“ Portate bien, y si no me invitas” is the way my grandmother says goodbye. It means stay out of trouble, and if you find it, invite me. My grandmother taught me how to not lose your sense of humor and gentleness even after life should have hardened you. She showed me that life will sometimes take everything from you and you have to continue without letting it break you. Her story begins in 1933, the worst year of the Great Depression- suitable for her rugged individualism. We are descendants of the Otomi people of Michoacan, before catholic missionaries changed the physical geography of our forests. We come from the land of the monarch butterfly, of humid tropical summer nights and Dias de Posada during winter. We come from the people who were continuously dispossessed of their rights and land. My grandmother’s dad was a revolutionary, a Zapatista who belonged to the peasantry movement for agrarian land reform. I have always felt that the work for justice was left unfinished and it was up to me to get right with history. My grandmother never had the opportunity to go to school; she had to work at the local mill from age 6 for 50 cents a day. My grandmother is an enigma, no one is exactly sure of her birthday so we celebrate her twice in the month of February. She is as sweet as piloncio and as tough as the rod. It is often said she would chase my father around with a rifle, no one gave her trouble and she did not give an iota for anyone who tried. She is Leonila de Cruz, but to me she is my Noni.
When I was 7, my grandmother dragged me out into the middle of a Chicago blizzard to go to church. It was 4 am, but she was a staunch Catholic and after all it was just a little snow. We doubled up on sweatpants and sweaters until we resembled walking snowmen. I didn’t mind the snow then, but mass was incredibly boring they could have done it in Latin and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The snow blanketed all the ugly out of the streets and transformed vehicles into snow monsters. It took the air out of my lungs, all the air I needed for prayers and repentance. This was a small sacrifice my grandmother would remind me “In Mexico we do penitence on our knees”. Penitence happens every year during Holy Week as an offering and act of gratitude. For my grandmother penitence was a way to give meaning to her life as a cancer survivor. Identifying as a survivor makes you fearless; it also makes you want to do penitence until it results in severe knee injuries. My paternal grandmother was not so lucky and died of cancer, sometimes I felt she was trying to do penitence for her too.
Maybe because we are forest people, we have forest remedies, I thought to myself. The snow had melted over to uncover cars were not really monsters and dandelion roots were really medicine. South Chicago looked like a grid of brick houses, and occasionally dandelions would adorn our otherwise barren backyard. When my grandmother told me dandelion roots were good for your health, me and my sister climbed over the neighbors fence to unearth all the dandelion weeds we could find. I felt like I had discovered a really important secret and insight into adult wisdom, at the same time I was dumbfounded. Why do penitence if you could drink dandelion tea?
