My sister/friend Patty sent this to me awhile back. I remember looking at it and thinking how many great memories were tied up in this one picture. Then I went about life and forgot about it until it popped back up today. I'd like to tell you about these four women that raised me.
Most often, when asked who raised us, we offer the names of the adults in our home. For instance, I was definitely raised by my mother and father. But when I looked at this photograph today, I realized something profound. There are usually a lot more people involved in our raising than just our parents and grandparents. Especially if you were a kid born in the 1950's like me, raised in the same house in the same neighborhood your entire childhood, just like most of the other kids on your street. Parents on our street were interchangeable. Every mother and father had some what of an eye on you no matter who you belonged to. They also had no problem smacking you if you got out of hand and there was no fear of you running home to tell on them. That would have just got you smacked again. Now, before you sissy parents sound the psychological/physical abuse alarm of smacking a kid in the 1950's, you would have been smacked too and survived to tell about it, so relax. There is beating, which never happened, and there is smacking, which often happened. I'm ok, you're ok. OK?
Isabel Heras lived four doors down from us. She and her husband and their four children were wonderful people. Her one daughter, Theresa, was my age and we became fast friends when they moved into their house in the 1960's. The Heras family was from Mexico which meant their house was the place to be. There was always something wonderful cooking on their stove and you could smell it walking up the driveway. Mr. Heras was the most handsome man I had ever seen along with being soft-spoken and kind. Both my parents loved Mr. and Mrs. Heras and their children so we all spent a lot of time together. I have so many great stories, some funny and some heartbreaking but the one I will always remember is the day Mrs. Heras pierced my ears in our kitchen.
Isabel Heras was at our house making homemade tamales with my mother. It was quite the production with six brand-new baby bathtubs lined up on the counter, each filled with a different piece of the tamale puzzle. There was masa, corn husks, chicken, beef, and a sweet candied filling. They had a full blown assembly line going. I came in from school and plopped down at the kitchen table, completely dejected. Several of the girls in my class had pierced ears but my mother wasn't having it. I had been begging for days but my mom had her heels dug in deep and I couldn't get her to budge. Mrs. Heras was a tiny woman but she was wiry and loud. A force to be reckoned with. Before I could say a word, she yelled at me to stop pouting and spit out what I wanted. They had work to do and I was in the way. I mumbled I wanted pierced ears and my mother wouldn't let me have them. The next thing I knew, Mrs. Heras was grabbing a potato and ice cubes and barking at my mother in Spanish. As my right ear was numbed with the ice cubes, my mother appeared with a needle threaded with red thread. I started to say I might need to think about this but Mrs. Heras had the potato behind my ear as the needle pierced through my skin before I knew what hit me. And that's when I passed out cold on the kitchen floor. The second ear was also pierced that day as I lay on my parents bed with a cold, wet washcloth on my face. And y'all were worried about me getting smacked earlier.
Jean Fritze was my sister/friend Patty's mother. She was strong and independent. A working woman. I didn't know many of those because most moms I knew stayed at home like mine. I thought she was scary and amazing at the same time. Mrs. Fritze was no nonsense. She said what she meant and she meant what she said. She was never mean to me but I knew she meant business if she told us kids to do something or more importantly to not do something. Like the time we thought she was at work so we went in the backyard to smoke her cigarettes. I think Patty and I were probably ten or eleven. It wasn't funny then but it's hilarious to think back on now. When she walked in the backyard and caught us, Patty and her brother Michael got sent inside and I was sent home. As I walked down their driveway, headed to our home six houses up the street, I realized Mrs. Fritze was walking behind me. I stopped and turned to face her, then completely came apart at the seams. I knew she was going to follow me home, tell my mother and then watch Sister Mary Bernice kill me. I was shocked when she looked at me and started explaining why smoking when you're a kid is a bad idea. She made me promise to never do it again. I never meant anything more than when I promised to never smoke and I don't to this day. I will always remember Mrs. Fritze granting me mercy that day, joining us with her kids on our road trips to Tijuana and playing cards with my mother at our house until the early morning hours.
Violet Maben or Vi as we all called her lived across the street from us. She was the Mrs. Kravitz of the entire neighborhood. She literally had eyes on all of us, everywhere, which is so weird since she usually laid on her living room couch watching the going ons of Virginia Ave. How did she see the shenanigans we were up to when we thought we were so sly? Who knows, but if someone was going to catch you at something and then report it to your parents, it was Mrs. Kravitz. Vi was originally from Kansas, loved country music, CB radios and fried everything. Her fried chicken was out of this world and she believed it was medicinal. If anyone was sick, you were going to get a huge pan full of fried chicken from Vi. She was also the one my mother called if we were throwing up. My mom could not handle vomit but Vi was a pro. She would come across that street ready to clean up and wrap up whoever was causing my mother to heave. Vi had a way of making you feel safe when you were so sick you couldn't lift your head. She was like those nurses that flip newborns around like they know what they're doing. That was Vi. She would have you cleaned up and bathed, wrapped up and in bed before you knew it. I was always trying to avoid her when I was well because she was too much in my business but when I was sick, I asked for Vi.
There are not enough words to tell all the wonderful stories of my mother. She wasn't perfect but she was definitely the best. I would never truly understand and appreciate who she was to me until she was gone. I've told a few stories of Bernice Casas on this Blog in the past and I will tell more in the future. She deserves her own post because she was that good. Let me just say, I am who I am because she was who she was and I am forever grateful.
I am also grateful for each of the women I just wrote about and so many I've yet to write about, each one helping to shape my life into something of worth. We all do this. We all play a part in the lives of others without even realizing it. Sometimes for a moment, or a season or a lifetime. Who we are matters to those we come in contact with. We're all connected. There are no accidents. There is only purpose and meaning. Some of it good and some of it not so good. Either way, it shapes and molds us into who we are. I'm going to try to remember that more often.
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