To be honest, I feel unresolved about this essay. Nothing about raising children or growing ourselves is tidy and easy to shape into a narrative that holds all its complexities. But I’ve been literally losing sleep over the ideas in here and realizing that I should be having this conversation with other people and not just my 3am self. (She is far and away not my best self, and she’s very loud.)
So I’m putting this out here with a request. If you feel called to, share an idea or line that stirred something in you and what it brought up. No need to have a well thought out response. It can be a memory, a word, a thought, a feeling. Comment if you want, or feel free to email (hello@parentpueblo.com) if you’d prefer privacy. I’d love to hear from you.
-Melina
My parents are walkers. When I allow my thoughts to drift backward in time towards my childhood this is how I remember them: walking circles around our backyard, around the neighborhood, and up and down the beach. My brother and I would trail behind filling our pockets with treasures–shiny rocks, pennies, the occasional dropped earring–or speed ahead on rollerblades. We were moons orbiting a single planet. My parents walk en amoureux, hand in hand, and always in impenetrable conversation.
During the first couple of summers I spent home from college my mother and I began to walk, too. Every day after dinner we would set off along our suburban street. We’d walk past my old junior high school, my brother’s old elementary school, the tree where a horsefly bit my ankle leaving me with a permanent fear of flying insects. We’d stroll up streets I knew well and side streets I had never stepped on. All-American streets named after trees. Sycamore Lane. Beechwood Place. Cedar Avenue.
These were not happy walks. At points they bordered on interrogation. To be clear, it was always me with the questions. There was storytelling, the airing of grievances, blame pitched and volleyed, and many questions asked and answered. Our conversation would often devolve into tears, much to the embarrassment of my younger brother who still had to live out his high school years in that town. We would keep walking until we had reached an understanding. Bitter tears would sweeten. Hours later we would return laughing arm in arm. I relished the catharsis and the jealousy in my brother’s eyes when we’d walk in.
The thing about walking is you don’t have to look each other in the eye. When you are side by side you are talking to yourself as much as you are to the other person. Risks are easier to take, mistakes more easily forgiven. It is the same with driving in cars, which is why my mother chose our car as the place to drop her bite-size lesson about babies when I was in high school. Babies–a euphemism for sex that was as confusing at first as it was embarrassing once I realized what she meant. Yes, even as a former hippie, photos of whom clearly reveal a sexual being living the liberatory ideals of 1960s and 70s feminism, my mother’s Latina side (her Catholic upbringing? Or was it fear? Or experience?) took over as I hit puberty and slammed the door on passing any of the language of those ideals to me.
Anyway, on our walks, just a few years later, it was easier to talk about the hard things. More importantly for me, it was easier to talk at all.
Spanish is my first language and it’s the language I still speak with my parents. I cannot bring myself to speak English with them. Just thinking about it makes my scalp tingle with discomfort. I don’t remember being told that I couldn’t use English with my parents, but I internalized this message at some point because when I lob those same words at my daughter in a moment of frustration I have a sense of déjà vu.
I don’t feel good asking her to speak Spanish to me. It happens as a last resort once I’ve exhausted every strategy to surreptitiously draw it out of her. When I ask her, I feel like I do after I’ve yelled or said something I know I shouldn’t have. I’m not sure it’s wrong to ask her to speak Spanish with me, but it doesn’t feel right either. I want her to want to speak it. Like how, in spite of myself, I want her to choose fruit over candy without any prompting. I imagine myself apologizing at birthdays, “She’s just not that into sweets.”
That my Spanish is closer to a child’s keeps us in familiar roles even as we have outgrown them.
I can speak Spanish and understand it. I know it well enough that I’m reminded of words I’ve forgotten existed anytime I read in Spanish, which I can do, though not quickly. I have to chew on the words and work to extract the meaning. I can write it, too, but I never get the accents right and, if I’m being honest, I double check my work using google translate most of the time.
I don’t trust my Spanish, which is why my first draft of this essay began like this:
I don’t have the words. I don’t have the words to ask my mom what it was like for her when she was raising me. To ask her how it felt to hear me speak English. To ask her if she felt alone like I sometimes do. I don’t have the words to ask my father what it was like to hear a Chilean accent on me when I returned from studying abroad. Did it cause him to wonder at what could have been?
Except that the more I wrote the more I realized that, actually, I do have the words. I’m pretty sure I could find a way to ask them. It might not be as eloquent or nuanced as their answers, but I can get my point across even if I have to pepper in a word or two in English to get there. Questions, I can ask. So long as we are walking and they don’t correct me too much, I can get the words out.
I don’t have the words to explain to my daughter that her sister doesn’t actually need convincing to share with her. I stumble over words trying to explain the three year old mind, landing on something that feels untrue in its simplicity and is unhelpful at best.
This feels closer to the truth. I don’t have the words to speak with my daughters as I would like to. Not in Spanish. They are only 6 and 3 and yet I find myself working to keep pace with them. I google words like “slimy” so I can translate our Halloween books as we read. When I come to the word “spooky” I throw an “e” in front of it and call it good. It is a relief to realize my mom doesn't know these words either. She’s not the only one.
I don’t have the words to speak with my parents as I would like to either. I can get the conversation started. It is much harder to keep it going. That my Spanish is closer to a child’s keeps us in familiar roles even as we have outgrown them. I am the mother now, except when we are together and I return to being a child. Challenging conversations are difficult. Winning an argument is impossible, so long as I rely on only a part of who I am. This benefits none of us. For one, I have a lot to say. I am excellent at carrying a conversation, convincing others, and, though it may not come across in my writing (yet!) I can land joke after joke without breaking a sweat. For another, I’m ready to step into a different role.
I thought I was raising bilingual children. It turns out I’m also raising a bilingual me. The same strategies apply. I’m talking with anyone willing to join me in conversation, both in Spanish and about the complexities of raising US born Latine children. (No, our Spanish does not make me or my daughters any more/less Latina. Yes, it ties us to our histories.) I’m listening to audiobooks in Spanish and collecting turns of phrase to try out later. I’ve even started doing my Pelotón rides en Español.
I’m also working on accepting that there are some things I can only say in English, and that this probably will not change. Bilingualism is not double monolingualism. Perfection is never a useful goal, so I’m letting my mistakes go.
I want to leave things there and wrap this up neatly, as if the “working on accepting” is working. The truth is that I’ve sat on this essay for months because nothing about this is tidily resolved. Maybe this is not even about language at all. Maybe the struggle is in the impossibility of fully sharing ourselves with each other without risking disappointment, or disappointing. Walk side by side and you can keep your eyes to yourself, decide how much to reveal, how much to take in. My Spanish is vulnerability and armor all at once.
On Tuesdays I take my eldest to a musical theater class uptown. (I am trying to be chill about the fact that she shares this interest with me, but internally I am THRILLED.) We sit next to each other on the subway and walk down the street holding hands. Her hand feels big in the space that is usually filled by her younger sisters’. The commute is long enough for us to move past the small talk.
“Solo hay a few Hispanish kids in my school,” she tells me, counting them on one hand. I can’t see her eyes so I search her voice for clues as to how she feels about this. At her age I was just learning English and hiding my Spanish from my peers. She adds to her list a child who moved to another school, because “he has a Hispanish mom like me.” Her tone is matter-of-fact. She asks me to text his mom, but I don’t have her number.
I decide to ask my own mother about her experience. What was it like when my brother and I started speaking English with each other? How did it feel? Was it hard for her? She seems confused by the question. It felt fine. Normal. We were living here, of course you were going to learn English. I didn’t really think about it.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
It probably helped that you always spoke Spanish with me.
Melina this is a lovely piece 💕