INTERSPECIES XMAS Merry Christmas everyone! If I have learned (and re-learned) anything this year is that there is nothing like family. Whether it is made with blood or formed to your own liking, I have learned the power of what it means to love people who are NOTHING at all like you. Here’s the thing about family – they are supposed to annoy you, that’s why they are there, and in large Mexican numbers. If everyone thought and lived like you, it would be a perfect Chicano world, but we all know that perfection is unattainable (unless you have a very good Beverly Hills plastic surgeon) and half the fun of living is battling your way through the madness of trying to figure out how you could have been raised together in the hood as a unit and yet emerged with such different personalities and world views, and if you ask me, world views and personalities bordering on the insane. The Alfaro’s were always close, but since our father left us, we have found an even more profound expression of what love is, and it’s deeper than the love we show on the outside, which I have to admit, has gotten very loud and physically expressive, but that is joy too, although I prefer my loving a little lower on the volume level. I love my annoying, argumentative and physically expressive family. We were not always so full of hugs and willing to say the l.ov.e. word so easily, but time and loss make one appreciate the present so much more, and the one thing about us is we definitely make up for what we have lost. How can I not love them when I physically wince in emotional pain at the ridiculous insensitivity of a remark or the dumbest joke told repeatedly year after year or when the volume in the room breaks decibels as we play the Mexican bingo game, Loteria, as if it was our own Hunger Games? Yes, family is love and it’s also a little bit of internal violence, struggle and smile forcing, but oh, how it feels so good to have feelings, any feeling, inside and be able to express it when you beat your brothers at a board game? Our big celebration happens on Christmas Eve and true to form, the tamale efforts of my mom and sister weeks ago come into full play on this evening. I tried to take my Chicano family into the modern side of the border age this year by contributing a truly Americanized ambrosia, but no one was falling for it and stayed true to our roots, agonizing our delicious way through my mom’s ridiculously hot salsa which basically goes on everything from the scallop potatoes to the green beans. But how do we celebrate that which makes us wonderfully unique – our differences? My sweet loud emotionally taxing family, they are so game and willing to indulge the best and worst of me, and this year I introduced what it might look like to feel like me in the family. Everyone was invited to wear the interspecies mask of difference as we went about our holiday celebration for ridiculous picture taking and to see what it would feel like to be from the Alfaro’s AND another species altogether. I know, I get the most ridiculous ideas and they are indulged and I will give them credit for that. Oh, woe is me. I thought there would be lessons to be learned and rights to be apologized for and a consideration of me, the black sheep of my family, who would finally be understood as the outsider of the group, chastised and made fun of year after year. But no, interspecies families suffer the same dysfunction and insensitivity of any family. In fact, everyone took to it so well they just went about their Christmas business. It’s a simple Christmas lesson isn’t it, passed down through the ages, from family to family – we may not all be the same, but love is greater than everything, and when you share it with annoying, irritating, loud mouth people who are nothing like you but that you are stuck with for life, the real beauty of the season emerges – que viva la familia!
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 20:31:40 +0000
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