I can make it through the Rain... I am strong enough to mend!

I CAN MAKE IT THROUGH THE RAIN...

I chose this song, because lately I've felt like I've been in a rain storm. Grandma has had surgery and feeling like i've lost her was a really sad feeling i couldn't stop crying so much all the times that we've spent together rushed through my mind the memories of how i would stay with her during the summer time. She would send me to the grocery store i would spend $200.00 on grocries and i got to buy whatever i wanted to cook for her and i would have fun discovering new ways to make her diet tastey without salt and things she couldn't have to much of. 

 

"Grandmothers are just antique little girls.  ~Author Unknown"


"Grandfathers are just antique little boys.  ~Author Unknown"

Grandma sits with me today and she really can't breath to good but she is breathing. she doesn't want to call the hospital because she doesn't want to go in again. She feels like she's in her last stages and she's been crying a lot she says she's not afraid to die but today she asked me to fill out the forms for the Advance Health Care Directive Kit. So my mother myself and my grandma and my friend all sat down and made sure she knew what she was doing and she signed the forms. This was an emotional process for me because i didn't think my mother would be ok with me being in charge of her medical part of the whole thing since i have been the one to care for my grandmother. 

She is mildly overdramatic at times and it has been a rough night and day with her. 

"The history of our grandparents is remembered not with rose petals but in the laughter and tears of their children and their children's children.  It is into us that the lives of grandparents have gone.  It is in us that their history becomes a future.  ~Charles and Ann Morse"

sometimes.... I ponder on the times when I was younger just before my Grandpa passed away well he wrote a card for me about graduating and sometimes I wonder what will grandma's last words be to me before she goes. I wonder why God made us this way why we have to lose the ones we love, why there even has to be a last word maybe this is why it's so easy to say good bye in some of the relationships I've been in. "It's a fact that no one is perfect, not one person is the same so how can one be perfect right..?" I often don't realize how old I really am. 34 years is a long time but it never really hits you until you've seen the children you've used to babysit grown and with kids. 

 My Interview With Grandma

All photo's included are of the many Grandma's

of the World let's share in a moment of Grandma!!!

What are your favorite colors Grandma? baby blue

Do you have a favorite movie Grandma? I have two of them that I'll never forget when i was younger China's Little Devils and Cotton field China's Little Devils at that time they painted him up to look Chinese i can't remember his name but he became very famous it was during the Pearl Harbor War. 



If you could tell anyone anything to better their lives from your experiences what would you tell them? If there young and single don't get married until you get a steady job and have enough money to get your home and then get married to raise a family but don't go from girl to girl or boy to boy just make up your mind and just do it don't let no one stop you weather you don't have a car take a bus I've taken it for many years, and once you have all that thank God and remember without God you can't do nothing. 

If you could share a part of your life one memory which one would you share? I had this boyfriend that was in the service and we had plans of getting married when he got out and he got killed in action and that doesn't come out of my mind that was a bad experience but the good experience was living with my mother that was the best experience i ever had she taught me a lot.  


What are some of the things your mother taught you? To forgive, not to look down on other people and cleanliness, and how to cook. 


Tell me about the time when you were younger when your father took care of you when you had Exema...  yeah i was born with a skin disease called exema and it just wouldn't stop my hair didn't grow i didn't have eye lashes eye brows but then at the age of 13 oral Roberts brought his tent revival and i went to church and he prayed for me and i got healed. my Mother would sit up night and day putting all kinds of medicine on me so i wouldn't scratch. Thank God i don't have it anymore. My father was another good person he took care of me he would rap me up in a sheet and take me to the doctor he didn't have a car at the time and he would walk with me in his arms he was the best dad. 

What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance.  They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life.  And, most importantly, cookies.  ~Rudolph Giuliani

Did you have any friends during that time growing up? very few in school they thought it was catchy but i had my comadre keeto we were very close and i had a few other friends but they moved away and my sister feena she used to take good care of me too.


What was your inspiration for creating a women's home for court committed women who abused drugs? "God of a second Chance #1" I had a women's home and a men's home I ran the womens home and Danny ran the mens home it was a good experience for me because i learned why these women get into drugs and they had bad things happen to them and they didn't leave the home until they were clean and the men they did pretty good after that, and  Danny  took care of them ... some of the men became preachers. 

Who was the most memorable woman? In the women's home it was Gigi, and in the mens home was Patricio. 

It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.  ~Igor Stravinsky


Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends.  ~Allan Frome

How did you come up with the idea of running a womens home ? when i started going to church when i was 13 and God healed me i wanted to pay back some way and i would go into the prisons and talk to the men and women and i decided that some of them really needed help and so i decided to create the program for each one. 


If you could take it all back would you do anything different? No, I would continue. 


Were you around during any of the wars did how did they effect your life? My brother Mo and Franky were in all those war's and then the last one but i remember the war's how some came back and some didn't.  It was bad when they got wounded my oldest brother manuel he was president John Kennedy's bodyguard we weren't allowed to see him because he couldn't be out in public. Franky came home and started running around and finally met Mirna and he got married and very seldom seen him. Mo came home and got sick because he got hooked on drugs and there were over 6000 people at his funeral because he worked for the community and they all remembered him because he would help people. and my younger brother passed away but before he died he left his wife and kids a home. 


What was your favorite car out of all the car's you've had? My Chevy 
What color was it again? bLUE, Baby blue... Chevy.  I would walk up and down the street looking for your mother when she would borrow my car oh my God! she made me go through changes! 

# Where and when were you born?
 In Los Angeles, California in the general Hospital.

# What do you recall about your childhood?
It was a little sad because of my skin condition some kids didn't understand in school. I missed a lot of school i didn't graduate but i made it to the tenth grade. 


# Where did you live and go to school?
 I went to Pio Pico Grammar School and then i went to Whittier High but i didn't graduate.

# How long did you attend school?
 Up til the 11th Grade.

# What do you remember best about your parents?
My father was such a good man he was a Minor he used to go up and look for Gold.
he had so many friends he was a very very nice man, and my mother she was the best cook. always helping people babysitting washing clothes for them for a dollar i would get so mad
i wouldn't understand... why for a Dollar mom? but now i see so many people in need, they need help that was a lesson from my mom to help somebody. 

# What did you and your siblings do in your spare time?
Are you kidding !? fight! My sister Lita she thought she was a lot better than me and always flirting with boys and didn't want me around she was ashamed and then she would go out and want me to lie to my mom for the next day that she came home to sleep but she didn't she was always something else. In high school she wouldn't say  i was her sister she's always been ta' ta'... 

# Did the family move around quite a bit?
 No, we lived in Pico for a long time.

# What styles of clothing did children wear then?
Simple, clothing. The mothers at that time didn't like us to wear pants you know like slacks and all that we had to wear a dress my mother would make mine.

Family Traditions

# Did your family have any special traditions?
yes they used to BBQ a lot not the kind that we have now but back then they used to dig a hole and put bricks inside of it and buy a gunny sack and put all the meet in there you know baste the meat and everything and put it in a sack and the next day the meat was done tender.. my mother would make dozens of tortillas and chili or whatever and she would invite people over and we had records at that time and she would play the records.  My mother was very well liked by people but i would get very mad when they would ask her to babysit and they only gave her a dollar.

# Are there any family recipes that are particularly special?
 [Grandma Chuckles] That i remember a pot of beans, fried rice, and fried potatoes with meat that was a meal we ate all the time once in awhile she made soup, chilli relleno's you know the kind we eat now. when we were eating we could put cheese in it.. she would make flour tortillas they would just spung up! 

# Are there any heirlooms that have been passed down from one generation to another?
I can't remember except for pictures but Lita [Grandma's sister] took most of them.

Growing Up

# When did you leave home?
Mo [Grandma's Brother] was in jail, lita ran away, felix had a girlfriend, who else... and i was alone just me and my mom and my mom was always babysitting i think i was about 18, when i went to see Mo in jail but no one came out he's not out yet they said and it was someone else that came out and they said that's him right there and i said no that's not my brother and they asked him what's your name and he said his name and it wasn't my brother. The guy's name was Ray, he was five years older than me and used to walk like a Cholo.. and started coming around and everything and that was it, he got what he wanted and then after i was pregnant i told my  mom she couldn't believe it and she said you gotta get married and when he came over to visit ...my mother told him he had to marry me. then he started thieving and they got him and put him in  jail and i went to pastor Sonny and he paid for my divorce when i went to sonny he asked me what happened i said Ray beat me up and that's how i lost my eye. I got a restraining order on him and don't know where he's at anymore. Then Renee  [Grandma's Daughter] was running around the streets and  doing drugs and they put her in a christian home and she did it again and they busted her and she got a probation officer and Renee's father married Renee's probation officer. 
 
A few months after .. the next time when i was sitting in the park walking Chonga and there he was Ray... sitting in the park and then again he beat me up and this time when Renee saw me she asked me "what happened mom?" and i said your father beat me up and Renee told her probation officer and he never came around again.


# Did you have a favorite aunt/uncle?
Uncle, just my sister fina she was like my dad when he married my mom he had already had fina and Manuel from his first wife but my mom raised em' so she was like my step sister. but she was good at everything.  and Manuel spent most of his time in the service we had an uncle named Jimmy i didn't like him because he came down the house and he would try to hug my mom and i didn't like him.

my aunt my mothers sister, keeka [aka] frances but they used to call her keeka she lived in el paso and then she moved down to pico. just up the street she would visit my mom
ooh they were always so happy and then they had another sister Belen that came down my mom's house and she had a son named chewy and that's when Renee got pregnant and i blamed him because he disappeared but i had blamed the wrong man for getting my daughter pregnant then she gave the baby up for adoption that's why she's so close to those kids [the kids she has now]  she doesn't leave them out of her sight. 

 
 

When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.  ~Ogden Nash


Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete.  ~Marcy DeMaree

# When did you get married?
 I married Lupe and we got married but he met somebody else and left and i told him he better pay for the divorce and he did and then no more...

# How did you meet your spouse?
In a night club I think.. in San Gabriel the man had to go somewhere and asked me if i would tend the bar and i didn't know anything about that and he said oh it's easy and i worked there for awhile and he walked in and that was it. but he had been married before
and had kids and was always over there and i said ah. forget you!

Occupation

# What did your parents do for a living?
 My mother would clean houses and cook for people a house keeper, and my father was a Minor.In those day's in Pico they had trucks that would come and sell corn on the cob or potatoes we hardly had any meet either unless they would kill a chicken. some people would make tortillas and sell them at that time there were hardly any stores. everybody would make Menudo and share with everybody not like now.

# How old were you when you got your first job?
I think i was 14 i used to babysit 75cents an hour that was a lot I'd be all happy because they would pay me cash and i would take it to my mom and i think i was 17 when i started to work in Birdcage Pacific Bell Birdcage i was a welder. i had a lot of jobs and then i worked at the Biltmore florist making corsages and reefs we worked at the floats we decorated the floats.

# Which job was your favorite?
the floats especially because i never knew what the baby orchids were.

Physical Characteristics

 

# What physical characteristics do people in your family share?
 I look like my mom i have her build and i have big breast just like she did Renee looks like her dad.

I remember a time when grandma  tried out her new electric wheel chair and we got stuck in the middle of the street and i had to steer for her and she ran over my toes. LOL - Sarah Saldana

Religion

# What part did religion play in your family?
 Well we were brought up catholic but when Oral Roberts came with the Tent Revival i went to church and liked it but i think by that time Lita had run away with stein and Mo and Piga everyone was gone. and mom would go to church every Sunday. Then my brothers started to go to church.

# Were you very religious?
 When i started going to church i was beginning to be religious i wasn't to much into it because i wasn't reading the bible and all that and they had baptismal and Sony had that big place where he lived and i liked it we all got baptized and i said I'm going to stay here and my life started changing and my mom started going and we liked it and it was good.

  

Mo was so famous they used to give him these big things of velveeta cheese and he would take them to Mexico and when Mo died Everyone was there. and when he died Piga wanted to go the day before because she didn't want to be there when his new wife was there. but the next day there was his wife sitting up in there like she was all it. Hardly anyone went up to console her because they liked Piga.

SO uncle Ray aka Mo was married to Piga ?? I didn't know that! ??? YeaH, YeaH... grandma and i were laughing after this.. lol.  

Grandma's last words the years of working were tiring for me. I would get sick but not like now.. . I just turned 75 and everything fell apart but i got to do what i wanted to do in life. i had a lot of friends but then i kept moving around. 

In Closing...  
 Grandma says.. "Don't forget my Two brothers and that movie they left behind "The Duke of Earl" You can search it on YouTube.com Julian was an inmate and Mo' was the security Guard in the Jail scene. 

 THE END.

I Hope you enjoyed this blog as much as i enjoyed interviewing Grandma. 

Please Comment below. I share all comments with Grandma. xoxo

2010.7.29