I remember Mexico in the summer of 96'.
It was when my Dad took me to Guadalajara, Mexico
for a reunion and a quinceanera.
He flew me to the middle of the country
and introduced me to long lost family.
I didn't speak Spanish so I couldn't really talk to anyone,
but that really didn't matter,
I don't think I would have been able to say much.
All I could do was watch,
because I couldn't say much.
It was almost a relief that I didn't
have to worry about conversation.
My family was very loud.
They are traditional Catholics.
I guess it was more like Catholic by birth.
Although they are Catholic
the rules do not apply.
I think it was more of the assurance
that they were getting into Heaven.
I was a shy girl,
who was very insecure.
I never opposed a soul.
I always did what I was told.
I felt like a guinea pig at times,
because I noticed people would watch and observe me.
They would wonder what I was doing there.
Maybe because I was a bastard child,
or maybe because they thought I was a mute.
Sometimes I felt like a skittish deer,
I think they saw it too.
I was a cute delicate child with large round glasses
that always fell of my nose.
My glasses were new from just the year before,
when I went to my cousins house in Oregon.
I tried to impress them with my wicked jumping skills.
I jumped on the bed
so high I could almost touch the ceiling.
I knocked my glasses right off my head.
They flew across the room and bent down the middle.
I tried to fix them like my Dad used to.
He would take the glasses to a door post
and place the middle of the glasses to the corner of the frame.
Then he would carefully bend the glasses back
with one hand on each side.
When I put each hand on the edge of the optical frame
I pushed hard so I could make them real straight.
I guess I didn't know my own strength,
because I pushed so hard that I broke them in two.
My cousin took me to the nearest eye glass store
so I could get new frames.
I've been legally blind since I was 11,
so I couldn't really wait too long for new frames.
All they had were frames too big for my face.
I didn't want them, but I was desperate
and I couldn't see.
I also had beautiful long brown hair.
It was thick and wavy.
People used to call me Pocahontas,
because of my dark skin and long dark hair.
The minute we got to Mexico my Dad took off.
They left me with my other cousins
at a house just down the block from theirs.
The owner of the house was a former military man.
We called him Uncle Bill.
When I first met Uncle Bill
I noticed one of his hands was burnt real bad.
All of his fingers were missing.
He told us he lost his hand when he was in the war.
When he was on the battle field he pulled out a grenade.
He pulled the pin to throw it,
but it was defective and exploded in his hand.
I thought that was pretty sad.
Now he lived in a house in the middle of Mexico.
We called his house the Cucaracha hotel,
there were always cockroaches in his house.
All the adults in the family started a committee that year.
So naturally they needed to have "meetings".
Since then they've been having pretty regular "meetings",
we grew suspicious.
Later we figured out they were really having pot parties.
They would drink and get high while we were left alone all day.
Little did they know that we were having parties of our own.
That year was when I started smoking weed and drinking alcohol.
While they were out partying all day we had to stay amused,
so we did what they did.
I remember smoking while the adults were home.
my cousin and I went into the bathroom,
started the shower
and turned the water to steaming hot.
The steam cleverly masked the smell of marijuana.
My cousin took my empty Coca-Cola can
and poke several holes on the side.
She separated the marijuana leaves
and stuck them over the holes of the can.
With the mouth of the can wide open
she sucked the air in while the flame burned the weed.
Then we sat for a while.
We took a trip to Puerto Villarta and stayed at a hotel by the beach.
They served alcohol to minors so I was taking the initiative.
One morning some of the parents came to our room
knocking on the door.
We jumped up, hid the weed,
and grabbed the 20 empty glasses from around the room.
We thought we were so cool that summer, but I knew,
even then, we were all frightened and hurt little children,
who just wanted to be noticed by the parents that are supposed to love you.
To think that as a child, a beautiful little innocent child,
you are capable of wanting more than the pure joy that is given to you.
When you are rejected, turned away, or ignored,
you would do anything to replace that loss.
That year I was a child, who wanted to replace her loss.
"When I was a child,
I talked like a child,
I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man,
I put childish ways behind me."
1 Corinthians 13:11
