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Sitting between my grandmotherâs legs, her fingers intertwined in my clean, moist hair, my eyes pulled back into painful slits as she braids the ponytail sitting high on top of my head, I quickly learned as a child what “no mueves” means. Sitting at the kitchen table between my siblings before the bus arrives, eating the thick ham steak and sugary-hot oatmeal and heavily-buttered toast my grandfather systematically made each new day, I instinctively learned what both âcome másâ? and âcome todoâ? mean.
Listening to conversations in the first grade between Lorena , Sandra and Laura (all names necessitating a roll of the tongue), I eventually learned what things like â¿Que tienes?â? and âJuega con nosotros,â? and â¡Estúpida!â? mean. Between my parentâs late-night squabbles that I strained to overhear and my unclesâ soused wordplay while tossing horseshoes at summer cookouts and my auntsâ whispered gossip while they made the macaroni salads and salsa, not to mention the eight tracks that lamented âpor un amor;â? and Chispita, my motherâs favorite telenovela, playing in the background of my youth, I learned enough Spanish to plainly ask you, in the name of God, where have you been? And will you please shut up! And watch out, man! And I cannot believe how that woman lies. And Iâm so sick. And, by the way, I love you!
Several years later, between my first and last college semesters, I took two Spanish courses and eventually learned how to string together a chain of coherent, drama-deficient, functional sentences that demonstrated immediate usefulness. I could proficiently tell the guy at the door selling tamales that weâre all stocked up and could even go so far as to give him directions to the nearest gas station where they fix flat tires. I could order my burritos with mild green chile and ask for extra onion and understand when they explained that, for fifty cents more, I could add a medium drink to go with it.
But I still kinda liked the drama-laden Spanish, and so I used my improved skills to sing along with Chavela Vargas about the Black Dove, feeling her very heart palpitate as she tells the object of her affection, in one breath, that she will continue to await her lover, and in the other, that she wants to be free to live her life with whomever she so chooses!
Then I moved to eastern Oklahoma. And everything changed in an instant. My unofficial teachers were no longer within reach. My conversational dance partners were missing, too. Forget jalapeños and corn tortillas, I couldnât even find one single Spanish radio station to get my fix of lyrics that ooze with emotions running the gamut from rapturous to suicidal all in one song. No telenovelas. No tamale salespeople. Not even a Taco Bell. I had never felt so isolated from my culture. But, even worse, I was slowly unlearning everything I had tried so hard to accidentally learn over the years.
Eleven years and four kids later, I can no longer call myself an eastern Oklahoma transplant, but Iâm still 500 miles away from the nearest aunt, uncle, grandparent, and first-grade friend. My TV is more likely to be tuned into Oprah than the telenovelas, and my radio station only moves off of NPR when the babies are crying and need a shot of happy music, my voice singing âSeñor Grillo,â? maybe.
I’m trying to inject Spanish lessons into my children’s lives between home and day care, occasionally at the dinner table, and sometimes while they are getting their teeth brushed or their butts wiped. Mostly, itâs when I remember, which might very well occur while hair is getting pulled into a tight ponytail. Iâm afraid their Spanish-learning experience may not be quite as fun-to-listen-to as a family cookout filled with conversation and tipsy banter, an evening of eavesdropping on their parents, a breakfast with grandpa or the galloping wit of little girls at a bilingual elementary school playground.
But, between you and me, I think it all might come out in the wash, anyway. My hope is that I will at least teach them enough to know how to speak courteously to their Spanish-speaking elders. That I can help them understand the lyrics to those songs that make me cry so damned easily. And, together, maybe we can keep from forgetting. With any luck at all, theyâll take a couple of courses in college, and a tamale salesperson will move into the neighborhood.
In the meantime, you can be sure I will be there encouraging them to ¡Come más! and ¡Come todo! As their mother, I would be remiss if I didn’t.
Eva
I say kudos to you for even trying. It would be tough to do in an area that does not encourage it!
Eva
P.S. I would have said that in Spanish but my mom never taught me how. 🙂
Amber
My neighbor is very consistent with raising her kids to speak Spanish. As they grow older, they are resistant because their friends don’t do it but she has kept on them and only speaks in Spanish, even if they respond in English!
Amy
You remind me of me. I’m half Mexican and grew up picking up bits and pieces of the language of my elders (and even my father, who is a native speaker), but to this day I am still far from fluent, and most of what I know I learned in school. I always got high marks in my Spanish courses (Spanish student of the year 3 years running) because of my childhood exposure to the language and culture, but part of me wishes my dad had taken more time to teach us kids his native tongue. I hope I will be able to encourage language learning in my children. I hope they will be at least bilingual, but maybe even trilingual, or a real polyglot. For now, I myself just try to keep my Spanish from getting rusty by reading Spanish vogue, periodically. I am now endeavoring to learn French and Russian . . . we’ll see how far I get with that.
Kagey
My mother talks about knowing the German for potatoes, salt & pepper, bread, etc because her grandparents would ask for them in German at the dinner table. The double hammer of the two world wars meant that German-language church services, newspapers and other resources in their middle Illinois town were looked down upon and then stamped out of existence, about the time my grandparents would have learned German. Fear and patriotism taken to an extreme took away these town’s cultural identity, or at least watered it down.
Being bilingual is the only proven way to increase a person’s IQ. It’s a challenge to accommodate at times, but I hope we won’t let fear keep us from helping future generations from hanging onto more of their cultural identities.
Catherine Dix
Eva and Amy, don’t you just bet that our parents would do things so much differently if they could go back in time?
Amber, I probably would’ve hated it, but I wish that we’d spoken nothing but Spanish at home. For me, that would’ve been the only way to really get it down pat.
Kagey, I’ve heard such stories from other friends. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to be German in America at that time in history. Mexican-Americans have had their issues of watered-down culture, but I think it’s been fairly gradual, nothing like what the Germans must have gone through during WWII. Terrible.
Shannon (Cole Mine)
“fingers intertwined in my clean, moist hair, my eyes pulled back into painful slits as she braids the ponytail sitting high on top of my head”
and
“hick ham steak and sugary-hot oatmeal and heavily-buttered toast my grandfather systematically made each new day”
I love your writing!
Annie
When people learn that both my husband and I speak Spanish, their next question is whether we have taught it to our children. My answer is,
“Heavens no, I’m too busy just trying to keep them alive!”
Doc
Here I sit on the total flipside of the whole Bilingual thing. I’m an American living in France, where everything, every. single. thing. is in French. Flipping back and forth between languages is extremely hard, especially when I’m the only one speaking anything resembling English. My monkeys, the oldest of whom is four, seem to understand my mother-tongue, but as far as speaking it? Ugh! Not so easy, this bilingual mommy thing…
Paula
I am so happy to hear you are trying to raise your children bilingually. I used to live in CO, now I am in CA, but I miss Denver! I am originally from the Dominican Republic and was lucky to have grown up in a bilingual household. As an adult and a mom to be a big priority for me is to make sure my child is bilingual. So much so that my sister-in-law and I joined forces to start a bilingual children’s company, Professor Pocket. I wanted to share Professor Pocket with you because it’s a great resource for other moms trying to raise kids bilingually. There aren’t a lot of great products out there for us. We produce Spanish/English audio CDs that make learning fun and entertaining. I encourage you to check us out at http://www.professorpocket.com!