The Original One Girl Revolution
I got some bad news this week that had me in tears for days. (Yes, revolutionaries cry too. Don't make me say it again. I don't feel like kicking your ass today) I go to the Optomotrist for a routine eye exam and he tells me I have Glaucoma and that I need to get to the Opthamalogist right away and get treated so that I don't lose my sight. On any given day, that's bad news. But you have to factor in that I'm an artist and a writer, that I homeschool my children, that my eyes are crucial to my livelihood, that I've been fighting a battle to, quite literally, the death with my health. I've had a lot of health issues that I won't go into. My medical chart looks like the manuscript for War and Peace. On any given day I'm riding my bicycle ten miles and using the punching bag. Or I'm doubled over in pain in bed. Take your pick. Sometimes you're fighting the war on the front lines. Other times, it's from the strategy room.
And every once in awhile you feel sorry for yourself. It's human to do so...But then I began to think of my great-grandmother. And I hung my head in shame. After she died, at the age of 103, about a year later, I came across this psychic who told me she had a message from me from this person that she described as my great-grandmother. The message was: you're fucking up. It was pretty simple and it was true.
So after I stopped crying yesterday and I really thought about it, I realized it was true in this case. There have been difficulties in my life that have been annoying, but I think in the end it's all about your perspective. I have a good life. An interesting life. And pity for myself isn't even warranted or appropriate. Let me tell you why.
My great-grandmother was born into a ranching family in Mexico that had lost everything by the time she was 8. Her father died then and left her mother to raise her and the children. She had to drop out of school in the 3rd grade and help her mother start a small business to support the family. Her mother hadn't had the access to education that she briefly had and so the handling of the money for the business was left to her, a third grader. Everybody did what they could. One of my uncles sold toliet paper door to door, she kept their little business afloat.
Time passed and she grew up and fell in love and got married. There weren't many opportunites for my great-grandfather there so they packed up what little they had to come to America. She had a three year old and a new baby. Her mother-in-law wouldn't let her take her three year old son with her telling her that it would be too hard on him and that she'd send him when they got set up in America. It would be years before she would see him again. The baby died of sickness within a year.
My grandmother worked her ass off. She did whatever she could to keep money coming in to help support the family. For years, she worked on the railroad. During WWII, she worked scrubbing the train engines in the pits. Hard work for any man. Even harder work for a small, petite woman. All the while she had children and lost them. She lost six children while they were still very small. Mostly to Polio. Can you imagine putting six small children in the ground? I cry everytime I think of it. Later she had to watch her only daughter die a long wasting illness as an adult. She outlived seven of her children all together.
During that whole time she managed to put every dime she made to work. She mostly ate food she grew herself. She had chickens. It was the best kept secret of Fifth street, because it was a busy urban area. There stood her little house, it's back to the rail yard fence, with a line of bushes that disguised a whole other world. Fruit trees and vegetable gardens, and livestock. She wasn't daunted by limitations.
She bought small pieces of property nobody else wanted and fixed them up, sold them or rented them out. She bought her family security. She lived through the depression and hadn't forgotten its lessons. Even in her nineties she'd go to McDonalds to buy a burger and bring her own lettuce and tomato.
She was the family's first feminist. She didn't hate men, despite the fact that her husband cheated on her, not atypical in the Latin culture and that era. She loved her family passionately and unreservedly, although she had an acid tongue and a voice that could stop traffic. She didn't make excuses. She acted. If you fucked up, she told you, and then she helped you. She helped her grandchildren and great-grandchildren buy houses, put them through college. This little Catholic woman who walked to church every morning and flat out refused to use a wheelchair, even in her 90's, told us to use birth control. Told us not to let men dominate us. Love them. Don't let them rule you. Get your education. She didn't lie. She didn't sugarcoat anything. She was real. A self-made woman. The original One Girl Revolution.
On days like these, when little things get to me, I have to remember her, and get off of my ass and keep fighting.
And every once in awhile you feel sorry for yourself. It's human to do so...But then I began to think of my great-grandmother. And I hung my head in shame. After she died, at the age of 103, about a year later, I came across this psychic who told me she had a message from me from this person that she described as my great-grandmother. The message was: you're fucking up. It was pretty simple and it was true.
So after I stopped crying yesterday and I really thought about it, I realized it was true in this case. There have been difficulties in my life that have been annoying, but I think in the end it's all about your perspective. I have a good life. An interesting life. And pity for myself isn't even warranted or appropriate. Let me tell you why.
My great-grandmother was born into a ranching family in Mexico that had lost everything by the time she was 8. Her father died then and left her mother to raise her and the children. She had to drop out of school in the 3rd grade and help her mother start a small business to support the family. Her mother hadn't had the access to education that she briefly had and so the handling of the money for the business was left to her, a third grader. Everybody did what they could. One of my uncles sold toliet paper door to door, she kept their little business afloat.
Time passed and she grew up and fell in love and got married. There weren't many opportunites for my great-grandfather there so they packed up what little they had to come to America. She had a three year old and a new baby. Her mother-in-law wouldn't let her take her three year old son with her telling her that it would be too hard on him and that she'd send him when they got set up in America. It would be years before she would see him again. The baby died of sickness within a year.
My grandmother worked her ass off. She did whatever she could to keep money coming in to help support the family. For years, she worked on the railroad. During WWII, she worked scrubbing the train engines in the pits. Hard work for any man. Even harder work for a small, petite woman. All the while she had children and lost them. She lost six children while they were still very small. Mostly to Polio. Can you imagine putting six small children in the ground? I cry everytime I think of it. Later she had to watch her only daughter die a long wasting illness as an adult. She outlived seven of her children all together.
During that whole time she managed to put every dime she made to work. She mostly ate food she grew herself. She had chickens. It was the best kept secret of Fifth street, because it was a busy urban area. There stood her little house, it's back to the rail yard fence, with a line of bushes that disguised a whole other world. Fruit trees and vegetable gardens, and livestock. She wasn't daunted by limitations.
She bought small pieces of property nobody else wanted and fixed them up, sold them or rented them out. She bought her family security. She lived through the depression and hadn't forgotten its lessons. Even in her nineties she'd go to McDonalds to buy a burger and bring her own lettuce and tomato.
She was the family's first feminist. She didn't hate men, despite the fact that her husband cheated on her, not atypical in the Latin culture and that era. She loved her family passionately and unreservedly, although she had an acid tongue and a voice that could stop traffic. She didn't make excuses. She acted. If you fucked up, she told you, and then she helped you. She helped her grandchildren and great-grandchildren buy houses, put them through college. This little Catholic woman who walked to church every morning and flat out refused to use a wheelchair, even in her 90's, told us to use birth control. Told us not to let men dominate us. Love them. Don't let them rule you. Get your education. She didn't lie. She didn't sugarcoat anything. She was real. A self-made woman. The original One Girl Revolution.
On days like these, when little things get to me, I have to remember her, and get off of my ass and keep fighting.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home