When people asked me if I would take my spouse’s name after getting married, I would give an emphatic “NEVER!”
But actually, I’d already changed it.
In Mexico, I had two last names––my dad’s and my mom’s, same as everybody else––but on my U.S. documents I only had my dad’s, so when I moved to Texas, I lost my mom’s name.
I grew up thinking that that was the way it was. In Mexico, I had my full name. In the United States, not quite.
Last year when I shared my immigration story publicly, I decided I wanted to use my full name. It felt important to link myself to the people who raised me and love me and give me strength every single day and to the country that has been my home as long as I can remember. I decided I wanted to reclaim my full name in the United States and made that my resolution for 2017.
Then, the election happened.
Now there are many things that feel much more urgent than dealing with the bureaucracy of changing my name, so I’m not doing it yet. However, I have started using my full name everywhere I can.
So this is just a note to say, if you see an extra word hanging off the end of my name, don’t be confused. It’s just my name, and all of it is mine.
“I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up, but since women couldn’t do that, I went to secretary school,” Abbita (short for abuelita) explained, when I called to interview her for a homework assignment about feminism. I’d been nervous to call, afraid she’d say feminism was a crazy American import or that it was un-Christian and ruining “the family” or that she was disappointed in me. Instead she told me about how she had worked for Licenciado Müller, a lawyer who helped women get divorced in Chihuahua. Abbita, whose real name was Carolina, said she loved her job because she cared about helping those women and because her boss trusted her judgment.
I never knew about any of this because she stopped working after she and my grandfather got married, but hearing this story illuminated the parts of her life I did know in a new way. It was the light turning on in a room I’d only explored with a flashlight. All my life I’d heard about how she had been on her school’s basketball team. The girls wore long skirts as part of their uniform, but she joined the team in secret and had to hide it from her family because playing sports––even in giant skirts––was not ladylike. It was a quiet act of resistance. Like most of what she did. My grandmother would often tell me the story of a woman who got married in the city and was soon forced by her husband to move to a little house with a dirt floor in the mountains, completely isolated from her friends and family. She would get angry telling this story and say that she supported the woman leaving her husband because the way he treated her was wrong. When I was little, I thought this was just one of those stories that grandmas tell (“This one again?”). I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal to her. Now I can imagine how desperate I would feel if I lost control of my life from one day to the next, can imagine how many women my grandmother knew who never regained it.
Whenever a woman she knew got married, Abbita would give her a little bit of money in secret because she believed it was essential that women have a way to escape bad marriages. This too seemed melodramatic to me (“Por si el marido le sale malo” sounded like something from a novela, and when I heard about my grandmother’s bridal safety-net tactics, I laughed and thought, “Too much Televisa.”)
In my own life, I’ve noticed that it is very taboo to talk about divorce if you’re married, but I don’t think I could be married if divorce weren’t legal and accessible to women. I don’t mean to imply that I take my relationship with Devin lightly, but I think marriage fundamentally changes when it is not an obligation. When I decided to get married, I didn’t have to give up my name or my rights. I didn’t have to give up my job or my dreams. I didn’t become someone’s property. I believe that Devin and I choose to be together even though we are free to leave. I believe we have the kind of marriage women like my grandmother fought for. On the day of my cousin Vanessa’s wedding, Abbita told me a story. “I was never interested in cooking, but when I married your grandfather, I thought I should learn. He said, ‘No! Don’t take a cooking class. You should learn to play the piano,’ and he got me a piano. In the end, I didn’t learn to cook or play the piano. All I did was have babies. What kind of a life is that?”
Of course, that isn’t all she did. She did lots of things, like finding a way to own and manage properties and teaching me how to read and write and becoming so well-known for her wit that people would ask her to write their greeting cards and building relationships so strong that her children and grandchildren would fight over who got to sleep in the extra twin bed she kept in her room.
Still, I know she would have liked to do other things, too. It’s no coincidence that all of her daughters have Master’s degrees or that she gave each of her grandchildren a small sum of money when we turned 18 and said, “This is your money. You can do whatever you want with it.” She believed fiercely in independence. She took as much of it as she could and made sure we were free to have more.
Abbita didn’t go around exclaiming “I’m a feminist!,” but when I asked her to explain if she was, she had a quick answer: “Machismo means men are in charge, but feminism doesn’t mean women should be in charge. Do you know the saying ‘Behind every great man is a great woman’? Well, I don’t think anyone should be behind anyone. To me, feminism means that we all walk together, hand-in-hand.” I think about myself at 21, nervous to call her, worried that I would have to defend feminism to my grandmother, wondering if there were any books I could give her to explain it in a way she could understand. I was so silly, thinking I’d discovered feminism when she had taught it to me all along.
The first order of Valentine’s Day business is a realization: I’ve had some really unexpected Valentine’s Days. There was the one that started with a photo shoot for a whiskey ad and ended at a Harlem Globetrotters game, with a bizarre pseudo-romantic (not at all romantic) run-in in between. There was the one that started with hundreds of dogs and ended with free ice cream, with a cinematic random act of kindness in between. There was the one that started with surprising Devin with a bottle of milk and ended with him surprising me with a carton of soymilk. (I didn’t blog about that one because it’s as straightforward as it sounds. Technically, it happened simultaneously, but you know, poetic license…) This year I spent Valentine’s Day with my niece Leila on her first birthday, and it was wonderful.
I love visiting my cousin Vanessa (a.k.a. Leila’s mom) because we have similar tastes and interests, but she’s one million times cooler and more collected than I am. Visiting her is like glimpsing an alternate reality where I spend less time asking “What if?” and more time asking “Who cares?” That sounds funny to say because Vanessa’s very responsible, but she’s super carefree about it (and she literally smiles and says “Who cares?” in response to all my worries, which is exactly what I need to hear). Josh, my cousin-in-law, is a master of deadpan pranks, so their house is always full of laughter, albeit at my expense!
This weekend I got to assist them in throwing a party featuring pink and hearts and the most ridiculous piñata I’ve ever seen.
The party was on Saturday (the 13th), and Leila partied so hard that she slept in on her birthday the next day. Vanessa asked me to watch her while she took a shower because Leila was sleeping in her parents’ bed. I was only with her for a few minutes before she woke up. She looked scared, but somehow I calmed her down before she cried. We looked at each other for a little bit, and then she reached out to hold my index finger and smiled and laughed and talked to me in baby babble. When I got to Vanessa’s house on Thursday, the first thing I noticed was a print of three sisters hanging in Leila’s room. I knew immediately that she’d bought it to symbolize my mom and her two sisters (sometimes we call our aunts the tías-mamás because we are so close to all of them). I love knowing that Vanessa loves my aunts and mom like I love them. I love thinking about Leila growing up with so many abuelitas, but thinking about this, and remembering that I live far away from all my sobrin@s, hurts.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get to live close to Leila. I don’t know if she’ll ever rely on me the way I do on my aunts. I don’t know if I’ll ever earn a place on her wall. But I think I was the first person she saw on her first birthday. And she smiled and held my hand.
In 2015 I got a valentine named Leila (born February 14th)
…and a little firework named Nolan Antonio (born July 4th).
Devin and I finally went to Mexico City to visit my cousin Carol’s family. Carlos Manuel and Devin became fast friends and spent hours playing rockets. I wish I had a video!
Victoria told me her favorite hobby was “helping,” so we spent time folding clothes and writing letters. She also learned to whisper and told me secrets like “I love baby Leila” and “Will you please come visit me again?” (I’m positive this information has been declassified by now.)
All four of my sobrin@s finally got to hang out together in November, and I realized just how little babies care about each other. Victoria was excited, but the rest of them were preoccupied with things like sleep, milk, and their mothers. I suppose the real lesson is that I know almost nothing about babies because I expected them to have so much fun and become BFFs, but I guess those types of interactions don’t happen until after you’ve mastered things like holding your head up and feeding yourself? IDK.
This summer Devin and I said goodbye to New York and hello to a little city between two lakes. In between, we decided to see as many of our friends and family as possible. Our goal was to attend every wedding we were invited to and meet all the babies we hadn’t yet met, and somehow we were able to do it. Highlights from this summer vacation included
• going to Jill and Eric’s wedding in Portland (the first Portland wedding I went to was my own, and Jill and Eric came to our wedding, so it was like déjà vu + role reversal + our friend Tasha!)
• sightseeing in San Francisco with my mom
• sharing Chihuahua with the world via Enormous Eye
• falling in love with Mexico City
• packing up our apartment and saying goodbye to our friends in New York (that part was actually so hard and sad and why can’t you make everyone you love go everywhere you go?)
• being welcomed to our new neighborhood in Madison by this incredible octopus sculpture (it’s gone now, but I will never forget it)
Sometime in 2015 I decided I’d like to be the Ambassador for Mexican Snacks. I blogged about burritos and junk food, and at Christmas I got my very American suegra hooked on Valentina, Mexico’s top hot sauce. Though I’m not yet receiving a paycheck for my ambassadorial services, I am certain that my career is on track and look forward to living in a mansion with a giant chamoy fountain in the center where I can entertain dignitaries and elevate Mexican snacks to the level of fame they deserve. I expect all of this to happen within the next year, and you are all invited to the housewarming party. ; )
I. I walked into a dining room full of tables with people sitting and talking and asking others to pass the salt. The whole scene reminded me of the fancy restaurant I used to work at on Sundays during the brunch rush, only the people at the soup kitchen actually seemed to be enjoying their food. It was my job to help serve in a buffet line. That’s where I met an older gentleman who said to me, “Hello, I’ve come for my lobster” and smiled. I asked him if he wanted a whole one, and he said, “Oh, yes, of course.” After he’d gone through the whole line and gotten beef, potatoes, salad, and fruit, he turned back to me and said, “Merci beaucoup” with a wink.
Part of a mural near the soup kitchen.
It reminded me so much of Abbita, my grandmother. When she had to get a walker to help her get around, she called it her Rolls-Royce with a smile. She lived in a comfortable little apartment, and I never heard her ask for anything, not a new TV or a fancy anything. Like the man I met last week, she seemed to know that you don’t have to have the best, biggest, or newest fill-in-the-blank to be happy, and it doesn’t matter what’s on your plate as long as you have enough to eat and good people to share it with.
Part of a mural near the soup kitchen.
Right now, as I write this in a coffee shop, I am listening to a couple talk about how they are going to get a $6,700 couch because it is the absolute best. The world is fascinating.
II. This morning I was having a terrible day. I set an alarm, but it didn’t go off, and it seemed like all my plans were ruined, and I might as well go live off the land all by myself because there was no way I would ever be a productive member of society. I decided I might as well go eat a bagel on the promenade because it was sunny, and I might as well say goodbye to the skyline before running away to live in the forest. I was walking there, wishing I’d been smart enough to buy something to drink with my bagel, when I heard, “Cupcakes and hot cocoa for sale! All proceeds benefitting the Malala Foundation!” The two little girls were about seven years old, and I could tell it had all been their idea, everything from the sign to the cupcakes was clearly made by them, and they smiled really big when they talked about Malala. The hot cocoa wasn’t really hot anymore, but it’s the best thing I’ve had all week. When I paid the market-rate price ($5) instead of their ridiculously low asking price ($1)––didn’t their parents teach them to do market research?––their jaws dropped, and I realized all my missed plans had been worth it.
New York, today.
P.S. I worked at the soup kitchen for a couple of hours last week. I say “work” instead of “volunteer” because there was something in it for me (who do you think I am, some kind of altruistic chump?). Devin and I shop at a food coöp, where our groceries are very, very cheap. In return, we have to volunteer once a month. There are lots of jobs you can do in-store, like being a cashier (the prices are low because most of the labor is done by members), but there are also jobs you can do outside the store, like volunteering at the soup kitchen.
I spent Christmas in a gingerbread house. For real. Devin’s parents’ house is a little wooden cabin in the middle of the snowy woods, and as soon as you walk in, you are absolutely surrounded by sugar. Would you like a Christmas cookie with sprinkles? Maybe chocolate chip is more your style. Or perhaps you prefer cookies dipped in chocolate. No matter, they have it all. Candy bars and candy canes galore. If you like cold sweets, there’s ice cream. And if you like warm sweets, there are cinnamon buns, pancakes, and blueberry muffins covered in sugar crystals. Maybe you’d rather have sugar in liquid form. For that there are dozens of jars of maple syrup (from the trees outside) and a jar of honey (from the neighbor’s bees). It’s like being a kid in a candy store, only all the candy is free.
A mitten made of mini cupcakes
This is my first Christmas away from my family, and I joke with Devin that it’s my first White Christmas because it’s the first* Christmas I spend in the States, with White Americans. Of course, “White American” is an ethnicity with many subcultures, just like “Mexican” is. Devin comes from a community that grows food, buys gifts at L.L. Bean, and has thoughtful discussions about politics and climate change. They also go out of their way to make me feel welcome. On Christmas Eve, the family friends who invited us over for dinner made lots of mini food because they heard I liked little things (seriously)! On Christmas morning we ate beans for breakfast (because Devin told his parents that beans are my favorite food). And Devin’s family has included me in their own traditions. We cut down a Christmas tree the day after I got here, and there’s a fire burning all day long. It’s been magical to sit by its glow and listen to carols. Once I was singing, “Frosted wiiiindow panes, candles gleaming inside, painted candy canes on the treeeeeeeee” and realized we were surrounded by all those things! Well, okay, replace “candles gleaming” with “LED’s glowing” (they are environmentalists, after all).
The town closest to this little farm reminds me of Casas Grandes, the town closest to my aunt Menry’s house, where my family usually spends Christmas, only all the restaurants here are sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer instead of Coca-Cola. (You could argue that Mexico sponsors Coca-Cola and not the other way around because Mexico drinks more soda per capita than any other country.)
Of course, nothing makes up for missing your family, especially when you’ve never had to be apart this time of year before. My cousin Vanessa knows this firsthand, and she sent me the best box ever to open on Christmas. It was called the “First Christmas Away From Your Family Survival Kit” and contained a funny book, the best Mexican candy (including mazapanes for those who prefer sweet to spicy) and chocolate Abuelita. She also sent me some earrings because she is the greatest.
By far the biggest difference between U.S. Christmas and Mexican Christmas is bedtime. When Devin’s parents were going to sleep on Christmas Eve, my family in Chihuahua was just sitting down to dinner. Devin and I managed to stay up to Skype with them, which was awesome. My niece Victoria rushed to the screen and said, “¡Estoy comiendo zanahorias como tú!” (I’m eating carrots like you!). I always worry that she’ll forget about me because I don’t get to see her as much as I wish, so it was really special to know that she thinks about her weird vegetarian aunt.
Otherwise, Christmas here is pretty similar to Christmas there. A big part of that is due to globalization and how effectively U.S. corporations export American cultural traditions, but another big reason is that I’ve always been surrounded by a loving family at Christmastime, and this year was no different.
*It’s not my first Christmas in the U.S.A. if you count the very first Christmas of my life, which was spent in the States, but I don’t because I was nine months old and had to fact-check where I spent it before writing this.
(To the tune of “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash)
“I hear the 2 a-comin’
It’s comin’ down the tracks
It’s going to run over
Five little rats
I’m waiting on the platform
And it smells so bad
When I hear that train a-comin’
I’ll tell the rats goodbye”
It’s only one verse, but it’s based on a true story.
The true story is that last night we watched a group of little rats play on the tracks while we waited for the 2 train. I don’t know if it really ran them over or not, but while we’re on the subject, have you ever noticed that rats don’t die when they touch the third rail? At least, I have never seen it happen. Do you think New York City rats evolved to withstand electric shock?
Last night Devin and I got to watch the rats play in the company of my little cousin Gaby and her best friend Efren. It was special because this was her first trip to New York, and I thought I might not be able to see her. I was also super excited to meet her bff. They’ve been friends for what seems like an eternity, and now they’re both in their first year of college, away from home, all the way on the East Coast! (They’re both from El Paso.) I think it’s so cool that they get to be close to each other.
We had dinner at Umami Burger and all agreed that it was not delicious. Maybe our palates are not refined enough to taste the fifth taste, but everything tasted overly sweet to us, which is not great where burgers are concerned. However, it is open late and does have a great mirror for group photos.
~Visual Umami~
This morning I rushed to New Jersey as fast as I could to see my cousins Vanessa and Josh. They were in town for Thanksgiving and their first baby shower (Josh is my cousin by marriage). I only got to see them for a couple of hours, but it was really fun. I watched them pack all the books they got as gifts for their baby and took a picture of some cool found art.
“One of these dolls is not like the others.”
I also bought Vanessa a book to read on the plane because she accidentally packed hers, and it seemed a grave injustice that someone who took such care to ensure her progeny would have books to last a lifetime would be denied the joy of reading herself! (If I’m being completely honest, I have to note that she is the best at letting me borrow her books and it was a book I’ve never read, so really it’s an investment. Sometimes she even sends books to me all the way from Phoenix because she loves me that much.)
After that, I took the PATH train back to New York, walked through the West Village, and hopped back on the 2 train—no rats this time.
Devin and I are visiting my family in Mexico this week, doing all the things we never get to do at home, like eating freshly-picked figs and cactus from my aunt and uncle’s garden, taking my niece to the park, and shopping for piñatas. Piñatas are true works of art, and today I think I might have found the very best ones. First, I found this one: Then, I passed this high-fashion statue: Obligatory close-up of the collar: In the end we settled on My Little Pony for my little pony of a cousin Isabella who turned eighteen today!
FALL & WINTER This fall Devin finally moved to New York, and he even moved in with me (hey, thanks!). After resigning ourselves to living in a studio, we found a tiny one-bedroom on a tree-lined street just in time. I discovered that Devin is really good at decorating, or as he calls it, ‘maximizing vertical space’.
On Halloween, I dressed up as the very scary Phyllis Schlafly and we decorated little cookies at work. In November, Marika and Tasha sent us to see Drake because they’re ‘the f*cking best’ (sorry, Drake reference). I didn’t think I could like Drake any more, but then I heard him sing a cappella—and his stage banter!!!! He is funny without being mean, which is the ultimate comedic achievement in my book. Devin mused that Drake should make more political music because he seems like a cool guy (he really does), but we both bet he’ll keep singing about wimyn and money in a ‘more is better’ way for the foreseeable future. Oh well. We’ll just keep pretending he has rad politics and all his lyrics are in code.
My mom and my friend Issy came to visit around Thanksgiving. It was fun. And cold. Pro-tip: don’t go to MoMA P.S. 1 until after the Mike Kelley exhibit closes. In the words of my mom, it’s ‘creepy’. We all agreed. Pro-tip: do go see the new musical about Carole King. To quote myself, it’s the best!
After Thanksgiving, it was Christmastime, fa la la. My favorite Christmas gift is always my family, but this year it got a little bigger because Devin was there, too. This was the longest time we’ve spent together in Mexico, and I loved sharing the everyday things I do when I’m home, like walking around the big park and grocery shopping at Alsuper, formerly Futurama. We got to spend a lot of time with my our (!) niece Victoria who learned to call Devin ‘Tío Bibin’. I always think I’ve hit my maximum capacity for love until I hang out with her. The older she gets, the more I love her. And not without reason. On New Year’s Eve, she told me she kisses me because loves me. On New Year’s Day, we were playing on a swing set, but we had to leave. We asked her to come get in the car, and she said, ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’, I asked.
‘Someone is pooping’, she responded.
‘Who is pooping?’
‘Me.’
Polite but never dishonest. The world should aspire to be more like you, Vic.
I arrived in Portland three days before the wedding and was reunited with Devin, friends, and my family who battled the harsh bureaucracy of that cruel border just to say ‘I love you’ in person. That sounds melodramatic, but my little cousins’ visas weren’t delivered until a day after their flight left. The grown-ups in my family came together and bought them new (last-minute, very expensive) tickets. Then, they had to figure out how to get them to the airport and convince the authorities that they had permission to fly without their parents. I should mention that this was their first time traveling by themselves. Just to say ‘I love you’ in person.
The day before the wedding, we took thirty of our friends and family to a little island where we picked berries and flowers for the party. We picked so many, in fact, that we set a record on the farm for most berries picked, and Devin’s parents had to figure out how to get them to their house in Wisconsin so they wouldn’t go to waste!
Devin and I got married on a sunny day. He looked sooo good. Neither of us really remembers the feminist ceremony we planned for months. We do remember the flowers lovingly arranged by our cousins and friends, the surprise ice cream we received in the park while playing lawn games, and dancing to the sounds of seventeen musicians with my cousin Caren on vocals.
After celebrating from noon to midnight, we stayed at a hotel that I’m pretty sure I imagined and willed into being. The building’s architectural details have been preserved for a hundred years; it was decorated with Old Hollywood film stills; and when we asked for ketchup the next morning, they sent us a whole bowl.
We took a train along the Pacific Coast, basking in the beauty of the scenery, white-tablecloth dinners, and a freshly-made bed every night. This would have been a great honeymoon, but we were even luckier, spending a week at a veritable oasis in the Sonora Desert. Though I’m from Northern Mexico, I’d never been to a beach in my region, and it was incredible to swim in the ocean and emerge in a place so similar to my hometown. Devin and I spent our days swimming and snorkeling. We ate fresh fruit with chamoy in a hollowed coconut. At night we danced and learned about Puerto Peñasco from friends we made who live there. On our last day, they led us on an epic scavenger hunt to get souvenirs for our families and eat all my favorite snacks one last time before heading back to the States for a tornaboda on Devin’s family farm!
Where Devin’s from they’re into potlucks, so we asked everyone to bring a pie. In all, our friends brought 20 different pies! I tried in vain to taste them all; Devin succeeded.
We ended the night, and our summer, with a big bonfire and camping on a cold night in our cozy new sleeping bag for two.
Then, I passed this high-fashion statue: 
Obligatory close-up of the collar: 
smoothliminal 