La Madrina by Ana Consuelo Matiella

In Memoir class, we were talking about narrative, how it can be linear or a mosaic. I thought this piece by Ana Matiella was illustrative, and am re-blogging it here.
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La Madrina by Ana Consuelo Matiella

In my work on Mexican Femenine Archetypes, I still love the story of my three fairy godmothers. I would like to share them with you…

La Madrina – The Godmother – Ana Consuelo Matiella
Octavio Paz once said that Mexican women had no identity of their own, and that they only existed when men woke them up. Centuries before Paz, Grimm and Andersen without ever having stepped foot in Mexico. had the same philosophy. They told us stories of sleeping princesses and damsels stuck in towers waiting to be awakened, rescued or defined by men.
As angry as it makes me to acknowledge it, I was caught in a tower too. I pretended to be a tough cookie all the while holding on to the husband of my childhood for dear life. I put up with the indignities of generations of Mexican women who were married to men who no longer wanted them because I did not want to be in the world without a husband. Then, bless his heart, Art did me a great service. He left. When I saw Art’s back as he walked out, I took a deep breath and closed the door. Then I cried for several days and waited for the earth to open up and swallow me. Soon I expected to grow a hump and turn into a hag, as if Art, by leaving me, had taken a chunk of my femininity. I was deranged. I fantasized about how much better it would have been to save some dignity through widowhood. But after a few days, the earth felt as stable as it ever felt, my back never felt better and the birds still sang.
I came to three conclusions:
One: Of all things, my house could no longer be white. I invited everyone who loved me to paint something, the walls, the chairs, the nichos, the chest of drawers – all in different colors. Golden corn yellow, Mexican rose, communist blue. Even the dog got an accidental streak of mango orange on his brow.
Two: For the sake of the two most important women in my life, my daughter and myself, I had to learn to live a joyful life without a man.
Three: I needed help.
The third conclusion was the most formidable. It wasn’t just help in the form of support I needed, not just someone to paint a wall, provide a shoulder to cry on, break Art’s legs. No, I needed a special kind of help. I needed wisdom.
The two wisest women in my life thus far had been my maternal and paternal aunts, Tía Paqui and Mamachelo. They were my madrinas, my godmothers. Paqui was an old maid and Mamachelo was a widow and both of them lived most of their lives without men. Perhaps I could conjure up some help from the memories they left behind.
The truth is that the presence of my Tía Paqui has never left me. I see her firmly in my past and in the current day clutter of books, notebooks and rolls of fabric that seem to sprout out of nowhere in my house. So on that day, the first Paqui inspired act I performed was to bake a kick-ass lemon meringue pie without a recipe, just following Paqui’s instructions. The meringue healed my soul. I then went to my basket of fabric and pulled out the pieces she left me when she died. I vowed to make something out of the green and brown print. I took the fabric and put it around my shoulders like a hug. I could feel her blessings, her smiles and her kind encouragements. I remembered the best day I ever had with Paqui and was transported to a late afternoon on a mercilessly hot summer day on Rosario Street when I was eight, or ten or maybe twelve.

Madrina # 1
Tía Paqui
My parents had taken my older brother and my baby sister on another one of their trips. (The older one was too much trouble, they said, and the younger one was too young to be left, so the middle one, that one being me, got left behind.)
They left me with my grandmother and my Tía Paqui. My grandmother was mean and crazy by then and I didn’t want to be there. My Tía Paqui worked all day and I was left alone to play with the servant girl, who was a couple of years older, but she had work to do. There were pigeons to catch, rabbits to pet and eggs to pick; there were errands to run and tea towels to embroider, but the long and the short of it was that until my Paqui got home from work, I was bored and restless and wanted to go home. Home, as I mentioned, had gotten into a 1959 Chevy station wagon and gone to Guaymas.
So there I was counting the hours and the days until my family returned to pick me up and take me back to the American side of the border where at least I had daytime television and friends to play with.
I perched myself on the corner of the garden that overlooked the street, waiting until I could see her figure coming up the hill and then I ran to meet her to take her bags and ask her what were we going to do now. The minute my Tía Paqui got home I would want to do something with her. I would want her to teach me how to make something, like a lemon meringue pie or biscuits, but it was too hot to turn the oven on. Maybe today she would teach me that new stitch, the one called, “make me if you can.” It was a difficult one that not too many women knew how to do.
She was tired, she said, and why didn’t I come with her and take a nap in her room. But I had already taken the dreaded siesta and listened to the lizards and the pigeons count the hours. I told her I was bored. I wanted to go home. I started to cry. When was my mother coming back? Why did they leave me behind again? Why could they take my sister and my brother on their stupid trips and not take me? She stroked my hair and comforted me but gave me no good reason except that my brother was trouble and my baby sister was still in diapers. That was not reason enough for me. Why should I be punished for being civilized?
That afternoon after her small nap, when the sun was beginning to leave its eternal center in the sky, she said to take a bath and get pretty because we were going out.
I put on the blue and pink print dress she made for me and my red rubber calzi-plasticos, plastic gel shoes that stuck to the hot pavement if you went out in the middle of the day. But this was not the middle of the day, it was several hours past the wretched noon; the sun was beginning to move and there was a hint of rain to keep us cool. The plastic shoes made the sound of a bouncing ball against the hard dirt as we walked down Rosario hill and into town.
When I asked where we were going she said, “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
I had never been to a bookstore before. In Nogales, Arizona we had a library but no bookstore. I liked the idea of a place where you could buy books and keep them. When I walked in, the first thing I became aware of was the distinctive odor. I took a deep breath and it smelled like I thought heaven would smell like, cool and moist and protected from the sun. I didn’t know at the time but the musky aroma that I smelled was ink on paper and since that day, it is one of my favorite scents. The second thing I became aware of was the jumble of books stacked on top of each other with no apparent order and no one looking over your shoulder to make sure you didn’t put them in the wrong place.
My tía explained that students came here to buy their textbooks, and that you could buy comic books, fotonovelas, magazines, novels, cookbooks and other materials in print. There were more books there than in our small library on the American side of the border, more books than I thought could fit in such a small space. We spent what seemed like not enough time browsing and she bought me a Pequeña Lulú, a Little Lulu comic book, a book on cross stitch embroidery and another on word puzzles. She also bought me a chocolate candy lollipop with caramel inside and a hard candy one shaped like a red umbrella. I was already in heaven when she took me to the corner where all the school supplies were stocked. She picked out 4 pencils, red, blue, green and yellow, a tiny clear green plastic pencil sharpener and a blue notebook with paper so thin, I thought it would tear if I touched it.
“Here,” she said, “the next time you get bored and sad and you want to go home and you can’t because there’s no one there, write in this notebook.”
“But what can I write?” I asked.
“You know how when you sit in the corner of the garden looking down into the street, there are many people that go by?”
I still didn’t understand. She said, “Write about them. You know the washerwoman that goes by, the man that carries the table of bread on his head, the beggar that goes through the garbage foraging for food? Look inside them and make up stories. Then, write them down.”
I looked at her again and she said, “That’s how all these books got started, by someone writing in a notebook just like this one.”
I believed her. In my imagination, the blue notebook with the onion skin paper became a magic treasure chest of books. I looked up and saw her gentle smile, the one that was only meant for me. When Paqui smiled at me, I felt how much she loved me, like the first time I tried on the dress with the blue and pink flowers she had made me, just like I did only a few moments before when we walked into the cluttered store and I smelled a thousand books for the first time.
What was I? Eight or ten or maybe twelve? Did Paqui know she was changing my life by taking me to a bookstore, by telling me that all writers start their writing in a blue notebook with falling apart pages of onion skin paper? Could she have known that she was casting a spell on me that day?
Walking back home with my package in my sweaty hand, hearing the sole of my cheap plastic sandal hitting the hot desert dirt like a rubber ball, the long hot summer ahead of me didn’t look so grim.
We went back to Nana’s house and I couldn’t wait to get started. Who could I write about first? There was that old woman with the cages full of parrots on her head, the one that my grandmother said was a witch and to stay away from. I could write about her. And then there was that kid Julio who died because he talked to the pigeons and the pigeons talked back. And what about that old man, Don Nacho who kept the store down the hill? His nose was huge! I could make up a story about why his nose got so big. Maybe it was because he lied like Pinocchio, maybe it was because as my uncle Romeo said, when you get old, everything shrinks except your nose.
When the dusty stationwagon showed up for me on Rosario Street to take me back to Perkins Street, I was still yearning to get back to my American home, but I had a notebook full of stories in my bag, and three pencils, one blue, one green and one red. The yellow one had worn out.

Madrina # 2
Mamachelo
Mamachelo was the 5-minute madrina. Everything she did, including giving me advice, she did well and in the minimum amount of time. She was a widow, wore black, and traveled. She was tall, busy and smelled good. While my Tia Paqui was plain and fostered humility, Mamachelo was elegant and fostered arrogance. Like my mother, Mamachelo spoke with so much authority that you wouldn’t even think to question that what she was saying was true. She expressed an open fondness for her own intelligence and the intelligence of others. She advised us to thank God every day because none of us were stupid.
Mamachelo came around about once a month in a whirlwind of activity with my second cousins, who were her granddaughters and so lucky because they got to go to back to Spain and visit the Louvre in Paris. I lived vicariously through their pretty clothes, what I deemed as sophisticated mannerisms, and how they came and went in the pleasantries orchestrated by Mamachelo.
Mamachelo told the stories of her childhood as if they were lessons from a book. How my grandfather was so over protective that she wasn’t allowed to go to high school and how she went about the business of educating herself. She reported that even in her old age, she read voraciously in both Spanish and English. She read three things regularly: Forbes Magazine for the economic news, Time Magazine en Español, for international news, and to balance things off, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood.
We heard about how she lifted herself out of the sadness and grief of widowhood by starting new businesses, volunteering in the community and going abroad whenever she darned well pleased. She was like a Spanish Auntie Mame without the overtones of decadence.
She had high expectations and very little use for complaints. Once when I was bemoaning about some friends who were gossiping about me she said, “Don’t worry when they talk about you, dear. Worry when they don’t talk about you.”
She held me responsible for my actions, and showered me with praise when I showed initiative or creativity.
My best day with her was when I was preparing myself for my first formal dance. My father’s alcoholism was beginning to take its toll on our family and we had fallen on hard economic times. My mother had committed to making my gown, a pale aqua blue satin that she embroidered with sequined flowers. My shoes had been dyed to match; I had borrowed a beaded purse from one of my well-to-do cousins, and all I needed were some gloves. In my mind, the gloves needed to be aqua blue but we couldn’t find them in that color and to order them would have been too expensive. My mother, who had accepted a donation of a pair of long white gloves from one of her friends, insisted that white was fine but I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted aqua blue gloves. I had read an article in Seventeen magazine about dying clothes so I went to the grocery store and bought myself a couple of boxes of Ritz dye and carefully read the directions on how to create aqua blue. By some odd miracle, the gloves matched the blue of the dress to perfection. I was pleased but not as pleased as when my Mamachelo, who was on her monthly visit from Hermosillo, found the long gloves drying in the shower.
You would have thought I was Pablo Picasso’s protégé the way she went on about how well the gloves matched the exact color of the dress. She asked me how I did it and listened to me recounting my steps. She nodded with approval and said that I had a good eye for color. Not just anyone could do this, she said, why she herself had created some disastrous colors. She was proud of me she said for taking what little resources I had to make something beautiful. She was certain that I was going to be one of most elegant girls at the dance.
Mamachelo came in and out of my life quickly and effectively. I saw her perhaps once a month when she came to Nogales, Arizona to shop for American products or collect her rents, but every time she came, she stopped to know me. I felt strong under her gaze.
In a long letter before she died she told me how proud she was of me and listed all of my accomplishments, some that I didn’t even know she knew about.
After my divorce, I vowed to be more like Mamachelo. I made it a priority to work hard and travel with my daughter, stand up tall and smell good. I didn’t spend too much time whining; it wasted time and I was busy.
They say that when you are loved right, you always go back to that love in time of crisis so in my moments of despondency, I ran back to the memory of my two madrinas and I was consoled. They witnessed all my sacraments, my baptism, my confirmation and my marriage. There was only one problem. They were both dead. What I needed now was a living madrina, one that would witness the sacrament of divorce.

Madrina # 3
Dr. Lee Little
My friend Karen, who was one of my lifelines during my divorce, understood what I was looking for and she told me about a psychotherapist she knew. She said she grew dahlias and had hair like mine and thought we might hit it off. Dahlias are the most magnificent flowers on earth and not too many women have hair like mine so I called and made an appointment.
From the moment Lee gave me directions on how to find her, in a small white house in an old compound on Canyon Road, I knew that I had arrived in a place where I could find healing. Like Mamachelo and Paqui, Lee had a quick wit and a sense of humor. Her one-liners were salve to the wound.
One of the things that you can become infected with in Santa Fe is the new age philosophy that can be as helpful as annoying. I am vulnerable to these kinds of gimmicks because some of my family members were psychic, some of them were superstitious; and some of them were just plain nuts and to this day I don’t have the discernment to tell them apart.
In my hour of need, I was pulling out all the stops. A friend of mine told me that I needed to bring good chi into my home and so recommended that I install a small pond that re-circulated water in the pathway that lead to the entrance of my home. After going about the business of setting up the pond, I was to buy three gold fish and assign a good intention to each one. The three little critters were going to aid me in my journey to recovery, clean the atmosphere and bring in good energy.
Three days later, my daughter and I came home from our long day in town and the three goldfish were floating belly up on the re-circulating water.
All Sixteen Year Old Daughter could say as she passed the catastrophe was, “Now, that can’t be good.”
I was devastated. Three gold fish with three good intentions dead in three days! How could this happen and what could it mean?
The next day was my first session with Lee and I came in with my heart in my throat. I sat down and recounted that the three goldfish died in three days; I told her about the three intentions and looked at her with anticipation. She had a serene look in her eyes and didn’t say a word.
“Well?” I said, eager to know what she thought. “What do you think this means?”
She shook her head softly and said, “Dear, sometimes a dead gold fish is just a dead goldfish.”
I burst out laughing and I knew that I had come to the right place.
I went on to tell her that I wanted to hire Moo Gonzalez to break Art’s legs. “Just save your venom for me,” she said.
And that is what I did. I would go in foaming at the mouth and come out feeling cleansed. I purposefully saved my venom for Lee, as she recommended, so that I would not contaminate my daughter with my anger at her father, a decent father whom she adored. Lee’s little white house was the place where I would go to separate my “stuff” so that Sara and I could grow in our separate ways. Whenever I went in worried about Sara’s adolescence, Lee would say, “We know she’s fine, but how are you?” And although Sara never went to Lee herself, she knew that Lee was in her corner. Whenever I got too intrusive or frantic about setting curfews or other limits, my daughter would say, “Ask Lee what she has to say about this.” Sara intuitively trusted Lee to guide her distraught mother in the right direction.
Lee grew dahlias and had hair like mine. I told her once that she was the Jewish mother I never had. She smiled and called me Honey from then on. She witnessed the sacrament of my divorce, the divorce of a woman who thought she was a tough cookie until she realized that she was snagged in a tower.
Unlike Sr. Paz’s archetype of the Mexican woman who only existed when men woke them up, I would point out that this Mexican woman had at least three wise women facilitate her awakening. I would also challenge Señor Grimm and his crony Andersen and tell them that they were remiss in their recounting the stories of stranded young maidens. If they had just come in a little closer, they would have seen that it was not just the prince, the king or the kind woodsman who saved the girl. Fairy godmothers had a hand in it too.

Year In Review

It has long been the custom of me and my friend Ana that we do a year’s review each fall. Since we don’t live in the same city any more we don’t do a monthly coaching session, but we manage the review. This year is a bit earlier than autumn, but we’ve got a lovely weekend at the beach so we’re doing it slowly.
I think anyone or pair of friends could benefit from these questions, courtesy Ana:
The number one lesson I learned last year was…
Aspects of personal relationships that worked well for me last year were…
Aspects of personal relationships that didn’t work well for me last year were…
Things I would like to chage this year related to personal relationships are…
We ask the same set of questions for:
Prosperity and finances
Living Environment
Career and work related aspects
Creative Expression
Health
Aspects of care of my soul
It is always a rich process–hope you can use some of it.

Spirited Sisters: Q and A on Fear by Ana Consuelo Matiella

Q and A – Ana Consuelo Matiella

What do you fear as you age?
When I was a little girl, my father used to sing me a politically incorrect song about death…
“Que se mueran los feos.
Que se mueran los feos.
Que se mueran toditos, toditos, toditos los feos.
Yo no soy muy feo.
Y por eso, yo no me voy a morir.” –

English Translation?
May all ugly people die
May all ugly people die
May all, all, all ugly people die
I’m not very ugly
So, that’s why, I’m not going to die

Look, you had to be there. The point is some of us live in denial of death, but I am not one of those people.

As I age, my greatest fear is not death. I witnessed how my mother coped with her 9 year death sentence, each day knowing that the disease she had would kill her and then I watched her die. During all those years, she would say, “I don’t have too much time left,” as if looking at her watch, but I did not detect fear.

I think I might have learned something from her and how she accepted her upcoming death and so the act of dying is not what scares me. Besides, I’ve done the research and I found out that if I live to be 65, which is about 5 and ½ years away, my life expectancy goes up to about 83. According to The Economist, life expectancy for people who live in the upper 50% of the economic strata, like yours truly, has gone up. So even with the diabetes land mine that I inherited, I’m going to live longer than say, a working class Black or Latino guy who is serving time for a crime he didn’t commit.

All that consolation aside, I would have to say that my greatest fear is that I will lose my mind. I hold out for the possibility that if I do lose my mental capacities, I won’t know the difference between pre and post. That’s the blessing and one that I am grateful for in advance.

¡THE GREATEST FEAR WHIPS UP A MEAN FROTH WHEN I FORESEE THAT I COULD ACTUALLY REACH A DECREPIT OLD AGE, CONTRACT THAT TERRIBLE STRAIN OF DEMENTIA AND BE A BURDEN TO MY ONLY CHILD!

And how do you cope with this fear?
The main way I cope is by taking gingko, working out, riding my bike, buying long term care insurance and praying that if I do lose my mind, I won’t know it. Oh, yeah, and I don’t cook with aluminum pans.

What do you remember fearing when you were younger? And did any of these fears come to pass? Oh, I have been afraid of too many things in my life – the police, men, cats, divorce, and the dentist, to name a few. And yes, some of those fears were well founded. Did I tell you I was once attacked by a cat? And, yes, the dentist sucked, but most of my other fears never came to pass.

Winston Churchill might have said something like, “Fear is the mind killer,” and I tend to agree. It’s been my experience that the fear of something is always worse than the THING you were afraid of. I’m hoping this will be the case with dementia and decrepitude.

What is the source of your courage?
Fear. You need fear to have courage. Courage without fear is useless. Fear and courage go together like soup and sandwich, like marriage and divorce, like life and death. It’s like that other old song my dad used to sing. “You can’t have one without the other.”

Spirited Sisters: What Keeps Me Sane by Ana Consuelo Matiella

Ana Consuelo Matiella

What keeps you sane at this time of your life?
On the days when I choose to be sane, I wake up at 5:30 am, and make a cup of espresso with foamy milk. I sprinkle cinnamon on it and go upstairs to my little attic bedroom, put on some soft music and read from John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara. His poetic prose puts my mind at ease. No matter what my worries are, I can always count on him to introduce a calming thought, or a different way to look at things that might otherwise drive me out of my mind. After I have coffee with John O’Donohue, I meditate. So this is the way I start a ‘good’ day. If something upsets me, I seem to handle it better after a good cup of espresso, some words of wisdom and a quiet, if caffeinated mind.

There are other amenities that keep me sane. They are as follows:
My dog Guapa and how important I am to her. I am her hero. She lives for me, a romp in the school playground and big bones from Gartner, the butcher. She is my beast and my shadow. I cannot live without a dog.
My bike. I love my bike almost as much as I love my dog. If I ride every day for at least 30 minutes, even around the block like a little kid, or just to go buy tomatoes for the spaghetti sauce, or fritos for the frito pie, my life is much saner. There is no bad computer problem or demanding client that cannot be remedied and/or put into perspective with a bike ride.
Chocolate cake. This one is like the bad boyfriend. How can something that makes you feel so good make you feel so bad? I don’t know the answer to that, but chocolate cake is one of the best things life has to offer, and a strong contributor to my sanity for many years. This is a life-long commitment.
Friends. When I am feeling really bonkers, saying it out loud to a friend either makes me feel really out of my mind, in which case, I am willing to be talked down from the ledge, OR, validated OR vindicated depending on what I have already done with my insanity. A good conversation with a friend, and preferably on with a good sense of humor, is like medicine.

What kept you sane when you were 25?
I am so much better now than I was at 25. I know young women that are 25 or 28, for that matter, that are so much saner than I was at 25. When I was 25, I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I only knew how I felt politically. My politics were the only thing I was sure of and heaven help you if you disagreed with them, my politics, that is. I was so hostile, it is now embarrassing. (That poor guy in Sociology class! ¡Ay vey! If you are reading this, please accept my apologies.) Everything else in the personal, spiritual and professional aspiration categories was up for grabs. Somehow, and at the expense of other people’s sanity, being hostile politically really helped me from going off the deep end.

How is it different?
I have always loved dogs, bikes, chocolate cake, and friends. These passions I bring from my childhood and on to each graceful phase of my aging process. I try, unsuccessfully, not to be hostile when someone disagrees with me politically, but I think the only thing that has changed is that I now meditate every morning after a strong cup of coffee.

What advice might you have for younger women?
If you haven’t already done so, get a dog, buy a bike, eat chocolate cake in moderation and surround yourself with people who love and accept you and are willing to talk you down when you’re on the ledge. As you get older and your nerves start to fray, buy yourself a copy of Anam Cara, and one of those cute little Italian espresso pots. Every morning, after coffee, close your eyes and take many deep breaths. Sometimes it helps to say, “Om.”




Aging Gracefully by Ana Consuelo Matiella

Ana Consuelo

Mirror, mirror…

When I look in the mirror I see that my eyes are the same eyes that peered into my soul when I was seventeen and was trying to decide if I was pretty. The depth and color are the same. Is the soul inside the same? Does the soul change over time, grow, become wiser? Does it change its mind? Does it want a cookie?

I take a good look at my skin. ¡Ay, the skin! No bags yet. (Does the soul yearn for youth or is the soul youth-eternal?) There are these tiny bumps under my eyes and when I told my new doctor, who looks 15, he said, “I would refer you to have them removed but they are so close to the eye… are you sure you want to take a chance?”
“I promise I won’t move,” I said.
He looked down on the chart and made a note. Then he said, “I bet that if you lost the ten pounds you’ve been talking to me about, the bumps wouldn’t bother you a bit.”
“True,” I said, not wanting to be in denial about the proverbial ten pounds.

So, am I feeling my age, you ask? Yeah, I’m feeling my age. There are a variety of symptoms that I wish to ignore. (Is that a ringing I hear? What the hell is Dupuytren’s Contracture? And was that my knee that made that noise or my stomach?) I have friends who are still raising children and they’re too busy to have symptoms. Sara was so easy to raise, I had time to worry about palpitations and lower back pain.

I think about my mother and the proletariats who raised her…

I remember realizing that my mother was getting old, just shortly before she died. She was 59, although she claimed 58 until the bitter end. It was the day that I picked her up to go have lunch and one of her eyes had more eye shadow than the other. It was a violet color that made her hazel eyes pop out like a gypsy’s. I remember wrinkles, lots of fine lines like rivulets that she said were for the tears she shed as she suffered, and I remember lots of bright colors and wild prints. She said she had a gypsy’s soul, alma de gitana. And she was a youthful sort, she was. My mother. She loved to tell “off-color” jokes which drove me to hostility, and she was beautiful. Her goal, which I secretly inherited, was to be thin. Above all, thin. (Sobre todo delgada.) She was a Barbie, like a Mad Men character, in gloves and a hat, with a bag that always matched her shoes. She wore a girdle, a corset of sorts, that turned her into an hour glass. She dyed her hair, using the Clairol color wheel as her guide, and she boldly went through most of those colors in her lifetime. She was scary as a platinum blond. With money and an additional 10 years, my mother would have defied the aging process and had “un lifting.”

¿Y mi nana? Judging by my maternal grandmother’s looks and shoes, she didn’t care that much about aging. She was thin, I’ll give her that, but her thinness had more to do with poverty than vanity. Another sign of her not caring that much about aging was that she didn’t seem to mind going deaf, which I myself am dreading. She used to say “El sordo no oye pero compone.” – “The deaf man doesn’t hear but he composes.” In other words, if she couldn’t quite make out what you were saying, she made up the rest. It was an interesting, if somewhat random, dialogue.

So yeah, I’m feeling my age although my eyes and the depth and color are the same. Eye color apparently doesn’t change until you’re ancient which I am not, not yet, but my hair is turning white and not in a good way. And although Clairol served my mother well, it does not agree with my scalp, itching now as a result of chestnut in a tube which Liz so kindly applied on my head in her kitchen. So I will go back to paying a significant premium to get the right mix that does not burn my scalp or kill any animals to hear my hairdresser free associate about his conquests while I “feel my age” sitting captive in his chair.

The audiologist said I’m having a little trouble hearing at low frequencies, damn it, so as it turns out Dan doesn’t mumble as much as I originally thought.

But what choice do I have but to age gracefully?

Aging Gracefully by Ana Consuelo Matiella

Ana Consuelo Matiella
October, 2010
Portland, Oregon

Aging Gracefully

I am now twelve months away from being 60-years-old. Several months ago when Dan hit the benchmark, I vowed to slow down and savor each day. My time was going by too fast, it seemed. Each day left me feeling like I was skimming it off the top, like I had not paid close enough attention. Today, I take a trip back over the last few months of my journal to see if I had met my commitment to be present in my daily life and not simply let the time slip away.

Here are three journal entries marking the days…

I

June 16, 2010:
Mir is here! It’s such a pleasure. Yesterday we talked about out-sourcing ourselves to India in our old age, or when we are too old to take care of ourselves, whichever comes first. We were at the corner of Second and Stark waiting for the light to change. With that decision made, we crossed the street and had a power breakfast at Mother’s Bistro. After that, we went to Powell’s to see how much money we could spend on books in 30 minutes. Then we drove up to the Japanese Gardens where we agreed that ‘magic’ was the best word. Then down again to Portland’s decrepit China Town, (sorry) to buy Chinese notebooks. (Never mind that all notebooks are now Chinese even if they are not bound in polyester ‘silk.’) Once buoyed by rummaging in the dank corner of the shop for notebooks, slippers and fans, three of our cheap and simple pleasures, we agreed that our second to the last step in our Portland adventure had to be to eat greasy and mediocre Chinese food to take us back to our respective childhoods, hers in Jersey, mine in Nogales. We sealed the afternoon with the golden clasp of the Chinese Gardens where we strolled across the small paths and bridges chatting softly about beauty with a sprinkle of low-level gossip about the people we both love. Miriam bought a painting. Still life with eggplant. It was a cloudy day.

II

July 9, 2010:
I’m feeling a bit depressed about aging today. This morning Dan lost his coffee and it was very upsetting because it isn’t just the body that goes. It’s the mind. This is why people retire! Because they lose their coffee or find their shoes in the refrigerator. And it’s not just the fact that he lost the damn coffee. It’s the fact that he drinks instant coffee now. When did this happen??? I find it odd and distasteful, even if it is “Taster’s Choice.” Sometimes I hide it behind my LaVazza Espresso so I don’t have to look at it. Maybe that’s where it is! Then I have to wonder: “How did I come to love a man who drinks instant coffee?” But never mind. At least, he reads. That’s shitty, right? Mean and superficial and status conscious. I am a bad, bad girl. And what’s worse is that I am not a girl. I am a woman, twelve months away from 60. I should be fostering wisdom not worrying about instant coffee.

III

October 12, 2010

Reading back to the day of the Missing Taster’s Choice, I decide to take it in more fully and recount it from the beginning…

It’s 5:30 am and Dan is getting ready for work and he comes up stairs, lumbering like a giant up the wooden steps. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum. Even in my sleep, I pray he doesn’t miss a step.
He comes up and peers down on me while now, thanks to all the noise he has made coming up the stairs, I am only half asleep. I hear. “Have you seen my instant coffee?”
“Jesus, Dan.” I’m annoyed but then I find a groggy form of compassion. “Did you put it away some place else besides the cupboard?”
“You have not seen my instant coffee!” This is a command. My gentle man sounds like a Gestapo agent. He is angry, clearly distraught, and I am still half-asleep. This is important. I tell myself to wake up.
“No, I have not.” I say.
“Well, it’s gone.”
“Did you throw it away by mistake? I’ve done that.”
“No, I didn’t throw it away, damn it. It was there yesterday and now it’s gone.”
“Jesus, Dan, it has to be somewhere. Look in the refrigerator.”
“I looked every where. It’s gone. It’s like someone came in to the house and only took the instant coffee.”
“You’re kidding, right? Tell me your kidding.”
“Well, what else can it be?”
“Please, Dan. That kind of talk worries me.”
He turns to walk away.
I talk at his back. “I am sure there is some kind of logical explanation. Watch. You’ll find it later. Like on the counter, where you least expect it.”
One huge step at a time, he storms back down the stairs. I decide it’s best if I stay in bed and let him cool off. I hear him outside rummaging through the trash can.
“Mother of God,” I whisper and close my eyes. Then I hear him start his truck and back out of the driveway.
In an hour I wake up again.
I go downstairs and make a cup of espresso, thank you very much.
I look for the Taster’s Choice. Everywhere logical and reasonable, I look for the Taster’s Choice. I even take a cursory look inside the kitchen trash can. I stand in the tiny kitchen scanning the surfaces with my eyes and mind. It’s gone.
Remembering that one of my greatest fears is to some day store my shoes in the refrigerator, I toy with the idea of looking in his closet or in his chest of drawers. I decide that if the instant coffee is in his underwear drawer, it is better not to know.
But now I’m intrigued. Where the fuck is the Taster’s Choice?
On my way to look through his drawers, I stop and have a chat with myself. “This is not my problem.” I tell myself that losing things is like a trigger. I become obsessed with finding things that are lost. It is a characteristic that I bring from a disturbed childhood, a thing that could be professionally labeled. But today I refuse to go there. I conclude by saying, “I do not need to obsess about where Dan put his Taster’s Choice.”
I look in the linen closet in the hallway. It’s not there.
I decide distraction will stop my brain from going into OCD mode, so I go back to bed with my cup of real coffee and my phone. I check my messages. There’s one from my daughter from the day before…
“Hi Mama, I wanted to let you know that when we came by to pick up the cast iron pan, we took the instant coffee that was in the back of the shelf.” She ends with telling me the general location of the campground where they’ll be and that she loves me.
Instead of feeling irritated that Dan and I had spent all that time looking for the Taster’s Choice, I feel grateful that Dan, although aging, is not losing his mind.

Lupe and Ruth: Installment Four: By Ana Consuelo Matiella

Lupe and Ruth – INSTALLMENT 4
September, 2010
Lupe -
When Lupe and Ruth got back to Isabelle’s table, Isabelle was already holding court with Dr. De Alejandro. She called Lupe and Ruth over with her open arms. Raúl de Alejandro stood and shook hands with Lupe and Ruth. He let his hand linger. It felt warm, bordering on hot to Lupe’s touch. “Probably from beating the drum,” Lupe thought as she wondered if he was married.
“Can I get you ladies something to drink?”
Ruth said, “I would love a glass of wine.”
“Certainly. How about you, Guadalupe?” He asked.
Lupe was surprised to hear her full name pronounced with so much authority and she smiled and said, “I would love a glass of wine.”
Isabelle chimed in and said, “Raúl, dear, I would like a glass of green tea. I think I saw some bottles of green tea in the ice chest. You’ll need help to bring it all back.”
“Perhaps Guadalupe will do the honors,” Raul said, looking at Lupe.
Lupe got up and followed Raul to the refreshment table. “So,” he said handing her a plastic glass and pouring the white wine, “how long have you been in town and why haven’t you and I met?”
Lupe blushed and said, “I’ve been here all my life except for when I went back east to college. I don’t know the answer to the second part of your question.”
“Santa Fe is such a small town; everyone with more than a high school education eventually ends up at the same parties.” He said.
“I thought you were from Albuquerque,” Lupe said and at once felt embarrassed at admitting that she knew something about him that he did not disclose.
It did not go unnoticed. He smiled. “What else do you know about me?”
Lupe stuttered and tried to recover. “Uh, nothing. Ruth said that you were from Albuquerque.”
It was too late.
“Yes,” he said, “originally from Puerto Rico, but, I do live in Albuquerque.”
Lupe felt her eyes get hot with embarrassment. She turned to go back to the table and felt his presence behind her. Her heart beat fast and her ass felt enormous.
And the little white mice said, “It’s okay Lupita. Just don’t spill the wine.”
She was aware of her own vacant smile as she headed back to the table.
“Do you like to dance? I heard that the Paramount has a group of salseros coming from Cuba next week-end.”
“Go for it ,Lupita!” the mice cheered on. “¡Aviéntate!”
“Why, actually, I love to dance,” trying to be coy while feeling like she was losing her grip on the plastic wine glass.
“We’ll talk,” Raul said, over her shoulder.
“Here they are!” Isabelle exclaimed. “What took you so long?” and then to Raul she said, “Isn’t Lupe, or Guadalupe as you so aptly call her, beautiful?”
“Yes, indeed she is,” Raul said.
“I personally think women are too thin nowadays,” Isabelle said.
“A la madre!” The little white mice said.
One of them broke the chorus and called out, “Pinche-bitch!”
And the other two mice said “Shush.”
Lupe choked on her wine and Ruth came to the rescue. “I did a lot of body image work with Isabelle,” she said, patting Lupe’s back.
Lupe wanted the earth to open up and swallow her.
“Take a deep breath, Lupita.” The little white mice said.
Lupe was in the process of taking long deep but silent and not very obvious breaths when Raul said, “Well ladies, this is where I excuse myself. Women talking about their weight. Not my favorite topic.”
When he said that, Lupe felt like he looked directly at her hips and not in a good way.
Isabelle said, “Now, now, Raul, don’t start giving us this ‘men aren’t insecure about their bodies like women are,’ nonsense. Why I just read about how men are rushing in for the Botox just as fast as we women are.”
“Now there’s a good point,” Raul said in a decided condescending tone.
“I guess I get the bad taste award for today,” Isabelle said, pursing her wrinkled lips and looking sheepishly at Lupe.
“Excuse me, my drum beckons,” Raul said. He leaned down to Lupe and said, “We’ll talk soon.”
Lupe managed a smile but she still wanted to disappear.
The three women watched Raul as he sauntered over to the cottonwood shade where the rest of the men were drumming feverishly. He took his place and beat the drum slowly at first in counter rhythm, and then he was lost to it again.
Lupe turned her chair, away from Isabelle and towards the drummers and she watched and listened and glanced back and forth to Raul. He caught her eye a few times and smiled.
The afternoon was soft and breezy and the cottonwoods were bright green and shimmered in the sun. Lupe kept reminding herself to breathe as she silently kept repeating that Isabelle’s comment about women being too thin was not about her. She detected a small trace of hope in herself and fantasized about going dancing with Raul de Alejandro. “I bet he can dance,” she thought to herself. He did say, “we’ll talk.” Perhaps he intended to call her. With the help of the wine that she drank too fast she decided that she didn’t care that she was 30 pounds over weight and that her sarong was too tight. “Fuck it,” she said to herself as she reached for an open bottle of wine that someone had left by her chair. Pouring another cup of wine, she decided to say yes if Raul asked her to go dancing. He seemed a bit egotistical but weren’t all doctors egotistical? Then she thought of her mother who would approve of Raul, only Graciela would from this day forward refer to him as Dr. de Alejandro.
She heard a sigh and thought that it came from the little white mice but instead it was Ruth. “She didn’t mean anything by that comment. Don’t take it personally.” Her friend rubbed her back in vigorous strokes. Lupe smiled and pushed her friend away playfully.
“He is kind of cute,” Ruth said referring to Raul.
“He is that,” Lupe said smiling.
Just then, they heard Isabelle cry out, “Why Lili, dearest, how are you? How wonderful to see you!”
Both Lupe and Ruth turned to see a small dark woman standing next to Isabelle kissing her on both cheeks. The young woman reminded Lupe of an elegant little black bird. Her name was Lili and she was from Mexico. Lili’s hair was straight and short and so black that it shone blue in the sun. Her eyes were two sharp slits and were full of laughter.
Lili sat at the table and said, “I’m starving. I’ll go get us some food.” She came back with a tray of grilled chicken, a mound of pickled carrots, green onions, cilantro, a stack of corn tortillas and salsa.
Isabelle was delighted and said, “What a great idea!” and then to Ruth and Lupe, “Join us ladies!”
While they ate, they had a group conversation about Whole Foods, the new health food market that had taken Santa Fe by storm. When Ruth made a comment wondering what spice she detected in the dressing for the carrots, Lili informed them that it was anise and that the pickled carrots were Raul’s contribution to the potluck.
“Where I come from, men don’t cook, but Raul loves to cook. When I met him I thought it was so unusual. A Latin man who likes to cook? I fell in love with him immediately.”
Lupe was disappointed as she observed Lili claiming Raul but she held on to the hope that ‘falling in love’ was a figure or speech. But the young woman had quite a bit to say about Raul. When Ruth tried to change the subject by mentioning Isabelle’s new book, Lili responded by saying that Raul’s book on hiking in the Andes had just been published.
“He’s working on a book on mountain biking in Northern New Mexico,” she added. “He really is a renaissance man.”
The little white mice were disgusted. “Yuck-a-la!” they said and Lupe agreed. The entire time that the four women talked and ate their chicken tacos, Lili kept one of her bird-like eyes on Raul. Lupe watched Lili as she excused herself, left the table and perched herself next to the cottonwood tree by the drummers. She made it clear that Raul was her interest and that she would be vigilant to ensure that it stayed that way.
Lupe quietly left the table and went to look at Gerhardt’s paintings. They were an abstract concoction with Hindu imagery. They were inspired by the bout of dysentery that Gerhardt had suffered while on his recent meditation journey to India. Something about a very long worm they removed from one of his intestines…and then she noticed something odd in the painting, it was blue and long and had whiskers.
“Is that a rat?” Lupe asked in a whisper as she stood in front of the painting.
“We hate rats!” The little white mice answered.
“I guess Raul is spoken for,” Ruth said as she came and stood next to Lupe to look at the rat painting.
“Did you know that rats are considered sacred in India and that they can scurry about at will in the temples with no one stopping them?” Lupe said.
“What an ego trip,” Ruth said, “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about Ruth? He’s just a guy. I just thought he was attractive, that’s all.”
“He’s narcissistic to the core,” they heard a voice say from behind. It was Isabelle.
Lupe jumped at Isabelle’s sudden appearance and felt her face grow hot.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, dear,” Isabelle said.
Lupe was irritated. “Who said I was embarrassed?”
“Your intuition serves you very well, my dear. Let it inform your process. I have known Raul for many years and although I love him dearly, and who can question that he is an interesting and dynamic man, he also possesses one of the biggest egos in the State of New Mexico.”
“Excuse me,” Lupe said, as she walked in between Ruth and Isabelle, “I have another engagement…”
“I have to go too,” Isabelle said, following Lupe.
“How do I get rid of this woman?” Lupe asked herself.
Isabelle caught up with her on their way out of the patio.
“Please come out to the car with me and I’ll give you a copy of my book.”
Ruth scurried after them and put her arm in Lupe’s. “I’m sorry. Don’t be angry with me,” she whispered to her friend.
Lupe gave her another one of her glares.
Isabelle went on as if nothing else mattered. “The section about magnetizing your dreams is going to be of particular use to you, Lupe.”
Lupe couldn’t help it and gave up her resistance. She stopped and with a quick laugh said, “Jesus, am I that transparent?”
Isabelle then turned and looked at her squarely. “Not to everyone, dear. I have the gift of clairvoyance and I can tell things about you others can’t, but that’s no excuse, is it? I’ve been intrusive and that’s not right. That’s why I don’t go to parties. I am always inappropriate at parties. Please forgive me.”
Ruth took two steps back and said nothing.
Lupe felt vindicated somehow. And touched. “Don’t worry about it. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Will you come out to the car with us, Ruth?” Isabelle asked.
Ruth followed them out to the street.
Isabelle opened the back seat of her cream colored Mercedes Benz and took out a hardbound copy of The Power Within: A Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Wholeness.” She pulled out a long purple pen out of her oversized purple leather bag and wrote, “Lupe, There are no coincidences,” in a flowery script and signed it “Isabelle…”
She turned to Ruth and said, “I have decided to give Lupe her very own copy.”
Ruth smiled. Lupe took the book and Isabelle embraced her and said, “Read chapter
twelve.”
Lupe and Ruth watched Isabelle’s Mercedes glide out of the cul de sac as they waved good-bye.
“I’m getting ready to go,” Ruth said as she walked towards Gerhardt’s house.
“Me too,” Lupe said.
The two women went in to the house to get their bags which they had left it in Gerhardt’s bedroom. When they walked in, they noticed that the door to Gerhardt’s bedroom was closed. Ruth knocked lightly and Raul opened it. Lili was sitting on the bed, her black hair and the bedspread in disarray.
“Uh, I just need my bag,” Lupe said trying not to make eye contact. She hid the book behind her. Raul noticed and cocked his head to read the title. “A woman’s guide to spiritual wholeness.” Lili zipped up her tight black jeans.
Lupe noticed that Lili was shaken, embarrassed it seemed. She wondered why anyone would think they wouldn’t be disturbed if they tried to have sex where all the purses were being kept at a party. Lili struggled for something to say. “Spiritual wholeness, huh? Do you go for that kind of thing?”
“Oh, I’m not sure” Lupe said looking down at the book, “I’ve never read her work.”
“Isabelle is a sage, a real wise woman.” Ruth said.
Lili shrugged her shoulders and said, “‘cada quien hace de su culo un papalote.’”
Lupe burst out laughing. The Mexican dicho, was the cynical opposite of “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade,” only it involved making a kite out of an anus.
“What?” Ruth cried out not getting the joke.
“Never mind, Ruthie,” Lupe said, “this one needs some esplaining.”
Ruth looked puzzled and a little miffed and Raul chimed in, “I love Mexican humor!” He then turned to Lili and said, “Guadalupe likes to dance. Should we invite her to come out with us on Saturday?”
“Sure,” Lili said, “and how about you, Rose?” she said to Ruth, “would you like to join us as well?”
“The name is Ruth and my husband has two left feet.”
“Well, if you change your mind, a bunch of us are going to the Paramount on Saturday night.”
“Whatever!” The little white mice said as Lupe walked out the door.
The afternoon had turned to dusk when Lupe and Ruth made their way out into the street again. “Do you want to come over and watch an old movie? I think Larry got Chinatown.”
“No thanks, Ruthie. The little mice are tired.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Ruth asked. “Now, I’m kind of sorry I insisted on you coming.”
“Don’t be silly, Ruth. You aren’t responsible for my happiness. Besides, it was nice to meet Isabelle.”
“Really? Are you putting me on?”
“No, I was glad to meet the woman who had so much to do with you finding domestic bliss.”
“You sound bitter.”
“Sorry,” Lupe said as she walked to her car without saying good bye.
Ruth followed her. “Lupe! Come on. Talk to me.”
Lupe looked at her friend and tears welled up in her eyes. “I should have stayed home. I was in no shape to come out of my cocoon.”
“Ahhh,” the little white mice sighed sympathetically.
“He was flirting with you, the jerk!” Ruth said.
“Stop it, Ruth. I know you’re trying to be supportive but it really says more about me than about him. He’s just a guy with a big conga in between his legs, and a girlfriend, or two or three. Who cares? This is all about me, not him.”
Ruth held her friend as Lupe shed a few tears.
“Are you sure you won’t come for dinner? It’s Larry’s turn to cook. He’s making his version of Fettuccine Alfredo.”
“No thanks, I’m going home to read Isabelle’s chapter twelve. Who knows? It might have some to say to me,” Lupe said with a half smile.
“Let me know if you want Isabelle’s number.”
“Stop it!”
“I love you, Lupe.”
“I love you too, Ruthie.” Lupe said as she got into her old Karman Ghia.
On the way home, Lupe stopped at Cost Plus World Market to replace the dark chocolate truffles she had disposed of earlier in the day. Lindt would one more time see her through the night. She would read Isabelle’s book, or at least chapter twelve, and drown her sorrows in the dark sweetness of her favorite substance.
When she got out of her car to go into the store, the little white mice said, “Don’t do it, Lupita! Don’t do it. Please! Don’t do it.”
She commanded the mice to shut up and go away. She did not want to hear from them tonight. As a matter of fact, she did not want to hear from them ever again. They had become obnoxious, just as obnoxious as her dead, but ever-slender and militantly anti-chocolate mother.
“You’re fired,” Lupe said to the little white mice as she slammed her car door.

Ana Consuelo Matiella’s Essay on Death

Ana Consuelo Matiella

Death

I am now 16 months away from 60. My mother died at 58, although she lied about her age. She was probably more like 59. Being so close to my mother’s age makes me make the days count.

In the morning, I think about death when I ride my bike down Alberta Street in Portland. There’s so much traffic, I plan my funeral.

Miriam, you are there and you make a speech about how much you loved me and how smart I was. I had good taste in clothes, you say. You still have my hand me downs. You are wearing my hand me downs. Oh, so much black.

In the mist of the morning, on my bike, with the cars swishing past me, I think about the music I want Dan and Sara to pick to play at my funeral. Neil Young Harvest Moon, maybe. Or Joni. “I am on a lonely road, traveling, traveling,” except that Alberta is populated by all manner of Portlandia. I just saw a young woman who is a dead ringer for Raggedy Ann. This one has bright pink hair and what appears to be a full-body tattoo. Those stripes on her legs aren’t socks.

When I pass the “Nutri-taco” food truck I hear the blast of norteñas. Yum! This part of the neighborhood smells like corn tortillas!

The vintage shop has an orange mini dress that I wore in 1966 with white go-go boots. Now if that doesn’t make you feel old, I don’t know what.

On hearing the roar of the bus behind me, I pedal hard, foolishly hard for someone my age, 16 months away from 60 with IT band syndrome. The bus barrels by and once I know I’m still alive, I remember that I read somewhere that an occasional adrenalin rush is good for the blood. Thank you, I say and throw a kiss and a nod at the sky like the soccer guy from Slovenia.

That is when I decide. When I die, I want to die on a bicycle. Everyone has to die of something, is what my dad always said. And now thanks to my age, the narrowness of the street, and the power of a biodiesel engine, I have been put in a position to think about how I would want to die. Today I know two things about death: One is: Everyone dies. And two, everyone has to die Of Something. So what kind of death would you choose? The heart attack, maybe? Miriam, it was you who said it, “The heart attack is the death of the just.” It’s quick, a little painful but it doesn’t last long.

The word cancer makes me want to swerve as I feel the hot breath of the bio-diesel bus on the back of my neck.

If I die, which I know I will, let me die on my bike. It could be a little painful, but it would be quick and I have strived to be just. In Portland, if someone kills you on your bike, they build you a shrine out of an old bike, paint it white, adorn it with plastic flowers and install it on the place of your death, like the descansos all over the streets and highways of New Mexico.

Through my rear view mirror, ( I have one on my bike) I see that a delivery truck, one clearly too big for this narrow street, is coming up behind me. Realizing that it is even more clumsy-looking than the bus, I toy with the idea of popping a wheelie and getting my ass on the sidewalk. But the driver senses my trepidation. He makes eye contact with me through my little round mirror and he raises his hand to let me know that he is not going to hit me. I move a tiny bit. He passes. I wave.

Now, I have a long stretch with no traffic and I see that the shoe store has a new display and that the waffle kid has several people in front of his tiny window. It makes me glad since I was worried about how in the world he was going to make money selling waffles on the street in such weather.

So here I am on my bike on Alberta Street thinking about death and croissants because I can now smell the bakery. It’s on the left. I stop and get off my bike and walk it across the street. Two cars stop, one on each side. I look at both drivers and say, “Thank you for not killing me.”

I walk in to Petite Provence and I think about ordering a special cappuccino in celebration of one more beautiful day of life. But for the fact that the person who would have killed me would feel terrible, dying on my bike on the way to the bakery would be a good way to die.

P.S. For those of you who care, I like purple flowers.

La Madrina by Ana Consuelo Matiella

In my work on Mexican Femenine Archetypes, I still love the story of my three fairy godmothers.  I would like to share them with you…

La Madrina – The Godmother  – Ana Consuelo Matiella
Octavio Paz once said that Mexican women had no identity of their own, and that they only existed when men woke them up. Centuries before Paz, Grimm and Andersen without ever having stepped foot in Mexico. had the same philosophy.  They told us stories of sleeping princesses and damsels stuck in towers waiting to be awakened, rescued or defined by men.
As angry as it makes me to acknowledge it, I was caught in a tower too.  I pretended to be a tough cookie all the while holding on to the husband of my childhood for dear life.  I put up with the indignities of generations of Mexican women who were married to men who no longer wanted them because I did not want to be in the world without a husband. Then, bless his heart, Art did me a great service.  He left. When I saw Art’s back as he walked out, I took a deep breath and closed the door. Then I cried for several days and waited for the earth to open up and swallow me. Soon I expected to grow a hump and turn into a hag, as if Art, by leaving me, had taken a chunk of my femininity.  I was deranged. I fantasized about how much better it would have been to save some dignity through widowhood. But after a few days, the earth felt as stable as it ever felt, my back never felt better and the birds still sang.
I came to three conclusions:
One: Of all things, my house could no longer be white. I invited everyone who loved me to paint something, the walls, the chairs, the nichos, the chest of drawers – all in different colors.  Golden corn yellow, Mexican rose, communist blue.  Even the dog got an accidental streak of mango orange on his brow.
Two:  For the sake of the two most important women in my life, my daughter and myself, I had to learn to live a joyful life without a man.
Three:  I needed help.
The third conclusion was the most formidable.  It wasn’t just help in the form of support I needed, not just someone to paint a wall, provide a shoulder to cry on, break Art’s legs.  No, I needed a special kind of help.  I needed wisdom.
The two wisest women in my life thus far had been my maternal and paternal aunts, Tía Paqui and Mamachelo. They were my madrinas, my godmothers.  Paqui was an old maid and Mamachelo was a widow and both of them lived most of their lives without men.  Perhaps I could conjure up some help from the memories they left behind.
The truth is that the presence of my Tía Paqui has never left me.   I see her firmly in my past and in the current day clutter of books, notebooks and rolls of fabric that seem to sprout out of nowhere in my house. So on that day, the first Paqui inspired act I performed was to bake a kick-ass lemon meringue pie without a recipe, just following Paqui’s instructions.  The meringue healed my soul.  I then went to my basket of fabric and pulled out the pieces she left me when she died.  I vowed to make something out of the green and brown print. I took the fabric and put it around my shoulders like a hug. I could feel her blessings, her smiles and her kind encouragements.  I remembered the best day I ever had with Paqui and was transported to a late afternoon on a mercilessly hot summer day on Rosario Street when I was eight, or ten or maybe twelve.

Madrina # 1
Tía Paqui
My parents had taken my older brother and my baby sister on another one of their trips. (The older one was too much trouble, they said, and the younger one was too young to be left, so the middle one, that one being me, got left behind.)
They left me with my grandmother and my Tía Paqui.  My grandmother was mean and crazy by then and I didn’t want to be there. My Tía Paqui worked all day and I was left alone to play with the servant girl, who was a couple of years older, but she had work to do.  There were pigeons to catch, rabbits to pet and eggs to pick; there were errands to run and tea towels to embroider, but the long and the short of it was that until my Paqui got home from work, I was bored and restless and wanted to go home.  Home, as I mentioned, had gotten into a 1959 Chevy station wagon and gone to Guaymas.
So there I was counting the hours and the days until my family returned to pick me up and take me back to the American side of the border where at least I had daytime television and friends to play with.
I perched myself on the corner of the garden that overlooked the street, waiting until I could see her figure coming up the hill and then I ran to meet her to take her bags and ask her what were we going to do now.  The minute my Tía Paqui got home I would want to do something with her. I would want her to teach me how to make something, like a lemon meringue pie or biscuits, but it was too hot to turn the oven on. Maybe today she would teach me that new stitch, the one called, “make me if you can.”  It was a difficult one that not too many women knew how to do.
She was tired, she said, and why didn’t I come with her and take a nap in her room.  But I had already taken the dreaded siesta and listened to the lizards and the pigeons count the hours.  I told her I was bored.  I wanted to go home. I started to cry.  When was my mother coming back?  Why did they leave me behind again? Why could they take my sister and my brother on their stupid trips and not take me? She stroked my hair and comforted me but gave me no good reason except that my brother was trouble and my baby sister was still in diapers.  That was not reason enough for me.  Why should I be punished for being civilized?
That afternoon after her small nap, when the sun was beginning to leave its eternal center in the sky, she said to take a bath and get pretty because we were going out.
I put on the blue and pink print dress she made for me and my red rubber calzi-plasticos, plastic gel shoes that stuck to the hot pavement if you went out in the middle of the day.  But this was not the middle of the day, it was several hours past the wretched noon; the sun was beginning to move and there was a hint of rain to keep us cool.  The plastic shoes made the sound of a bouncing ball against the hard dirt as we walked down Rosario hill and into town.
When I asked where we were going she said, “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”
I had never been to a bookstore before.  In Nogales, Arizona we had a library but no bookstore.  I liked the idea of a place where you could buy books and keep them. When I walked in, the first thing I became aware of was the distinctive odor.  I took a deep breath and it smelled like I thought heaven would smell like, cool and moist and protected from the sun.  I didn’t know at the time but the musky aroma that I smelled was ink on paper and since that day, it is one of my favorite scents. The second thing I became aware of was the jumble of books stacked on top of each other with no apparent order and no one looking over your shoulder to make sure you didn’t put them in the wrong place.
My tía explained that students came here to buy their textbooks, and that  you could buy comic books, fotonovelas, magazines, novels, cookbooks and other materials in print. There were more books there than in our small library on the American side of the border, more books than I thought could fit in such a small space.  We spent what seemed like not enough time browsing and she bought me a Pequeña Lulú, a Little Lulu comic book, a book on cross stitch embroidery and another on word puzzles.  She also bought me a chocolate candy lollipop with caramel inside and a hard candy one shaped like a red umbrella.  I was already in heaven when she took me to the corner where all the school supplies were stocked.  She picked out 4 pencils, red, blue, green and yellow, a tiny clear green plastic pencil sharpener and a blue notebook with paper so thin, I thought it would tear if I touched it.
“Here,” she said, “the next time you get bored and sad and you want to go home and you can’t because there’s no one there, write in this notebook.”
“But what can I write?”  I asked.
“You know how when you sit in the corner of the garden looking down into the street, there are many people that go by?”
I still didn’t understand.  She said, “Write about them.  You know the washerwoman that goes by, the man that carries the table of bread on his head, the beggar that goes through the garbage foraging for food?  Look inside them and make up stories.  Then, write them down.”
I looked at her again and she said, “That’s how all these books got started, by someone writing in a notebook just like this one.”
I believed her. In my imagination, the blue notebook with the onion skin paper became a magic treasure chest of books.  I looked up and saw her gentle smile, the one that was only meant for me. When Paqui smiled at me, I felt how much she loved me, like the first time I tried on the dress with the blue and pink flowers she had made me, just like I did only a few moments before when we walked into the cluttered store and I smelled a thousand books for the first time.
What was I? Eight or ten or maybe twelve?  Did Paqui know she was changing my life by taking me to a bookstore, by telling me that all writers start their writing in a blue notebook with falling apart pages of onion skin paper? Could she have known that she was casting a spell on me that day?
Walking back home with my package in my sweaty hand, hearing the sole of my cheap plastic sandal hitting the hot desert dirt like a rubber ball, the long hot summer ahead of me didn’t look so grim.
We went back to Nana’s house and I couldn’t wait to get started.  Who could I write about first?  There was that old woman with the cages full of parrots on her head, the one that my grandmother said was a witch and to stay away from.  I could write about her.  And then there was that kid Julio who died because he talked to the pigeons and the pigeons talked back.  And what about that old man, Don Nacho who kept the store down the hill?  His nose was huge!  I could make up a story about why his nose got so big.  Maybe it was because he lied like Pinocchio, maybe it was because as my uncle Romeo said, when you get old, everything shrinks except your nose.
When the dusty stationwagon showed up for me on Rosario Street to take me back to Perkins Street, I was still yearning to get back to my American home, but I had a notebook full of stories in my bag, and three pencils, one blue, one green and one red.  The yellow one had worn out.

Madrina # 2
Mamachelo
Mamachelo was the 5-minute madrina.  Everything she did, including giving me advice, she did well and in the minimum amount of time. She was a widow, wore black, and traveled. She was tall, busy and smelled good. While my Tia Paqui was plain and fostered humility,  Mamachelo was elegant and fostered arrogance.  Like my mother, Mamachelo  spoke with so much authority that you wouldn’t even think to question that what she was saying was true.  She expressed an open fondness for her own intelligence and the intelligence of others.  She advised us to thank God every day because none of us were stupid.
Mamachelo came around about once a month in a whirlwind of activity with my second cousins, who were her granddaughters and so lucky because they got to go to back to Spain and visit the Louvre in Paris. I lived vicariously through their pretty clothes, what I deemed as sophisticated mannerisms, and how they came and went in the pleasantries orchestrated by  Mamachelo.
Mamachelo told the stories of her childhood as if they were lessons from a book.  How my grandfather was so over protective that she wasn’t allowed to go to high school and how she went about the business of educating herself. She reported that even in her old age, she read voraciously in both Spanish and English.  She read three things regularly: Forbes Magazine for the economic news, Time Magazine en Español, for international news, and to balance things off, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood.
We heard about how she lifted herself out of the sadness and grief of widowhood by starting new businesses, volunteering in the community and going abroad whenever she darned well pleased.  She was like a Spanish Auntie Mame without the overtones of decadence.
She had high expectations and very little use for complaints. Once when I was bemoaning about some friends who were gossiping about me she said, “Don’t worry when they talk about you, dear.  Worry when they don’t talk about you.”
She held me responsible for my actions, and showered me with praise when I showed initiative or creativity.
My best day with her was when I was preparing myself for my first formal dance. My father’s alcoholism was beginning to take its toll on our family and we had fallen on hard economic times. My mother had committed to making my gown, a pale aqua blue satin that she embroidered with sequined flowers.  My shoes had been dyed to match; I had borrowed a beaded purse from one of my well-to-do cousins, and all I needed were some gloves.  In my mind, the gloves needed to be aqua blue but we couldn’t find them in that color and to order them would have been too expensive.  My mother, who had accepted a donation of  a pair of long white gloves from one of her friends, insisted that white was fine but I wanted it to be perfect.  I wanted aqua blue gloves.  I had read an article in Seventeen magazine about dying clothes so I went to the grocery store and bought myself a couple of boxes of Ritz dye and carefully read the directions on how to create aqua blue.  By some odd miracle, the gloves matched the blue of the dress to perfection.  I was pleased but not as pleased as when my Mamachelo, who was on her monthly visit from Hermosillo, found the long gloves drying in the shower.
You would have thought I was Pablo Picasso’s protégé the way she went on about how well the gloves matched the exact color of the dress.  She asked me how I did it and listened to me recounting my steps.  She nodded with approval and said that I had a good eye for color.  Not just anyone could do this, she said, why she herself had created some disastrous colors.  She was proud of me she said for taking what little resources I had to make something beautiful. She was certain that I was going to be one of most elegant girls at the dance.
Mamachelo came in and out of my life quickly and effectively.  I saw her perhaps once a month when she came to Nogales, Arizona to shop for American products or collect her rents, but every time she came, she stopped to know me. I felt strong under her gaze.
In a long letter before she died she told me how proud she was of me and listed all of my accomplishments, some that I didn’t even know she knew about.
After my divorce, I vowed to be more like Mamachelo.  I made it a priority to work hard and travel with my daughter, stand up tall and smell good. I didn’t spend too much time whining; it wasted time and I was busy.
They say that when you are loved right, you always go back to that love in time of crisis so in my moments of despondency, I ran back to the memory of my two madrinas and I was consoled. They witnessed all my sacraments, my baptism, my confirmation and my marriage.  There was only one problem.  They were both dead. What I needed now was a living madrina, one that would witness the sacrament of divorce.

Madrina # 3
Dr. Lee Little
My friend Karen, who was one of my lifelines during my divorce, understood what I was looking for and she told me about a psychotherapist she knew.  She said she grew dahlias and had hair like mine and thought we might hit it off.  Dahlias are the most magnificent flowers on earth and not too many women have hair like mine so I called and made an appointment.
From the moment Lee gave me directions on how to find her, in a small white house in an old compound on Canyon Road, I knew that I had arrived in a place where I could find healing.  Like Mamachelo and Paqui, Lee had a quick wit and a sense of humor.  Her one-liners were salve to the wound.
One of the things that you can become infected with in Santa Fe is the new age philosophy that can be as helpful as annoying.  I am vulnerable to these kinds of gimmicks because some of my family members were psychic, some of them were superstitious; and some of them were just plain nuts and to this day I don’t have the discernment to tell them apart.
In my hour of need, I was pulling out all the stops.  A friend of mine told me that I needed to bring good chi into my home and so recommended that I install a small pond that re-circulated water in the pathway that lead to the entrance of my home. After going about the business of setting up the pond, I was to buy three gold fish and assign a good intention to each one.  The three little critters were going to aid me in my journey to recovery, clean the atmosphere and bring in good energy.
Three days later, my daughter and I came home from our long day in town and the three goldfish were floating belly up on the re-circulating water.
All Sixteen Year Old Daughter could say as she passed the catastrophe was, “Now, that can’t be good.”
I was devastated.  Three gold fish with three good intentions dead in three days! How could this happen and what could it mean?
The next day was my first session with Lee and I came in with my heart in my throat. I sat down and recounted that the three goldfish died in three days; I told her about the three intentions and looked at her with anticipation.  She had a serene look in her eyes and didn’t say a word.
“Well?” I said, eager to know what she thought.  “What do you think this means?”
She shook her head softly and said, “Dear, sometimes a dead gold fish is just a dead goldfish.”
I burst out laughing and I knew that I had come to the right place.
I went on to tell her that I wanted to hire Moo Gonzalez to break Art’s legs.  “Just save your venom for me,” she said.
And that is what I did.  I would go in foaming at the mouth and come out feeling cleansed.  I purposefully saved my venom for Lee, as she recommended, so that I would not contaminate my daughter with my anger at her father, a decent father whom she adored.  Lee’s little white house was the place where I would go to separate my “stuff” so that Sara and I could grow in our separate ways.  Whenever I went in worried about Sara’s adolescence, Lee would say, “We know she’s fine, but how are you?”  And although Sara never went to Lee herself, she knew that Lee was in her corner.  Whenever I got too intrusive or frantic about setting curfews or other limits, my daughter would say, “Ask Lee what she has to say about this.”  Sara intuitively trusted Lee to guide her distraught mother in the right direction.
Lee grew dahlias and had hair like mine. I told her once that she was the Jewish mother I never had.  She smiled and called me Honey from then on. She witnessed the sacrament of my divorce, the divorce of a woman who thought she was a tough cookie until she realized that she was snagged in a tower.
Unlike Sr. Paz’s archetype of the Mexican woman who only existed when men woke them up, I would point out that this Mexican woman had at least three wise women facilitate her awakening.  I would also challenge Señor Grimm and his crony Andersen and tell them that they were remiss in their recounting the stories of stranded young maidens.  If they had just come in a little closer, they would have seen that it was not just the prince, the king or the kind woodsman who saved the girl. Fairy godmothers had a hand in it too.

Lupe and Ruth – Installment Three-by Ana Consuelo Matiella

Lupe and Ruth – Installment Three
Lupe
Lupe hung up the phone and looked around the bedroom.  She went to the trash can and retrieved the smashed-up box of chocolates and placed them on the dresser.  Reaching for one of the truffles, she heard the squeaky little voices again.
“Don’t do it Lupita, mijita, cutie pie!”
She stopped. Did she really just take stuff out of the garbage and intend to eat it?  She took the truffles into the kitchen, threw them in the sink, turned on the garbage disposal, and watched them whirl down the drain, inhaling the last of the chocolate aroma.
“Wow.” She sighed.
The mice cheered. “¡Qué viva la Lupe!”
Her creative visualization book said the spiritual guides should always be positive and say kind things.  If not, you could fire them.  She fired the wizard.  She could swear she had heard him whisper she had a fat ass after she had a run-in with a pint of rocky road.
After a few minutes passed and she knew the chocolate truffles were gone forever, she felt a sense of triumph.  Whatever insane device her imagination came up with to keep her from eating the truffles, worked. At the same time that she felt triumphant she felt pathetic.  Please.  Little white mice?  Now she felt like crying, but instead of giving in to the tears, she went to her ropero and pulled out her royal blue biking shorts, got her baseball cap, stuffed her hair into it, put her helmet over it and rode off on her bike in the warm sun.  She pedaled hard; the blue sky swallowed her like a tunnel and she forgot about how much she hated her body.
When she got back in a full sweat after her hard ride, she showered, changed into a rust and blue silk sarong she had bought at the Tesuque Flea Market, and drove to Pancho Ortega’s neighborhood in search of the drumming party.
Lupe parked her car and walked through the small passageway that led from the side of the house to the back yard.  She checked herself in the reflection of one of the windows that faced the walkway and she heard a soft whistle coming from the little white mice.  She walked briskly to avoid the second thoughts, the ones that noticed her hips were too big or that she had a double chin.
The crowd was in a festive mood and Lupe was suddenly glad that she had come.  Ruth spotted her and rushed to welcome her and give her a big fake kiss on the cheek with the accompanying “Mwa!”
Lupe mwawed back and hugged her friend.
“I’m so glad you changed your mind!”  Ruth exclaimed taking her by the hand and leading her through the crowd.
Lupe followed Ruth through the narrow path and as she scanned the crowd, she saw him. He was sitting with the rest of the men, drumming.  He was the one with a large conga in between his long legs.  In the five seconds that Lupe had to look at him, she noticed that he was dark and thin and that his complexion had suffered from adolescent acne.  He was balding and the short beard he wore was a white stubble, but his long sinewy arms were confident as he filled the air with the beat of his drum. He looked at her and his dark eyes smiled.
“Uh oh,” the little white mice said in unison.
Lupe’s heart beat fast as she looked back at him and then turned away.
“There’s someone I want you to meet, Dahling” she said. When Ruth was in the right mood she did a bad imitation of her Aunt Esther who apparently was a dead ringer for Zsa Zsa Gabor.
“Wait, Ruthie, not so fast. Let me get a drink first.” Lupe was dreading Ruth’s eagerness to hook her up with some guy, any guy, just to get her to “practice.” Practice, is what Ruth said Lupe needed in order to get better at finding the right guy.  But at this moment, Lupe was having a hard time trying to keep her heart from jumping out of her throat and into love at first sight.
“It’s not what you think.  Come on.” Ruth dragged her by the arm and Lupe took another back glance at the drummer. Was she imagining things or was he looking at her too?
They approached a round table where a stately woman sat surrounded by several admirers.
“Isabelle,” Ruth said ceremoniously, “this is my best friend Lupe.”
Isabelle was what Lupe considered “pleasingly plump,” that luxurious label a woman gets to wear when she’s over sixty and can afford to sacrifice her body to pâté and champagne.
Isabelle took both Lupe’s hands, “Hello, Lupe, a pleasure to meet you.” Isabelle’s eyes were a deep blue slate and her weathered skin shined with a combination of expensive moisturizer and the sun’s harsh vitality.  Her piercing gaze accentuated her crow’s feet and made them beautiful.
“You are lovely, my dear.  Sit down and tell me about yourself.”
Ruth looked on with an approving smile.
Lupe had heard of Isabelle from Ruth for a decade — she was Ruth’s psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of New Mexico.  A New York transplant from the 70’s, she had become famous for her work with Native American shamanism and her own brand of Jungian transformational psychotherapy.
“I had been wanting Lupe to meet you for years, ” Ruth said, “and  here you are!  I didn’t even know you were back. What a coincidence!”
“There is no such thing as a coincidence, dear. Have I taught you nothing?”  Isabelle laughed and her crow’s feet crinkled.
Ruth said, “Dr. Goldstein has been living in Copper Canyon for the past year, studying under a Taraumara shaman and finishing her book, The Power Within: A Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Wholeness.”
“I have advance copies in the car, and I would love for you to have one,” Isabelle said.
Ruth touched her heart and bowed her head. “Thank you so much.  I’m honored.”
“Perhaps, you can share it with Lupe.”  Isabelle said.
“I would love to read it,” Lupe said, “Ruth has told me a lot about you.”
“It’s good to meet you physically, Lupe, but I already knew you energetically.”
“Really?”  Lupe said glancing at Ruth.  Lupe made woo-woo eyes at Ruth, hoping her friend would respond to the secret code they had developed over the years.  It was  limited but succinct. Woo-woo eyes were an indication that  some kind of paranormal phenomenon had transpired or was about to.
Ruth, however, missed her cue.
“Yes,” Isabelle went on, “although you see me as a white woman, I am really an indigenous Mexican.  The body of the European is just the package.  In my heart,  I am Raramuri.”
“Raramuri?”  Lupe asked trying to hide her disbelief.
“Yes, Taraumara.  Raramuri is what we call ourselves.”
“I see,” Lupe said , still trying to make eye contact with Ruth. “That is very interesting.”
Isabelle didn’t notice Lupe’s search for Ruth’s acknowledgement and said, “I think you and I would have a lot to talk about.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Lupe said as she stared at Ruth, this time not caring if Isabelle noticed.  When she caught Ruth’s attention, Lupe made her woo-woo eyes go wide.
“Will you excuse us?” Ruth asked abruptly.
“Of course, whatever turns you on…” Isabelle said waving her amber and turquoise bejeweled hand.
When Ruth and Lupe were safely locked in the small bathroom in the hallway Lupe said, “Okay, you know I don’t want a therapist, right?  I already have the little white mice!”
“She’s the best there is.” Ruth said.
“You set this up, didn’t you?” Lupe hissed.
“No! I’m shocked that you would think that.  It’s a coincidence.  I didn’t even know she was back!” Ruth said defending herself in a loud whisper.
“Didn’t you hear what Madame Freud said?  There’s no such thing as a fucking coincidence!” Lupe’s black eyes almost popped out of her head.
“Honestly, Lupe.  What do you think I am?”
“Life-long psychotherapy works for you, Ruth, but it doesn’t mean I have to do it.”
“I swear to God, I didn’t know she was going to be here, Lupe.  Don’t you think it’s synergistic that we run into the woman who was responsible for my life’s transformation at a party?  She never goes to parties!  You have no idea how rare it is to see Isabelle in public.”
Lupe noticed the admiration in Ruth’s voice. “You think very highly of her, don’t you?”
“She changed my life, Lupe.”
“Well, I’m not into it and you need to chill out.”
“You could benefit,” Ruth said.
“Ruth!”
“Okay sorry, I’m getting pushy.”
“I know you mean well,”  Lupe said softening her tone and putting her head on her friend’s shoulder, “but you need to stop it, Ruthie.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,”  Ruth said and then added, “Borrón, borrón,” in a thick American accent.  Lupe had taught Ruth some Spanish expressions in exchange for Yiddish ones.  “Borrón” in Spanish was the approximate equivalent of “erase.”  Anytime the two friends offended each other they would say, “Borrón, borrón,” requesting a clean slate.  In exchange, Lupe was allowed to say “oy vey,”  without Ruth cringing.  Lupe eventually changed it to “¡ay vey!”  the perfect Ruth and Lupe combo.
“Okay, now to the important stuff,” Lupe said changing the tone of the conversation. “Who’s the drummer? The tall mulatto guy with the acne scars?”
“Oh, him… We’ve never met but I think his name is Raul de Alejandro and he’s from Puerto Rico. He’s a doctor in Albuquerque.”
“A doctor? What a catch!”  The little white mice called out.
“He’s gorgeous.” Lupe said.
“Isabelle might know him.”
There was a light but urgent knock on the bathroom door.
“Are we done?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah, we’re done, but no more referrals, okay?”
The man waiting to use the bathroom was wearing a sarong just like Lupe’s only it was turquoise and purple. He looked at the two women coming out and smiled liked he knew something he shouldn’t.
“God, I wonder what he thought we were doing in there.” Ruth asked.
“He’s wearing a skirt, Ruth.  He understands.”  Lupe retorted.