Monday, Monday

The story begins with a classic homespun adventure- I go to be with the person who gave me life on my birthday. Back home, we are in “Crown of the Valley” the language of the Chippewas, an Indian tribe that never set foot in the area, the land on which the city was built occupied originally by the Gabrielino Indians and then by the Spanish and the Mexicans who built adobes. As in most of Los Angeles County, the greatest amount of fine architecture is domestic, but the city of Pasadena is ahead of most of her neighbors in public architecture. Still it's where I was born in the Lower Arroyo Seco section favored by bicyclists, joggers and people who like to stroll because they have something to experience-lovely scenery and well-kept gardens. And there is the ostentatious simplicity of the Arts and Crafts movement. Craftsman style homes, bungalows that are brown and woodsy, many remain in pristine condition that were once and still are attractive to people of moderate means and often of intellectual and artistic pretension.

Inside a Mexican restaurant there are two strolling mariachis, one strumming his guitar the other shaking his maracas. The minstrels serenade listeners with buoyant Mexican folk songs. It is indeed another perfect autumn morning. The sun shining softly in a high blue sky dotted here and there with ragged wisps of cloud. The air clean and fresh, the birds are singing, and the hours spooled before us. We were poised at another stretch of time in which anything can happen. The musicians join us and sing “Las Mañanitas” the traditional Mexican birthday and Mother's Day song, often used to wake the guest of honor early in the morning as the lyrics are about waking up and celebrating the day you were born. My mother bursts into tears. I, unable to keep dry-eyed at another's tears and having shed tears of many varieties, follow.

I think about the lineage that brought us together, and about my Grandmother. How as a child, there seemed to be so much time, as she pointed out, that I wished my life away. In my heart, I knew there was more to a day than how many things I played with, but also, in my heart I didn't know what that something was.

Now that I am older, there never seems to be enough of it, provoked by a growing awareness of my own mortality. I remember her often, more so in October, two weeks before my birthday would have been hers, and the more things speed up, the more I try to track it. I suspect it comes from believing if only I control time, I will keep it. Ironically, the opposite is true.

Past, present, future. Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Paradoxically, the more I think about time, the less I can make sense of it. It eludes me. The same thing can be said about dreams, words, and love. All I know for certain is that the time my Grandmother was with me, I was living both inside and outside of time and beyond it. And this time that I have with my mother will be the same, she has always been and ever will be with me. As a daughter and as a woman, I am predisposed to eternity.