A Few Good Things About Cold, Dreary Days

Tomorrow is the first day of June, but there's no warm weather in the forecast.  In fact, according to the Weather Underground's website, the next 10 days hold nothing but rain, chances of rain, chances of T-storms, and partly cloudy skies.  It's a bit of a depressing outlook, but there are at least a few good things about cold, dreary days like those up ahead.

1. You don't have to worry about getting sunburned
2. Allergies won't flare up
3. Plants will get precious water
4. You can curl up with a book by a fire or under a blanket
Umm... let's see....
5. You don't have to squint?
There has to be more....
6. You don't have to sweat?
7. Your skin can keep that nice, pasty color?

OK, I give up.  I'm ready for summer.

The Good and The Bad

First, the bad news. I’ve got a long way to go if I want to write a thorough story about how my great-grandparents came to the United States and how the lives of their descendants have played out since then.  Right now, I know very little about these ancestors of mine.  I don’t know how or why they came from Mexico, where exactly in Mexico they came from, or even what their real names were.  I know my great-grandmother was called ‘Moda’ as a nickname, but I’ll have to ask my dad what her real name was, and what her husband’s name was.  Almost all of the family stories I’ve heard from my dad and his siblings involve their generation and my grandmother’s.  It will be interesting to dig further back.

The good news, though, is that there are people willing to help me dig further back, and further into my grandmother’s generation.  My dad and one of his sisters are interested in answering the questions I have, to the best of their ability.  Their knowledge will have some gaps, though, simply because they haven’t been around since the beginning of the story.  But there are some older relatives I can contact later, who I hope can fill in those gaps.  And for the really old stuff, well, I might just have to join Ancestry.com or dig through some records myself.  Wait, are we still in the good news part of this post?  Yes we are, because even though it’ll take some work, this is still sounding like a fun project. A little mystery to solve. 

Next time I write, I hope to have solved the mystery of my great-grandparents’ names. 

New Project: Family History

About 90 years ago, my great-grandparents moved to Texas from Mexico, along with their children.  A short time later, in the town of Hearne, a stone's throw from Austin, my great-grandmother gave birth to Anita, my grandmother.  Anita, or Anne as she would later be known, would eventually move to San Diego and live a life that my dad would tell me about in fascinating snippets as I grew up.  There were tales of guns, alcohol, car crashes, unpaid electricity bills, hobos, and tapeworms.  But until now, these stories have only been an oral history.

My goal, over the next several months, is to compile a comprehensive written history of the "Legend of Anne" as my dad calls it, along with stories from my aunts, uncles, and cousins, about our forebears.  Right now, a lot of the information I know about my ancestors is murky.  And scant.  I'm also detached from a large group of my great-grandparents' descendants, because I live in Washington state and most of them live in Southern California.  I hope that, as I begin to research and talk to my dad and other relatives, I'll be able to flesh out some of those fascinating stories and get a better idea of who my ancestors were, why they crossed the border, and how my family history has played out in the lives of those who are still living.

The Lady in 110

As I descended the stairs from the second floor, I noticed her down the path to my right.  She was in front of apartment 108, two doors down from my place, and heading my way—the lady from 110.  I quickened my pace and hurried into the small corridor containing the front doors to my apartment and apartment 105.  I pulled my keys from my pocket and, with one swift motion, unlocked the door and slipped inside.  I closed the door immediately, not wanting to look back and see if she had tried to follow me. 

I don’t often claim to be a brave man, but I’ll admit that my paranoia regarding the lady from 110 has become a little humbling.  I’m afraid to let her know which apartment is mine, though she has probably already figured it out.  So I comfort myself by thinking that if she doesn’t see me enter my apartment she can only guess that I live in either 105 or 106.  And then I hope that, if she ever gets hold of a shotgun and decides to bring about judgment on everyone who has disrespected her by avoiding eye contact or rushing away when they see her, she’ll guess wrong.  Sorry, neighbor, but I’ll be slipping out the back window as soon as I hear the first blast.

Of course I don’t really expect any of that to happen.  I don’t think the lady in 110 is violent, but she does appear to be somewhat unstable, which makes me uncomfortable.  Mostly, she talks to herself.  Or rather, mutters incoherently.  Once, as I came down the stairs from the parking lot to the walkway in front of my apartment, she surprised me by passing right in front of me.  She walked a few paces past me, then stopped her murmuring and turned around and looked at me as though she was going to say something.  She smiled, baring the three teeth in her mouth.  Then she chuckled and turned away, apparently deciding not to tell me whatever it was she had to say.  Over the next few weeks, I saw her in various places around the neighborhood while driving my car.  I tried not to make eye contact, but I could tell she was looking at me as I passed, and I couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking.

My most unsettling encounter with the lady in 110 came last week.  I was on my way to the laundry room, and had just stepped out of the corridor between 105 and my place.  I looked to the left down the path and there she was in front of the corridor that runs between 107 and 108, walking with her head down and muttering to herself.  As she looked up, I stifled an “eep!” and walked as quickly as I could up the stairs to the second floor.  When I got to the top of the stairs, I looked down and saw her grab the cigarette butt container that sits by the bench in front of 107.  It’s the type of container that looks like a skinny post with a hole on one side near the top for depositing butts and a bulbous weight at the bottom to keep it from tipping over.  She had picked it up and was bent over, swinging it like a club at nothing in particular.  She continued muttering incoherently as she did this, apparently oblivious to the world around her.  I shuddered and walked on to the laundry room.  When I came back, I walked slowly, afraid she might pop out from around a corner and startle me.  I looked around cautiously to see if she was still near my apartment, but there was no sign of her.

A couple of hours later, as it was getting dark, I took out the trash.  At my apartment complex, the dumpsters are halfway across the parking lot, in front of the laundry room.  I ascended the stairs from my place to the parking lot, dumped my trash, and headed back.  In the weakening light, I saw the woman from 110 shuffling across the parking lot in my direction, mumbling to herself as usual.  She was between me and the stairs that stand in front of my apartment.  I considered my options as I walked: I could try to breeze right past her and hope she wouldn’t do anything disturbing to me, or I could avoid running into her by going down the stairs in front of Matthew’s apartment, number 109.  Matthew makes me uneasy too, but not nearly as much as the lady in 110 does, so I chose the second option and arrived at home safely a few seconds later. 

I feel a little foolish now, letting my fear of this woman grow so large even though she has never done anything to me besides give me the willies.  Maybe I’m just a coward, and the lady in 110 deserves more pity and help than fear. But maybe it’s also good to be cautious around mentally unstable people as a self-preservation technique, even if it makes me feel like a wuss.

Revision

I think I need to revise my idea for writing about the interesting characters living around me.  I've realized that I don't really know my neighbors, and any stories about them are merely based on brief, superficial encounters I've had.

So, with that grain of salt, I would still like to give the reader an idea of what it's like to live here, by simply describing a few of the interactions I've had with some of the more interesting, quirky, and unsettling people around me.  But these will merely be sketches; nothing in-depth.  In other words, this will be very informal and subjective, and it won't be anything scientific or requiring further research, like I'd alluded to in my previous post.

I think I'll start by telling you about my encounters with the woman who talks to herself.

Cultural Experiences Right At Home

Seven months ago, I moved into the largest apartment building I’ve ever lived in, with about 75 units.  (Previous housing situations for me have included: living with four other people in a 3-bedroom house until I was 20, living in a very large house with 25 other guys while I was in college, living with a married couple [not my parents], living with another married couple [my parents], living in a hostel with a rotating cast of other people, living with my brother, living in a quiet 4-unit apartment building, and most recently living by myself during a comfortable house-sitting gig.)

During these past seven months, I’ve become annoyed with some of the people around me. But I’ve also been fascinated enough to realize that a few of them deserve to have something written about them.  That’s what I intend to do in the next few posts.  Maybe this will force me to be a little more outgoing and engaging with my neighbors, as I try to understand them in order to better write about them.  Or maybe I won’t grow, but continue to hide away in the comfort of my apartment in order to avoid dealing with these strange people.

OK, I’m only half serious about that.  Sure, some of my neighbors have peculiar personalities and behavior, and some make me angry or uncomfortable, but many are also kind and friendly.  It’s possible for us to find common ground and get along well, even though we’re culturally different from each other.  Yes, most of us are Americans, and there’s not a lot of variation in our ethnicities, but we come from diverse economic classes, which I’ve realized is a type of cultural difference.

This apartment building is in a low-rent district; one of the lowest in the county.  And if that and the cars in the parking lot are any indication, most of the people here are probably in a low-income class (the one Lexus really looks out of place).  But not all of us are originally from the same economic class, meaning we don’t have the same experiences, values, or outlooks.  So we behave differently. (Even if we all came from the same class, there would be differences; they’re just more apparent between the classes.) That’s why interacting with each other is often uncomfortable, intriguing, and always a cultural experience.