Tag Archives: moms

A life that made a difference

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mom, art and meShe crossed the border from Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, Texas in a car with several friends. In the English she had learned while staying with her Aunts’ family in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico she declared “American Citizen” and she entered the country to begin a new adventure and a life that would touch many people down the line.

At that time, in the early 50’s her only real chance of finding work was as a babysitter/maid, which she found with Ms. Myers, a kind gentle lady that had a few kids. She washed, did some cooking, and cared for the kids while Ms. Myers worked and took care of other matters. Sometime down the line, she helped Ms. Myers put together a small party for some friends, and that is when he walked into her life. He was a young man from Michigan, stationed at Ft. Bliss for training, and the two of them generated some sort of spark. Before too long they went to Las Cruces, New Mexico and got married.

But life was not going to be the “Leave it to Beaver” fairy tale that you saw on TV. Shortly after giving birth to her son, he decided to leave her and go back to his first wife. He returned on occasion to see his son, and eventually, a second son was on his way. She never saw much of him after that. He returned to Michigan to his family and left her behind to raised two young boys on her own.

She worked hard, harder than anyone should have to work to feed their kids. Her mother and father helped as they could with a little bit of support and a lot of babysitting. The boys spent a lot of time in Juarez at their grandmother and grandfathers house while she worked. A friend of hers got her a job at Providence Memorial Hospital as a nurses aide. She had to convince a jeweler in downtown El Paso to let her may for a watch with a second hand by making payments. She needed that watch to be able to take pulses at work.

The boys grew and watched their mom come home tired, eat a small meal, and turn right back around to go back to work at the hospital for a second shift – a shift where she worked in maintenance mopping floors and cleaning up so that she could make a few extra bucks to take care of her kids. She never had much in those days, choosing to give most of what she had to her kids. On the rare occasion, she would take the boys to the Plaza Theatre downtown to watch a movie. Many times she would have to carry her boys from the bus stop back to their little apartment because they had fallen asleep on the bus on the way home.

There were a lot of obstacles at times. Even after gaining her citizenship, she was often stopped by Border Patrol and asked where she was going with those two little white boys. They did not believe that they were hers. Many men offered to “help” her with her situation, but always with strings attached that she could not, and would not accept.
Through it all she never complained, at least not to her boys. The husband that had left her alone never provided anything in terms of support, either financial or otherwise. The father figure in their lives was their grandfather, a man that was at the same time a strict disciplinarian but also a gentle soul. That husband would pass away in 1965 and the hopes of ever getting that assistance that she needed died right along with him.

She married again the following year, and her new husband treated her boys as his own. He moved them out of that little apartment into a house on the other side of the city, and he taught them the value of hard work and responsibility. Times were better, but raising two hungry growing boys required both of them to work, and often required side jobs on the weekend to provide a better life.

She taught her boys a lot of important principles – patriotism, honesty, faith, hard work, and a love of the culture from which she came. She raised them, with the help of her new husband, and sent them off into the world to live their lives as adults. It would be nice to think that she lived happily ever after, but that was not the case. Although she enjoyed a much more comfortable life and the joy of having grandkids, her health began to fail her. Two times she was diagnosed with cancer, and two times she fought back and beat it. When it came back for a third try she was just too tired and exhausted to fight it anymore. She told her loving husband and sons that she did not want to go through all the chemo and radiation again. She was at peace with her life and felt it was time to go. Eleven years ago, on January 28,, 2002 she finally gave up her battle and entered into an eternal peace.
She was a wonderful woman. She changed a lot of lives. She was a friend, a daughter, a wife, a grandmother, and my mom. I miss her terribly, even after these many years. I love you Mom.

The Carrasco School of Medicine (how my Mexican mom and grandmother got us through childhood)

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My knees were hurting me the other day due to the arthritis which is such a wonderful family tradition.    As I reached for the ibuprofen, I remembered the various remedies that my mom and grandmother used on me for my aches and pains while growing up.   My grandmother, Mauricia Carrasco Rivera had a ton of remedies for whatever ailed us.   She passed those down to my mom.

As far as they were concerned just about anything I had wrong with me could be solved with 3 primary remedies –

1.  Vicks Vaporub

2.  a 7-up  or

3.  a lavativa (enema).

When I mean everything, I pretty much mean anything.  All colds, flu, sniffles, muscle aches, headaches, etc. required what seems like 2 inch thick layers of vaporub on the bottom of our feet and all over our chest.  If it made you sweat, that was a good thing.  For good measure they stuck it in our nostrils too.

If it was stomach related then the answer was to drink a 7-Up.  All you had to do was burp and you would feel all better. I remember hearing George Lopez mention this in one of his stand up routines and it surprised me that someone other than my mom and grandmother followed this line of thought.

The final remedy was the worst of all.  Somehow my mom felt that the root of all problems that I ever had were the result of toxins and poisons that I carried in my colon.   Those horrible toxins needed flushing out with an enema.  Today the mere glance at a hot water bottle gives me the chills because I expect a long white hose to be coming out of the end of it destined to go where no man has gone before.   My mom would get very upset with me because I kept kidding her that I hoped I never broke my leg because an enema would be her first treatment option.
Other treatments included olive oil (either straight out of the bottle or heated), a big paper cone that they stuck in your ear and lit on fire (seriously, I am not kidding) and copious amounts of Karo syrup.   Of course no good Mexican mom would be without manzanilla, yerba buena, epazote and canela.  And for good measure, a headache needed some Mejoral and a Coke.

Don’t get me wrong.   They never tried to hurt me.  Every little bit of treatment they gave me came with a great amount of love.  Whether or not it had a placebo effect is unknown.  All I know is that when they finished doctoring us I usually felt better.

A big part of what they did was purely financial.  Doctors then, as now, were pretty far out of a single mom’s budget for two little boys.   It was much cheaper to buy a few herbs that would otherwise do the trick.

My mom was a very smart woman.   She became one of the very first Certified Respiratory Therapists in El Paso,  despite the fact she never finished high school.   Despite all my efforts, however, she would never answer my “scientific” questions that I asked about those remedies.  I took a lot of Biology and Chemistry classes and had my doubts about what she did for us. Her only response was “You’re not dead, are you?”

And you know, she was right.  I am still counted among the living.  I still drink manzanilla when my stomach  is upset, and a 7 Up or Sprite never hurts when I have a tummy ache.

Mexican moms, you gotta love em.