a color printer
may not seem such a prize
but it’s all i’ve got
only in his eyes
can i pretend it’s ok
because it’s just not
i have no energy to write tonight
’cause i’m trapped in the battle of fight or flight
(i know i’m not and i can’t rhyme for shit
but this crushing feeling is def legit)
what an insult, this new paygrade i got
why should i bother with this cursed rot?
because it is the weight i must carry
since he is the one i chose to marry
of course i love him more than anything
but that will never take away the sting
of knowing that i must pay all the bills
with a paycheck that allows zero frills
and the frills are what makes life worth living
after hours and months and years of giving
yet this is my lot on this Tuesday night:
not quite fight or flight–rather fright, fright, fright.
it finally came
and adds a little relief
to a stressful time
My Rohingya refugee who could not read or write in Burmese (but learned somewhat decent verbal English from the militia who murdered his parents) had to quit school, after just three months, to work full time at a chocolate factory.
My Honduran and Salvadoran refugees live lives in limbo waiting for court hearings that are mostly clouded in misery with threats of deportation.
My son awaits the opportunity to work while his cousin, his only nearby family, has to move from state to state working roofing jobs with no options for permanency because of his lack of papers and English skills.
Meanwhile, 20,000 people stood in line in 8-degree weather this morning to support our president, just down the road from my house, claiming his stance on immigration is one of the most important policies they support.
These white people (it’s always fucking white people) are simply fulfilling their American dream: If it works for me, it’s fine. Fuck everyone else.
And he isn’t my son. I was reminded of this last night when DHS came and told me that we can’t send so much money home to his destitute family, that he cannot leave the state for more than seven days (forget our three-week family vacation), that he must take extra English classes and study a vocation and be an independent tenant.
Not an eighteen-year-old boy whose vision was so focused on running for a train to escape abuse and poverty that he couldn’t see much beyond that journey. He just knew that here was the goal, here with all the money in the world… here with all the opportunities in the world… and screaming, raging racists waiting behind every third door, anxious to keep those things from people like him.
I didn’t know the Spanish word for tenant, so after the meeting, when I was explaining all the depressing news to him, I pulled up Google Translate and couldn’t help but be immediately disturbed by its interpretation: inquilino.
The word sounds wrong to me, like a sour slice of lime in my mouth, a cottony accusation. So similar to inquietude. On the same list as inquiline: an animal that lives habitually in the nest or abode of some other species. Its origins in Chile speak of servitude… submission… slavery.
“We can’t have you taking our money for a vacation. This isn’t a handout.”
I’m not asking for a handout. I already had the entire trip booked and paid for, and he could easily fit in the backseat of my Honda Pilot and lay his eyes on Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, and Puget Sound, places he may never be able to see otherwise, but… OK.
I won’t use your fucking handout to take a sliver of his summer for three weeks of adventure and joy.
I won’t ever see my Rohingya refugee again because he will be working twelve-hour shifts for minimum wage for the rest of his life so that people can buy a box of chocolates for their Valentine.
My husband could lose his job at any moment because he works for a corporation, like all other corporations that are part of the white American dream, that overpays its CEOs and lays off its workers to cut costs.
But the economy is great, right? And with Democratic infighting led by billionaire Bloomberg, it sure feels like that crowd of 20,000 standing in the cold is going to win this election. So we are in for another four years of heartbreak.
We are all inquilinos. Tenants in houses not owned by us, in jobs not guaranteed to us, in a country that owns us because we are not allowed to own it.
Inquilinos. Inquietude. Indefinite. Inmigrantes.
And it would be nice if we could just be human.
He doesn’t tell me over the phone when I call him on Valentine’s night to ask for the wifi password for the cabin we’re staying at. Not after twenty minutes of Google-Siri-searching for how to share a password so our son can call his real parents at the appointed 8-o’clock time, something impossible to do without WhatsApp or wifi in this middle-of-nowhere mountain town.
He doesn’t make me a card or buy me flowers.
The next day, when three of us return from a bluebird ski day, he tells me he has started the taxes, but that he was tired, his back hurt, and he got discouraged and bored.
I make a list in my head of what he hasn’t done: thought of what to fix for dinner, gone to the store to buy the cheesecake ingredients for our daughter’s birthday, done the laundry, told the remaining-at-home-children to do some semblance of chores that would peel them away from their screens.
I take our son, alone, to the Honduran restaurant for our Valentine redo.
No one else wants to go.
On Sunday, I do all the things while Bruce visits his friend for hours. Walk the dog. Fight the weekend grocery store crowds to buy not only the cheesecake ingredients, but everything else on the list that’s accrued in the three days since we’ve visited, because with six people living under this roof, why the hell not? Start, fold, and finish three loads of laundry. Throw together the soon-to-be-cracked cheesecake and read, appallingly, that it is an eight-hour, not four-hour, cool time. Put raspberry compote on the stove to overflow for forty-five minutes. Scrub the shit out of the glass cooktop for another fifteen.
He won’t take the time to come with me to see Bernie because it took me thirteen years just to convince him to vote and another nine to push him farther left, but he still doesn’t have any faith in the future, let alone a singular politician who has spent his entire adult life fighting for people unlike himself.
He won’t come with me to waste all of our money on indoor skydiving, Izzy’s birthday gift, even though it would have been nice to have a second parent, like all the other families there, to take still shots while I took the video.
Instead he grumbles about how he wished we’d just bought the cheesecake from the New York deli instead of me making it because “You pay so that it’s perfect.”
Because mine is not.
Before he drops me at the light rail, he argues with me before reluctantly agreeing to apologize for the remark.
We go to bed with few words and wake throughout the night to the giggling screams of Izzy’s sleepover, each of us texting and yelling at her to stop.
We wake at the sound of his alarm set two hours too early.
I begin it all again. Walk the dog. Fix the breakfast. Put away the dishes.
Ten minutes before he needs to leave for work, I whimper as I say, “We only have one year left of her childhood,” and wipe tears to walk into the dining room. He follows me and pours out the brutal truth of his three-day grump.
“My boss told me on Friday that they’re going to cut four positions. No more voluntary cuts. Involuntary. Two of the positions include my job title.”
His voice cracks as he continues the long explanation of every possibility, and I see now that he has been carrying this load all weekend, fuck Valentine’s Day, fuck our daughter’s birthday, fuck all that is right with the world.
I think about what Bernie said last night, what I didn’t catch on video: “We all have families. And every family has problems. We are in this together. We are in this to think about and support everyone’s families, not just our own.”
And I know what Bruce carries is more than the likely possibility of him losing his job. It is the weight of this presidency, this evil presidency that plagues our society and keeps us from moving ahead just when we think we can move ahead.
I immediately think of two years ago when this loomed over our heads, and all the bitterness and anxiety entailed in those two months of stress and anticipation.
I think of the four years of ski passes. The six weeks in Spain. The three-four-week family vacations we have taken. The ski weekends. The going out to eat. The boy living in our basement.
And I know that all of those things combined might add up to a year of his salary if only we had saved the money.
Yet, for that one year of safety net, we had five years of living like kings after ten years of living paycheck to paycheck, and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.
I am so angry at him for not having hope. For trying to carry this weight for an entire weekend when I would have unloaded everything the moment I heard.
I am so in love with him for trying (quite pathetically) to protect me for two extra days because he knew that all I would do is spend most of the day up inside the bedroom trying to hide my tears from the girls.
Our good health insurance will be gone, and we can’t even begin to pay our mortgage on my salary, let alone everything else.
But it’s out there now. He’ll come home tonight to our magical Costco Caesar salad, wish our daughter happy birthday, and act like nothing is wrong.
And we will find a way to make this work. Because twenty-two years in, that is what we do.
Spain-exploring, childbearing, child-adopting, paycheck-to-paycheck, ski-trip, road-trip, voting-and-hoping, working-not-working, accruing-and-paying-debts…
That is what we do.
Tears or not. Silence or not. Apology or not.
That is what we do.
with one child sick
and flakes falling just enough,
we’ll win a snow day
oh, Snow Day Goddess:
please help this teacher-mother
take a snowy breath
My boy loves to ski.
That should be the whole post, I know, because what else is actually important with this groundbreaking news from a person who’d never been outside of a tropical environment before seven months ago?
But it has been a hard week. It started with a $270 phone call to Honduras (yes, the phone company forgave my discrepancy in understanding here, bringing it down to $27). It continued with my child withdrawing (to the point of email contact from a math teacher who never contacts me) completely from math class, to juggling and standing on desks in science class where my colleague (covering a class) texted, “Man your son is a shit” to several outbursts and clownish behavior in the three hours I have him every afternoon.
This is what it comes down to: I have three daughters, and I do not understand how to raise a son.
Last night I took him to Walmart where we scored the final pair of snow pants for $10, and after we stood in the endless line, we arrived home to no dinner.
He fixed eggs for himself (his go-to meal), and I carved out an avocado to pair with my wine.
I mentioned, again, his behavior in all of his classes.
“But I am just being myself, Miss, and I can’t change who I am. And I always show you respect.”
“Do you show me respect when you return from a doctor’s appointment and shout across the room when everyone is taking a test, telling the whole class that you can’t write because of the shots you got? Do you show respect when you ask Melvin to tear off your bandaids? When your goal is to flirt instead of to learn?”
“No, Miss.”
“You are eighteen. And you can change your behavior. Not your personality. Your behavior. And the thing is… I already love you. I love you because you are my son. And I spend hours planning those lessons because I really care about everyone in that class learning English… Everyone including you. Do you understand?”
No response except visible tears that this boy will not allow to fall (though my three daughters pride themselves on regular tear-shedding).
“Oh, son. Give me a hug.” This sentence 100% in English as I pull him towards me in the middle of the kitchen, and Riona and her best friend witness the entire event, understanding nothing, but are too afraid to continue making their meringues, as he won’t let go.
He just holds me in that kitchen like he hasn’t been hugged in a hundred years.
And maybe he hasn’t.
“What did you say to him?” Riona asks when he finally releases me, opens the refrigerator, searches for hot sauce.
“I think I should tell you later. Who knows how much he really understands.”
“Really, Mama? I don’t think he understands us at all. He doesn’t act like it.”
He pulls his face away from the fridge: “Que pasa?”
We all laugh. Back to Spanish: “Do you know what we’re saying?”
“I understand some words, but not the whole conversation.”
“Do you know the word, ‘understand’ in English?”
“No.”
And that is it. That is my Saturday post. I knocked on his door at 5am and he was ready to sing me Spanish love songs all the way to Winter Park by 5:15. He learned how to ski in one day with his absentee fear and my broken Spanish, and what more could one ask for from a brokenhearted, ever-loving, muy-atletico, hijo hondureño?
Does he understand me?
A little.
Do I understand him?
I’m working on it.
But one thing I know:
I love him.
And that is better than any frost you will feel on your face. 
because of my pup
(and i already love him)
this was a hard week
the mid-winter blues:
sometimes words stick in our teeth
unspittable pith
but i will teach them
the ‘t-h’ intricacies
of learning English
i will not give up
’cause they’ve crossed every border
to learn love’s language
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