned of their past. I took it in stride; this was my parents past, and they were not asking me to do or feel anything concerning that life.

This being Mother's Day, i should say something about Evangelina Santillano Soto from San Juan del Rio: she baked really good cookies from scratch without using measuring utinsils, and she would stop me from eating too many of them.

When the doctors finally found the cancer that was making my mom sick for all those years, she held on for another two years, and it was dad that was there for her during those two years. He took her to all her appointments and did what had to be done to make her comfortable.