Donde esta la leche?

I remember it almost like it was yesterday. I’m about 14 years old, and I’m at my grandmother’s house. The summer after 8th grade year I spent a lot of time there with my cousin. He was basically my only friend that summer. I spent most of my days that summer at the local skate park and travelling back and forth between my grandmothers and my parents house whenever they missed me. It was one of the best summers of my life though. I learned a lot and met a lot of new people and made many acquaintances. I remember my favorite thing was when my grandmother would make bacon. She would make a seemingly colossal pile of bacon. She would make me and my cousin a pound of bacon and we would devour it. For the most part it would quell our cravings, but in the end who gets sick of bacon. I’ve always known a little bit of my family history, the part that I’m Mexican, but that’s not the only thing in me. I remember my parents jokingly saying how I’m a mutt, I have an array of diverging cultural backgrounds flowing through me. I’ve always kind of leaned towards “being Mexican” though. Growing up and still I would always get asked what ethnicity am I. The common answers is an islander or anything along those lines. I always say I’m Mexican and that sort of explains it. I’ve always had a darker complexion my mom would say I have olive skin, and after I grew my hair out and seeing the curliness is probably what really made me ask me. On my dads side his father was mostly french and my grandmother was Mexican. My mom is polish and every other version of white there is. I have some Native American in me also. I remember sitting around her kitchen room table where we would always sit and talk. It was always pretty warm and we would leave the front door open and people would come in and out during the day and kids would run around playing and there was a park right next to her house. Everyone would always go to hangout at Grammy’s, even the local kids called her that. She wouldn’t tell these stories to everyone but the family knows, we loved telling stories. We would sit there with all of her rooster all around her house, she loved chickens I guess because she had pictures, hand towels, little figurines of roosters everywhere. That’s where I would just listen to her telling stories while me and my cousin would anxiously ask her for more details.

My grandmother and grandfather from my dad’s side actually moved to Maine from Texas a long time ago just to be together. Back in Mexico my family used to be involved in gangs and all that sort of stuff. My grandmother and my grandfather met and they were from different backgrounds of people that didn’t particularly like each other. I remember her saying how when they were younger my grandfather told her father basically, screw you I’m going to be with her whether you like it or not. So they got up and escaped that life and came to Maine. Sitting in that chair around her dining room table all those nights with her and my cousin taught me a lot, a lot about myself and the kind of person I want to be and the kind of person that I should be. She taught many various life lessons and had a lot of knowledge from her experience of life so far. It also taught me how I want to be treated and how I want to treat other people. I have faced some racism myself because of how I look but I remember my Gram telling me about when they first moved here. It was difficult for them to find housing at first. They thought my family was dirty because of what they looked like, because they were from Mexico. I remember hearing how they had Puerto Ricans that lived in the apartment before them and they were really dirty I guess so they weren’t able to get an apartment there.

It taught me that I should treat people with a clear eye. Not judge them by how they look or anything but talk to them, get to know them before I make any decisions about them. It taught me to work hard in school and to live a clean life. I want to get a degree in the US where I can have a good job and family and make a good living with good money. It taught me to be a better person and strive for excellence.

Photo on Foter.com