Dear Mama,

18Jun08

I write to you because I am avoiding work that I should be doing.  It’s my way of procrastinating, which if you read this and knew this, you’d get mad at me.  But not really mad, more like Mama mad.  Mad because you want me to succeed & you know that procrastinating isn’t necessarily going to lead to success.

But Mama, I know you tried to hide it, but you used to procrastinate a lot too.  You make fun of me for having so many projects, crafts, books to read, involvements, pretty much everything else under the sun so as to not clean my room.  But Mama, I learned it from you.

I feared you as child because I loved you too much.  You miraculously cooked meals on Sundays that would last us to Weds and by Thursday night it was time for El Pollo Loco or Pizza Hut.  Dinner with the family was a staple, even when you and Papa worked 40 hours and then some to make sure we had a house over our heads, food in our bellies, and tv to numb our minds after a rough week.

Mama, you had your hobbies too.  The sewing machine, quilting books, and cross stitching materials grow dusty in our family’s spare bedroom, which you called the library.  I never understood that since there was only one tall bookshelf in the room.  With our family albums on one shelf, your accounting books on another, and Papa’s mystery novels crammed somewhere in between.  Saturday mornings and afternoons were left for hobbies for you, cartoons for me, and bad action movies for pops.

When you got sick it’s like our world stopped.  I know our family was strained because of the stress you were under.  Unemployment boded over your head and you tried to hold it together for us.  I got to be selfish.  Playing with my faux independence while attempting to finish a degree that sometimes you wanted more than I did.  Stress, worry, and too much bad food led to your stroke.  And when dad said you had one I didn’t want to believe him.  I didn’t think it could happen again in my lifetime.  I cried more tears than the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean combined.  It wasn’t fair that you would share the same fate as Lola ‘Sabel.  That the queens of my family tree would suffer this way.  It wretched my mind trying to figure out ways to find myself.  I didn’t have the luxury to be faux independent any longer.  Worry plays into reality and reality doesn’t let fleets of revoluntionary fancy or whim take hold.

Now I know I didn’t become selfless over night.  I know I’m not selfless now.  I’ll admit this, greed is a vice I know I still hold.  I don’t blame you Mama for this.  In fact I don’t blame anyone.  Because what I interpret as greed, some may interpret as a hustle.  You taught me not to rely on others to bail me out Mama, even when I knew I had you at my side.  You taught me that I had to fight for myself because no one else would fight for you.  You taught me to earn what was mine and keep it close.  You taught me to be suspect of strangers, a tough lesson to learn since I have always been so trusting.  You taught me to hold what is dear to me with the utmost respect and reverence because who knows how, if, or when it will get taken away.  You taught me that life is never easy, but if I was patient, it would be spectacular.  But don’t wait too long, because sometimes you got to find it before someone else takes it.

You taught me how to laugh when it seemed like there was no joy.  You taught me how to smile through painful tears.  Mama you taught me how to live.  You still teach me something new when I see you.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

L

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