Grandma´s Birthday

Grandma and I

All my cousins, grandma and uncle Joel

On Saturday June 23, 2012, my grandma turned 73. It was a day for as much celebration as it was tears. My grandma is pretty damn old and her age is slowly catching up to her. There is no one out there like her. She’s always supported my two cousins, Mario and Edson, and myself. Between all four of us there is a very special bond. When I was born, my grandparents both went to visit me in LA and bought a tv which still sits today in the living room of my grandma’s house and works without a problem. “That thing is as old as you,” she always tells me.

My grandma has always housed me when I visit Mexico and it is exactly where I am now writing this blog post on Microsoft that I will save on a flash drive and take to a cyber café once the sun rises in about four hours. This three-story house has a lot of history. Both good and bad, but that’s a story for another time. But the house, it represents a good part of me. As kids, Edson and I used to play soccer on the roof/third floor while my grandma put the clothes out to dry. On the second floor my uncle Ivan, cousins Mario, Edson, Diego and I used to all get together and play Mario Kart 64 together. There is also a bathroom on the second floor with an electrical plug that I used to shock myself with when I got bored. And on the first floor is the living room where the entire family would always get together and the kitchen where we would all sit at eat grandma’s delicious food.

These days that I long for sometimes are all gone and disappeared years ago. Everyone has grown up and gotten married. For god’s sake, in February my grandma turned into a great grandma.

But back to my grandma. I find her very special. Strong woman. My grandpa died about eighteen years ago and yet my grandma has still been able to pay for her bills without a problem. She provided a home for my aunt and two cousins when they had nothing and paid for their k-12 education. Like I said earlier, her age is catching up to her, so between the entire family essentially now we take care of her. I love spending time with my grandma, but like everyone else in the family, fear the day when she doesn’t wake up.

As an atheist, it would be a bit weird if I said “I hope God takes care of her in heaven” but I’m not and I actually do hope that when the day comes when she no longer sees the light of day and hears the sounds of roosters waking the whole block up, that the ground take good care of her bones. I hope I’ll be there to say at least one last goodbye but who knows. When my grandmother on my father’s side of the family died in March of 2004, I was not able to go to the funeral in Mexico, but watching the pain that my father went through in the process of the days before her death was hard enough. Nothing was more gut wrenching than the day she could no longer recognize his voice. My dad spent twenty years acting like a father to all my aunts and uncles alongside my grandma and for her to just be able to identify him hurt even me.

The moral of these stories always ends with “love a person while they’re still living because there is nothing you can do when they’re dead.” But that’s not the moral of my story here, mine is to enjoy my own life surrounded by the people I love while I’m alive. I constantly place my own life at risk. I’m a cyclist to say the least and to not recognize that would be pretty stupid on my behalf. I got hit once already and there is nothing that can’t say I might get hit again soon and lose a limb or my life. I sit on ledges with 100 feet between myself and the ground just for a pretty picture. One little thing can easily go wrong and there I go. When I die, I want people to look at my pictures and go, “well, looks like he did have a lot of fun at that show with America, Irving, Kim and Gio.” I smile a lot and give other loads of smiles. Enjoy then while they’re still around because you never know when I’ll smile for one last time.

Anyways, it’s 2:30 am. I need my sleep even though I’m not even sure what we’re doing today. Til next time blog.