An Ode to My Mother

 

"We have the beauty of our self awareness (and he who does not love himself does not in fact love anyone else!)"-Ricardo Sanchez Mi Canto Y Grito Mi Liberacion

 

Someone should have told my mother this

Made her sit and listen

Not like her daughters, not like me

 

Me, her conflicted little poeta…

Cruised and tattooed

La mas chigona in some circles

And the quiet one in others…

The only candidate left out of three daughters

To breed her paradox of culturas

Into an institution of higher education

My mother always knew I was

Stripped of my tradition

Entering catholic school con vergenza

Verguenza of my dark skin

And bus tokens that rode me to school

And then back to her again

Yet she knew I was humbled by all her perdonames

The perdonames that as a Chicana

I was destined to carry

Even when I wasn't sorry

Her perdonames that she learned to capture in her giving spirit

I never made an honest confession to a priest

And even the confessional lie was made under necessary circumstances

However,

Today I confess the greatest of my sins

Hoping to purify my self of the sin

Of not professing my love for my mother sooner

 

My mother has endless arms

Which adverted the rain Seattle would always bring

It was only in the rising of the sun,

Practically dragging me from my sleep

Did I ever loath them

 

In the gracious years of my youth

I felt the striking clock

That took my mother away from me

In the mornings that gave the clear signal

Of our departure from one another

Her to work, me to school

It was a horrible event indeed.

Fore' it would take my mamacita away from me,

And I would miss her eyes

Sweet and small like mine

 

Adelita, my mother

Is what I have called her

I will not call her adelita for her toil that

She reaped as a wife or as a daughter

But for her endurance that she embraced me in

Her endless arms that would not carry hopelessness.

The bandalero that she wore was more of a string of cuentas

Cuentas from the fields of asparagus and onions,

Of crowded cars going and coming from Texas to Washington,

Like wanders in their own land

Cuentas that told of the powder that was thrown on her head

Because all us Mexicans have lice they said

Each cuenta of being punished for speaking Spanish in school

Shot like silver bullets from her gritos

As she marched for a better way of life

 

I do not call her adelita for her strife as a wife,

Or as a daughter,

Because I feel she has not come to arm herself for that war

I waged a war a long time ago

Not knowing it

To liberate her

To liberate me

To liberate la chicana

My mother is the adelita of her day

Now I must take up arms in a new unofficial movement to liberate our selves

From the cage of oppression

That is present in our day

I have learned to march and be a carrier of justice

I have decided to stand against the pesticides

Polluting the mind of our young Chicanos and Chicanas

She liberates me, and her love

Hides in the blankets of my writing

Here in this institution without her