Showing posts with label San Diego. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Diego. Show all posts

Monday, May 2, 2016

Nunca me Dieron un Vestido de Novia...

Estaba sentada con mi esposo esta madrugada bebiendo una tasa de espresso y reflexionando acerca de la vida. Mucha sabiduría sale cuando estás inspirado o ‘En Espíritu’, cuando tienes tu mente relajada, tu corazón abierto, tu intuición alerta y más que nada cuando estas dispuesto a decirte a tí mismo la verdad sin temor a nada! 

Hablábamos de nuestra juventud, nuestro formato, enseñanza, familia, amigos y tantas cosas más, pero una de ellas que me dejo pensando fue al acordarme de mi Vestido de Novia.

Recuerdo que en mi primer matrimonio mi novio y yo éramos jóvenes, estábamos empezando y mi papá QEPD, siempre tuvo grandes limitaciones, trabajaba en bodas como animador los fines de semana y por ende la boda casi no le costó, la orquesta tocó de cortesía, me parece que también el salón y el templo y como fue en domingo solo habían bocadillos. Ahorita lo pienso y hoy por hoy lo haría en la playa con una taquiza de aquellas que no se te olvidan jamás. Como debía de haber sido ese día y no lo fue.

Nadie me regaló mi Vestido de Novia, yo lo tuve que comprar, lo pagué $30 dólares y eso porque era usado. Luego le tuve que hacer algunas modificaciones, le recorté las mangas para hacerlo mío pero no hubiese sido el vestido que yo hubiera elegido si alguien me lo hubiese regalado. 

Años después la “amiga” que me lo vendió terminó divorciandose después de haber engañado por años a su marido y mucho después yo terminaría divorciada de un matrimonio de 30 años y esa familia que había creado con tanto amor, deseo, corazón y dedicación nunca lo volvería a ser jamás. 

Curiosamente hace tres años me volví a casar después de una trayectoria de 10 años sola, viviendo una intensa aventura, tratando de identificar quien era yo y de lo que era capaz. Tampoco ésta vez me dieron un Vestido de Novia, nos casamos solitos en el Registro Civil de San Diego, CA que es una maravilla de Edificio Histórico con mucha personalidad e impecable, frente al mar, llegamos a primera hora en cuanto abrieron porque a mi esposo le gusta ser el primero en todos lados para no tener que esperar, nos casó una juez Latina y le pagamos $14 a otra empleada del Registro Civil para que firmara como nuestro testigo. 

Mi vestido recuerdo habérmelo comprado en Maui, Hawaii mucho antes de que mis hijos nacieran, y ellos ya tienen 27 años, me queda más apretado que cuando me lo compré, entonces tenía como 29 años y hace 3 años tenía 61 pero lo sigo usando. Siempre me ha encantado. 

Después de firmar nos tomaron una foto, no tenía ni pizca de maquillaje en la cara y mi pelo no me había quedado bien esa mañana pero me dí cuenta de que nada de eso me importaba.

De ahí nos fuimos a la Jolla a caminar por las calles, la playa, ver focas, parques, buscar conchitas y piedrecitas. Nos parámos en una planicie y le pedimos a alguien que pasaba que nos tomara una foto que ME ENCANTA! Momentos inolvidables!!! El día siguió igualito que como lo es cada uno de nuestros días, movido, divertido, loco, ligero, con retos, risas y siempre con mucha enseñanza.

Fuimos a desayunar a Harry’s Coffee Shop en La Jolla y comimos aquellos deliciosos pancakes que comí tantas veces que fui ahí con mi familia, para llevarme conmigo el sabor y los olores de los recuerdos de momentos mágicos. 

Nos fuimos a caminar por Seaport Village, Old Town, mi lugar favorito de todo San Diego, nos reímos tomamos muchas fotos, compartí con mi esposo todos aquellos lugares que por tantos años mientras criaba a mis hijos me trajeron incontables horas de felicidad y así empezó una aventura más en mi vida.

“Yo te voy a comprar un Vestido de Novia” me dijo mi Esposo con su voz gruesa y su acento argentino que me derriten “y nos vamos a casar frente al Mar en Mar del Plata, rodeados de familia y a lo mejor no hacemos taquiza, pero que tal empanadas”? “Y bueno”, le dije, “hagamos empanadas”...

Abrazos xoxo
@nit@ 




Wednesday, February 13, 2008

An Age for Celebration



An Age for Celebration
written by my daughter at age 17
Brighton Gardens was a beautiful peach building with an enormous green landscape centered in one of the wealthiest communities of Southern California. The retirement home not only attended to Senior Citizens but to High School teens that sought volunteer hours. It wasn’t long before I joined in and added “Bingo Caller” to my resume. B32 I would call out dully, just to hear quiet murmurs and shuffles of old and discolored bingo chips. I would hear snickers from the Queen Bees, talking about how naïve Olga was to put mustard on her sandwich. Didn’t she know how bad mustard was for her cholesterol? Not only was gossiping a commonality, but complaining was quite routine as well. It was always too hot or too cold, there was just no winning with them.

First, there was Doris who’d sit at the living room’s plastic fluorescent couch everyday at the very same time. If someone had “her chair” occupied, there would be a beheading. Then there was Richard, the bachelor, who strolled around in his walker nodding to the attractive women who still had a head full of hair and a mouth full of teeth, dentures that is. Howard played checkers every Wednesday, and every Wednesday he’d forget he was to play checkers. Then there was Mae. She was the most vibrant, hilarious, and childish out of all of them. Oh, she was also the oldest, 103. I never heard a complete sentence from her without a pun to it or a chuckle that anyone who knew her could identify. It was loud and obnoxious, as was she. While I would watch the majority of the inhabitants sitting lifelessly and waiting to die, I would turn and see Mae swinging on by, cackling with her groupies. Her smile could light up any dark alley way, any night in absence of a full moon, any person in need of a bit of happiness. Here I was subjected to all these elderly people who were bitter and angry at life, and there she was making a joke about it. Along with what I used to call a burden, volunteering bestowed insight, appreciation, and clarity upon me, the clouds had finally made room for the sun. Despite the age, a certain maturity is never met and a certain immaturity is never left.

While I used to drag my feet to make it inside Brighton Gardens, I was now walking, fast that is, to get there. I’d stumble through the door first thing after school in search for Mae. I didn’t want to turn out like the rest of them, holding grudges, spewing anger, detaining regrets. I didn’t want to drag my feet anymore, anywhere. For the last 17 years I had been rushing my life; now I wanted to pull the reigns tight. I didn’t want to get old and sit in a chair and stare at the wall! I wanted to go play on the swings, scrape my knees, and get into childish trouble. I was young, I was healthy, and I hadn’t been satisfied with my being. I had been too preoccupied with the latest Hollywood trends and the gorgeous boys with the baby blues, that I hadn’t even appreciated my existence, my youth. I had always been worried about something, but I didn’t want to be worried anymore, I wanted to be Mae.

That was my turning point in life. My perspective and my attitude, changed. I discovered a difference in me, a positive one. I had a bounce to my step and an optimistic touch in my soul. I had never been so passionate about being who I was! I let go of my regrets, forgave the guilty, and just smiled. I had been at Brighton Gardens for seven months, and every hour I spent there was a blessing, for it opened my eyes to more than anyone could ever imagine. I walked in one day, with that little bounce, and searched for Mae’s presence. She wasn’t at bingo, she wasn’t in the living room or the dining hall, Mae was no where. As I learned, she passed away the night before. The receptionist told me stories about how she had difficulty breathing. While she was being reeled out with an oxygen mask attached to her face, she was laughing and hitting on the firemen, calling them “Cuties” and “Sugar Muffins.” I was told she proclaimed that if it was her time to go, at least she was going out with a set of good looking men. I will never mourn her death, but celebrate her life, as I now do with my own. Thank you, Mae! 

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

55 and Suddenly Alone, What should I do for FUN!

Not long ago I became a senior citizen, and suddenly realized that I took back my life at 50. It took me 50 years to do it, but at least I did it, which is much more than I can say for most people.

Here I was all alone for the first time in my life, separated from a 30+ year marriage, and broke, but if I was going to just sit down and wait until the aftermath, the healing and the adjustment to changes before I started to have fun again, I might forget what it’s like to have fun and not remember how to get it again.

We just have to keep on enjoying the ride no matter how steep it gets, there’ll be coasting just ahead.

I know it works different for everyone, but this is how it works for me.

At first I started to travel all over Europe. I couldn’t get enough of it, I wanted to spend there months and months, perhaps even move there as soon as my kids went off to college, but since like I said I was broke, I had to do the best I could with what I had. Everything outside of the money to support my travel took a second place. Except of course for my kids, they knew they could always come to me for whatever they needed and I would make that happen as well.

I could write books about my adventures traveling in the past 5 years of my life, Europe, Israel, many small towns and cities in Mexico, the United States, Canada, at times I don’t believe some of the things I did, but I continue to LOVE every minute of it, even the things that went wrong for me on my trips, actually I love those more because they are the ones that give the spice to my experiences, and as a Latino woman, I LOVE SPICE :o)

I was sitting at home this morning thinking of something to do. My son was lazy, my daughter is on a trip, and I couldn’t think of anything. All I knew was that I was hungry.


So that brings me to “Los Panchos” in Pacific Beach.

I would describe Pacific Beach as a young surfer’s area. There are many beautiful young people walking around the streets. Tons of restaurants, and cute little boutiques with inexpensive clothes, fast food, supermarkets, hair salons, tattoo parlors, bars with hookah pipes, piano and dance lessons, gyms, there is even a rubber life-size dummy on the street outside a store that says “Punch me with a smile”, and of course I did :o).
There are furniture stores, and smoke shops that sell paraphernalia. And if you walk inside those shops to look around and start asking questions like I do, “Which Pipe works better? Why the different shapes and materials?” The attendant inevitably will look at this 55 year old woman who looks like a Jewish/Mexican mom asking about bongs and pipes, and they will reply, “well you get your tobacco and put it in here” and they are pretty much all the same, “it’s all in taste.” Although I know for a fact that’s not the case, because I happen to have a teenage son!!! OY VEI!

So the last time I was in PB (that’s how its referred to around here), I stumbled into Los Panchos, went in to eat and had this feeling of being back home in Mexico.

There is nothing really special about this place that would necessarily draw people in, just a normal size semi-fast-food type place; there is usually a homeless man outside by the tables picking up the leaves that fall off the trees to keep the place clean, I’m not sure who pays him but you see him with the top of a filing-type cardboard box picking up the leaves and whatever garbage he finds, places it on the boxtop, walks to the closest trash can and empties it, just to go back and look for more trash.

The place looks like any ordinary small restaurant in Mexico City where I grew up and would go to eat tacos every chance I got. It has booths all around and a sign that says “Please come in and have a seat”, kind of like saying “Mi casa es tu casa”. It’s decorated with tacky posters or paintings and banners advertising beer that go all around the place. There's a metal shelf by the side door next to the cashier that holds bundles of tortillas; I forgot I wanted to buy some!

But what will keep me going back to Los Panchos as long as I live in San Diego, is the food and the way I feel when I am in there.

The food is abundant and well priced. First they bring you fresh crunchy chips with spicy tomato salsa and a plate with spicy carrots, chiles and onions. I was so hungry and wanted to order a large plate, but decided to start with three small tacos and see if I still felt hungry after that. I thought for $3.99 for all three tacos, how big can they be? And to drink I ordered “Agua de Jamaica” (hibiscus water) delicious, refreshing, and very healthy for you, and they keep on filling your glass if you want more.

So for example take the three tacos I ate. Each one of them comes with two tortillas. They are small and easy to eat, with the right consistency and most of all fresh made. You don’t feel too guilty because they look small, but they have A LOT of meat, seasoned just right, and chopped even better. Then they sprinkle the right amount or fresh chopped onions and cilantro, a couple of slices of lime or lemon for you to squeeze it on the tacos, and you add some of that delicious salsa. The meat was a little greasy, (reminds me of the ones I used to eat as a child) but I figure if that is all I eat all day except for something light at night, then it’s not so bad, and besides, remember you are in PB, you can just keep on walking straight west when you finish your meal, do some window shopping, maybe get an extra piercing on your ears so you can wear two little studs in each, and go all the way down to the beach and jog or walk off the calories and feel invigorated and ready to do something else, like go to Old Town, it’s a very cute area for walking around and people watching, or just go to a movie, they change every week ;o)

I hope you enjoyed what you did with your day.

What should I do for fun tomorrow?!...

Anyone care to join me? :o)