Baby's First Birthday Mami Musings

Image via WikipediaHola Everyone,

One year ago, I was in the hospital, watching my baby's hear rate in the monitor and some late night TV, unable to sleep, waiting for the contractions to start. I can't believe it has already been one year. I have been emotional, up and down and up and down again. One year! Everyone said the time would fly so fast, so very fast, and it has. She walks around now, loves to say "Hi!" to everyone, has suddenly entered a picky stage, and finally has a little bit of auburn hair on her head. She looks like my husband still, but she has my eyes (oh, and my temper!).

Put on some dance music (techno, salsa, or even celtic) and she starts bopping up and down. If she is sitting on the floor, she does a weird little baby butt dance. It's cute, and pretty much looks like her attempting to lift her diaper in the air repeatedly. (You have to see it). She loves playing the drums and can hold a drumstick properly (its in the blood!). Her Nana and Abuelo just sent her a package with wooden spoons, a cowbell, and a couple of metal pots to drum on. I still don't know if my mom is attempting to enact long distance revenge on my ear drums! (haha)

Her Grammy in New York sent her a storybook, with Grammy's voice reading the text. Uncle Al, soon to go to Iraq, and Aunt Gretchen sent her a sweet little Elephant. She gets birthday packages every day. So much fun for mommy, too!

Today was preparing for the birthday party day. I went to my friend's house so she and I could make the sporty cupcakes (cute little basketballs, soccer balls, and baseballs). I finished the piñata, strings and candy and frills and all, with both babies' names on the side. My husband stayed up late making the baby birthday cakes, those cute little birthday cakes for them to dig into all by themselves. Mmm. So good, chocolate and looking like little basketballs.

So much fun!

If you have a sweet child in your life, cherish each and every moment. Hug them instead of getting mad at them. Turn that TV off and read them a book instead. Keep them with you every chance you get. There is only so much time before school and romance and work and college and work will separate you from your little one. Academics, sports, clubs, adult life can all wait. We let our kids grow too fast in this country. Kindergartners acting like teens, teens acting like adults, adults acting like kids. So backwards and hurting us all. So love your little baby, whether he or she is three or thirty. Cherish your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren. Hug your little nieces and nephews. Smile and let their happiness warm your heart.

Happy birthday, my little sweet baby. You are sleeping now, just as you were sleeping then in mommy's womb. And just like then, I was watching and loving and praying. Happy birthday little girl, my little princess, mi princesa.

Besitos mi vida,

Mamí

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Image by victoriabernal via FlickrAfter a creative hiatus, I have decided that I will embark on my first symphony. I have so many ideas in my head, so many things that I want to accomplish - a film, an opera, a novel, a symphony...mentally checking each off in my head before the last day I draw breath.

I will dedicate this symphony to my abuelita, whom I miss each and every day. How I wish she could hold my daughter in her arms! She would smile at my new mom anxieties, help me care for her, she would be here each and every day, just like she was when I was a child. I loved her, and still love her, so much, mi abuelita linda. I hope she watches her great grandbaby from Heaven and sends her besitos. I hope she intercedes with God for us daily, like she did when she was alive...her Bible worn and always in hand. I hope her and Abuelo have regained their youth, have reunited with their first daughter, Iris, who they lost before they left Cuba in '65.

I hope that this symphony, if I am able to create it, if time and resources will allow, that I will be able to create a work worthy of their struggles.

I send you besitos, Abuela. And little Eva sends the same.

Mami Mozart

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Shiny Urinals, America, and Latino Pride

This morning I scrubbed a church urinal, and I felt shame welling up within me. My pride ached within my chest. Years of college study, teaching at the university, my national reputation as a composer meant nothing as I succumbed to the worst of Latino stereotypes - the Spanish Maid. A hundred small steps brought me to this place, shining the receptacle of a hundred men's waste. The American economy, high energy bills, one too many vacations this summer, a new baby, a car that is too new, a body that is too old, university budget cuts - all contributing factors. In the end, my husband and I decided that taking care of our child and paying for the necessities was more important than our respective egos. 

I suppose my handsome gringo husband, his mother having to support four children on a janitor's salary alone, gave him a unique perspective on the cleaning job. He understood that children do not judge their parents the way that society, or even our own hearts do. But I had been raised that if you succeed, are the best, and overcome all through hard work and dedication, that you would want for nothing. Even when I chose the least lucrative field of all - the arts - I had foolish faith that as long as I gave my all, all would be already.

But then the economy failed, our old Toyota died, and I gave birth to our new baby girl.  

I spoke with my mom on the phone yesterday about the new cleaning job, along with other happenings from the week - baby took her first steps, I was published in Yahoo!, and I am composing a film score for an art film in California. I admit my relationship with my mom is tenuous. Its been calm for many years now, but I am always afraid that it will revert to the shouting matches of twenty years ago. The child within in me, I suppose, fears for the worst. She reminded me of the time when she scrubbed toilets, a couple of years after she had served as V.P. of my dad's engineering company. There is nothing shameful in taking care of one's family, no matter what the job. 

Jump back one more generation, and I think of Abuelo and Abuela, newly arrived from Cuba. My abuelo, a former medical student in cardiology became a pizza delivery boy, and eventually worked in construction. My abuela, a professional singer in her youth, then a kindergarten teacher (and official seamstress for the Cuban resistance against Castro), worked in a shrimp factory for twenty years. Each day she peeled shrimp in a factory in Miami, along with other new immigrants to America. Abuela had lost a young daughter in Cuba, and never again saw the child's grave once she stepped on American soil.

Sacrifice. Love. Pride.

These adjectives describe any Latino father working a day job so his children can eat for one more day, or the Hispanic mama slaving away in a restaurant kitchen or cleaning a bathroom just to provide a warm bed for her family. Mis hermanos y hermanas, your children do not care if you feed them working at a high paying job or as a janitor. All they care about is that you show them love. Ignore the idiots who try to pin the label "lazy" onto you, just because you speak the mother tongue to your children. The Latino people are hard working, American citizens or Americans citizen-to-be. It is only fear that attempts to keep us down. It is only fear that prevents us from succeeding. It is only shame that we put on ourselves which keeps us from holding our heads up high. 

Next week I will again clean shine the urinals, once again scrub filth, and once again feel the pain welling up within my sinful heart, but this time I will crush the shame and replace it with pride - the same pride that mis abuelos felt as they stepped onto American soil for the first time, the same pride my mother felt as she cleaned the church bathroom decades ago to put food on the table, and the same pride that I feel as I hold my little bebe in my arms, knowing that she and her papa have done all that they can to give her a chance at a healthy and happy life.