Nights To Remember

I have started to write, and create all around the idea of finding “the why”. Why do we respond the way we do in certain situations? Why do so many of our experiences overlap? Why do our children do x,y, or z? It never occurred to me that in writing my grandmother’s story I was finding out so many of her “whys”. 

My Titi has always been someone who blended class, kindness, and warmth, with sass, humor and strength so effortlessly. She never compromised her values or her worth to fit a “norm” or an idea of what someone else thought she “should” be. She valued respect and manners and always believed there was a certain way one should be greeted and addressed. She has never walked into a room and not commanded it by simply just being. Not only did she expect that kind of grace and respect for herself but she made you believe that you also deserved that type of respect as well. She made you want to take what was yours but also pay it forward. 

As I type I realize I am talking about her in past tense, not because she is not VERY much alive and just as “commanding” as ever but because all the things she taught me start from as far back as I can remember. She “made” me feel this or that so that right now, at 34 years old, I can say that “I am”. I am valued, I am strong and I like to command a room because of her.

So it is so interesting to look back and see ways that she viewed her parents or even the perception of that generation. To see the moments where she stopped and said “I will be kind and gentle, but I will also be acknowledged, appreciated and respected”. Or to see those moments where she found her love of singing with her father, or her skill to knit from her mother. And how both of them shaped her into who she IS and to experience the beginning of her “why”. 

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Nights to Remember 

My mom was everything to me. She was from more of my generation than my father’s, so she was just as much a friend as she was a mother. She was so kind and gentle, but in some ways she was almost too much so. She would put everyone before her, give everything and stay behind. I never understood why she did that, and I think in some ways I blamed my dad because he let her do it. He was kind of neglectful in that way. She would see that all of his clothes got beautifully ironed, she would cook all the foods that he liked, and make sure everything and everyone was in order. She would completely spoil him and I don't think he ever appreciated that. Even though that was a side I saw, I know that they did love each other very much. It was just very interesting to watch their dynamic.

My dad loved to play the piano and really played piano quite beautifully. Every night when we moved to the big house he would sit in the main room with the lights low and play. He would call me over and say “come sing for me”. He really wanted us to be good at something, to be well known for something. For my brothers it was tennis, and for me it was singing. He wanted me to sing and so I did. 

I did have a good voice and I would sing at the theater and churches. I enjoyed singing and remember the few times I sang at the theater in our town I received a standing ovation. Everyone thought I did such a beautiful job; except my dad. He would say it was okay, but I never felt that I had accomplished what he wanted me to. One night, when I was already engaged to be married, I went to one of my uncles' houses and they asked me to sing. There was a guy there that was a minister of education and he immediately found out that I could get a scholarship at The Colon Theater in Buenos Aires and just as quickly, I said “no thank you.” I knew without a doubt that I wanted to get married, be a wife and a mother, not leave to pursue a career in singing. I don’t think my dad ever forgave me. He thought that I should have been a singer and a better singer than I was. 

Years and years later, my husband Henry confessed to me that he always held a sense of regret and responsibility for me not pursuing a career as an opera singer. But for me, I never gave it a second thought. I like to look back and remember that I could’ve but I would have never chosen differently, even 88 years later. So this is just something that I think about.

Telling that story made me remember the very first time I sang in public. I was probably about six years old and we were in La Paz visiting my mother’s family. There was a contest on the radio and my grandfather signed me up. I just remember going and singing and I won first prize. That was my very first time. 

When I was very young I loved to imagine and play make believe and my family’s farm, Montragon, was the place I used to pretend about. I would imagine that I was a countess and that was my castle. I also loved to pretend I was a movie star as I was dancing with the broom and talking to the mirror. My mom would say “one of these days that the mirror is going to talk back”. Oh how that would terrify me, I thought WHAT if that happens!?

We didn't have television or anything like that so we created our own games and because I was usually off by myself, make-believe was my game. My brothers did their own things. They would play by the mountains, by the mines. They had a different childhood than I did, but we all had to be home for tea time no matter what. Right at 4:00 during the winter months the maids would bring wood to the fireplace and my mother would make tea and bake some wonderful food. After that my mom would sit around the fire and teach me to knit and if my brothers were misbehaving she would make them knit too. She would tell us all stories while we knit. I can remember her lovely soft voice even now. Some nights my dad would be at the piano and she would be next to him and she would be singing very very softly. My dad would refer to them as nights to remember. 

It was during one of those nights where he wrote the song “Alicita”, named for my mother, and that song became our family song. That was how he showed his love, maybe not in the ways I expected him to, but in the ways that he knew how. 

My parents were very influential in my life, but I would say the most influential person in my life was my Henry. I was married so young he taught me how to live. But that is for another chapter another day.