This originally appeared on MomsLA in 2013
The house sits near the top of the hill overlooking the entire city. From the porch, you can see the courthouse, the train that travels slowly through town, and over the border into Mexico. As a kid, it was magical – huge and sometimes scary. Ghosts or saints walked the upstairs halls, I was sure of it.
Soon that house will be sold and after nearly a century of being in our family it will belong to someone else or worse; it will be torn down. So many family memories live in that house and for me it means something more. How will I keep my Mexican culture alive for my two young boys when an important symbol of that will be gone?
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I had gotten a call from sister while I was on vacation with my husband’s side of the family. I’m married to a Caucasian man and I had spent much of the trip thinking about how differently my family operates than his. The trip was very smooth, well planned and orderly. Everyone arrived on time (except for us!) and no one drank too much or talked too loudly.
My sister said our uncle had died, our dad’s brother. He was the toughest, nice-man I have ever known and he had taken care of my grandmother for decades after my grandfather died. He had given up on life in the last couple of years and the toughness faded. There was no wife or children, but he had nieces and nephews who had looked up to him. He taught us how to shoot a rifle, take pictures, and swear.
He was living in my grandmother’s house when he passed away and I wondered when I made the trip from Los Angeles to Nogales, Arizona alone for the funeral if the house would look the same. I wondered if the cousins, aunts, and uncles would all come, if it would be like it had always been.
My grandmother lived a half mile from my Aunt Tita, the most gentle woman who ever lived, and everyone gathered at one house or the other on the weekends and holidays. It was where I went from being a Condes (Con-diss) to a Condes (Cón-des). Where everyone spoke Spanish and English interchangeably and there was no explaining myself.
After Tita passed away, her house was eventually demolished – an empty lot is there now. I’ll never again see her kitchen table where we sat and drank strong coffee with canned milk and sugar and listened to family chisme. The memories are fading and I didn’t want that to be the same with my grandmother’s house so I brought my camera.
When I got to the house I couldn’t believe how, not small exactly, but how not huge it was. I hadn’t been back to the house in 15 or so years. Although the paint was peeling off the walls and the carpet was worn down, the altar to the Virgin Mary was still at the top of the stairs. It was as it had always been and it was wonderful to see family even though the circumstances were so sad.
What I regret is not bringing my two boys with me. Most of my cousins’ kids were there, playing in a small park across the street where we hunted Easter Eggs. My boys will never know the house and unless I make some kind of effort, they will never know their second cousins or their great aunts and uncles.
I want them to know more of their family and I want them to experience our history and culture the way I did. Before I left, my sister and I went through the beautiful photographs my uncle had taken over the years. I can show them to my boys and tell them the stories of our family, but it won’t be the same. They won’t be living it the same way that I did.
I know the house isn’t what’s important, it’s family, where we come from and how we remember and celebrate the people who lived there. But I still feel that a part of me will go with it when it’s gone.