Preparing for the Next Generation
I disliked pregnancy A LOT. I won’t say “hated” because it brought me my Manny but we are in the ballpark. I was constantly sick my first trimester, couldn’t keep anything down, yet still managed to eat like there was no tomorrow and gain 70 lbs. I stopped weighing myself when the scale hit 200lbs, anything after that wasn’t my business.
Like my grandmother, I had also just moved away from my family, going from Illinois to Colorado. I was returning back home for the first time since leaving and was showing up quite a bit different. My anxiety and hormones were also all over the place during my pregnancy so I could go from sobbing to pissed to indifferent to “I need a nap” all in about 5 minutes.
One of the reasons I came back at that specific time was to not only have a baby shower, but to attend my grandmother’s retirement ceremony. She was retiring after 30 years of being a house mom at a Sorority at the University of Illinois, Delta Gamma. The title doesn’t do it justice even a little. She became the face of Delta Gamma, the mother and grandmother to hundreds and a lesson on class, kindness and strength to generations. I grew up in that house, with those girls… they “stayed the same” as I experienced almost an entire lifespan. I had a playpen there, went from being babysat by them, to annoying preteen who followed them around, to college peer, to pregnant elder. It wasn’t until her retirement that I got to see all the faces of women spanning three decades.
It isn’t lost on me that as one generation was closing yet another door on a period in their life, another was opening a whole new door; the door to the next generation. Once again, much like my grandmother in this period of time, I was welcoming the first of next generation to both sides of the family. I wish I could have appreciated it to that extent at the time, but I was giant, and miserable, and making life.
But that is the beauty of writing. You get to sit, reflect and write in a way that may not always match up with the external play by play of what happened but share what may reveal an even deeper truth; our internal experience.
With that being said… this is hers.
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My life in Camirri had started to get a rhythm. We had a cook and a maid and had our friends we would get together with and Sundays at the social club. But I was getting bigger and bigger and was expecting the first baby of the next generation on the Velasco side and the Mendez side. We had no idea what we were having, back then you never knew until it was time. Henry was hoping for a boy and I thought I would love a little girl. But anyway I got HUGE. My husband thought I was beautiful which I guess was nice because I looked in the mirror and I was not beautiful at all, I was a ball.
A few funny things happened that I remember during my pregnancy. We went on Sundays to our club and I was reading the paper. There were a lot of people there; a group of boys from Chile, couples, families and a couple of single girls. Well anyways I was reading the paper and the music started playing and the young guy came over and asked if I would like to dance with him, I gave him a look and said “I am sorry I don’t think I can dance” and he went on. I thought that’s weird, why didn’t he ask one of the single girls. I didn’t realize I was covering my belly with the newspaper. So when it was time to leave we got up and left and I appeared from under the paper with my big belly and the group of young guys gave this poor guy such a hard time. So that was funny.
And another Sunday there was a gentleman and his wife there from Russia. He was a very big burly guy with an equally big belly. One Sunday we were all having brunch and he got up and asked Henry, as you did back then, if he would mind if he danced with me. Henry said ‘of course’ and I got up to dance and there we were trying to dance with our two big bellies. We could barely touch our hands together so it became a very funny sight for everyone including us.
Pretty soon it would be time for me to go to LaPaz and have the baby. We were to stop in Cochabamba and spend some time with Henry’s family and then head to LaPaz. I didn’t want to chance staying at the camp because we didn’t have family there and I also didn’t know anything about the hospital or medical care available there so we all thought it would be the best thing for us to deliver in a hospital we knew. So that is where the next piece begins… me packing and getting ready to travel to have our little one.
