post #16 a recent dream
My mother and I had a volatile relationship that really didn’t feel close or comforting in my teens. I felt she was critical of everything I did, and I certainly didn’t think she ever thought I was beautiful. Then I look at a group of photos that she transcribed and see this. This is something…
post #15 grandma Norma
Guest Post by Older Sister One of the greatest joys—I’ve been told—is being able to get to know your grandchildren. It’s been described to me as a different experience from having children of your own and in its way even richer and more fulfilling. Grandparents joke all the time about getting to have all the…
post #14 parenting
Mother’s Day is always a strange day for me. My mother is no longer here, nor is my mother-in-law, and I’m not a mother. I can certainly celebrate the mothers I know, which is what I usually do. The day turns more into a day of memory or nostalgia. But this year I’m happy that…
post #13 youngest brother
You know how parents always say they don’t have a favorite. I find this to be completely untrue. Of course, they may not be able to say they love one child more than another. But there is always a favorite. Youngest brother was Norma’s favorite. She had gone through parenting stuff with us first three.…
post #12 La Norma’s tacos
My sister and I had a conversation about Norma’s tacos this past Christmas. It revolved around the question, where did they come from? She certainly used to make them regularly in our household. Growing up we always knew that mom’s speciality was tacos and dad’s speciality was spaghetti (which was a very distinct spaghetti with…
post #11 April 1977
I wasn’t quite sure what to write about this week. We are about a month in to stay at home orders, so I started thinking about what it would have been like to stay at home during different points in our family history. I started looking at pictures, specifically trying to get a wide view…
post # 10 Easter
We celebrated Easter. In fact, there was one point that Easter almost became my feast day. The most important Sunday of the year seems like an appropriate time to celebrate Sundi, born on Sunday, just as older sister got St. Stephen’s day. Of course, brothers did not have feast days either. But Easter was an…
post #9 music & identity
I’ve spent the past few hours listening to two of Norma’s favorite musicians. The first is Roberto Griego. He is a New Mexican musician who doesn’t even have a wikipedia page, but is part UCLA’s Mexican and Mexican American Recordings library. I somehow knew all the songs on this particular album, which you can listen…
post #8 mom’s family
I don’t know exactly where I read it amidst all the Covid-19 reading I’ve been doing in the past weeks, but one article said to consider all the people in your household as one person. Because if one person left and came back or came into contact with another “person”, all the people in both…
post #7 best friends
I didn’t write a post last week due to my school going into full on preparation for remote teaching. The only thing on my mind was Covid-19. It is certainly there this week as well, but I have some more space, and it’ll slightly influence this post. I spent a lot of time on the…
post #6 Norma Garcia
For this week’s post I’m looking at some of the pictures of Norma before she met my dad and started a family. I’ll start out with this one that I am not actually sure whether it is from before. It could have been after she became Norma Richard, but it is pasted on to a…
post #5 the nun
*edits added after originally posting are in brackets and in bold. My mother was a nun and my father was a priest. I often start talking about my parent’s story this way. I then have to say, they both left religious life before they met each other. But I actually know much less of my…
post #4 social Norma
Based on my own memories and stories recounted to me later, it’s clear that Norma was an extrovert. She spent lots of time with or talking to people. She had a lot of friends. She knew the neighbors. my memories My parents often took us to their friends’ houses. Sometimes those friends had kids our…
post #3 family portraits
The loss of a person is painful, final, and personal to each individual that loses and misses that person. The loss of a member of a family or other collective unit has its own devastation. My mother’s presence in our family was dominant. Her force became so apparent when it was all of a sudden…
post #2 proud, now
This story won’t be chronological. you look just like her Everyone used to tell me I looked just like my mother, which would make me so terribly mad. Why would I want to look like her? I looked like me. We were NOT alike. I don’t know how much we resembled each other in our…
post #1
I’ve thought about writing this for awhile. I’m not a complete person. There is a large gaping hole, where my adult relationship with my mother would have been developing. Not only do I fear that Norma now only lives in the memories of a shrinking number of people, I constantly imagine how she would be…
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