Remembering an Unknown Nana

Happy birthday to my Nana, Ramona Velázquez Núñez de Cornejo. You were born on August 31, 1892. We never met, but I feel your presence around me daily, providing me with guidance and inspiration. You are ever present. Your strength runs through my veins and I hear your voice calling out to me through the hardships of the past century, through my ancestral homeland, through the long forgotten and unspoken stories, through the family history, leading me to discover, reveal and share it.

Orphaned at age 11, your childhood was suddenly interrupted. You came to this country three years later, undocumented and alone. It was 1906 and you didn’t speak English. Would a child of 14 have been considered an adult back then? I don’t know what the law said back in those days, but in my way of thinking, you were an unaccompanied, unprotected minor. Yet, you were smart, full of dreams, resilient and resourceful. You found kindness in strangers, in an older woman who helped you come to this country. Together you came on a train to San Diego where you got work doing other people’s housework and laundry.

Your immigration story is not lost on me, as I watch the news and see today’s destitute and desperate children likewise seeking refuge and citizenship here in a land of opportunity. By comparison, as I see my own life and childhood, and those of my own children and my cousins, our lives have been easy. We are educated and thriving, without the unimaginable ordeals that you endured. We are all living your American dream, that you made happen.

Years later, in your naturalization paperwork, you state that at age 14, you came here to live permanently. What a resolute statement. This was your line in the sand: no going back. Did you imagine that within 2 years you’d be wed and have your first child? The earliest photo that exists of you is from this time period. You look radiant and elegant: a flower in your pinned up hair and wearing a beautiful lace collared suit and high necked blouse. There is a happy twinkle in your eye, as you proudly hold your young son, a stick with a rattle in his hand. There is a slight smile on your face. I see hope in your expression. The hand tinted image gives a blush to your cheeks. By contrast, your husband looks older and stern. His eyes look a little bleary. Could you have imagined that within 5 years your beautiful little family would be destroyed by alcoholism? Or that your first husband’s addiction would lead to a fire of his own making, where he would perish? And that you, pregnant, would draw upon that resolve and maternal love to protect your young son’s life? No, you couldn’t have believed it. Who would imagine such horrors? You managed to escape, but the ordeal sent your body spiraling into a long, difficult and premature labor. This birth story caused your infant daughter, my tia, to suffer a lifetime of disabilities. Did you know this immediately? Did you feel guilt or anger? Did you sense it? Or was it slowly revealed when benchmarks were missed? As you watched your child struggle?

As the mother of premies with special needs, this is not lost on me. I know the rigors and remorse when even rudimentary things are a challenge for your children and for you. But all those years later, we had the benefit of modern medicine and health insurance and my children had therapies and services that would allow them to move through the challenges, to develop and thrive. But Nana, your story is not lost on me. There but for you, go I.

Once again alone and without resources, you put your children in an orphanage. You, an orphan, did this. Knowing what it meant.  In 1911. At age 19. You were a widow making a way for herself and her children. Within a few years, you remarried. Did you marry your second husband, my Tata, for love? He sure was handsome. And you both look so beautiful in your posed wedding portraits. There is even a photo where Tata is clowning and wearing your hat. It seems like you were smitten, but your expression looks more thoughtful, there is no sparkle in your eye. It looks more reserved and posed than the earlier photo. Was this marriage an act of romantic love? Or was this too, an act of maternal love; a way to get your children out of the orphanage and back home with you? You’d go on and have a whole second family together, six more kids with him. There is a family portrait of this “second” family in front of the house in Logan Heights, now Barrio Logan. How did you feel about not having your first born children in the photo? I can’t imagine you had any say. Women were like property back then. the "de" Cornejo signifies this: of Cornejo, belonging to Cornejo. This was my grandfather’s family. The other man’s kids were a reminder that he was not your first love. Never mind that the first husband was deceased. I imagine that back then, taking a photo without them would have been like an oath of allegiance. I loved my Tata, but those suffering trauma, may often unwittingly share that trauma with others through their actions and their deeds. I love my grandfather, so I forgive him, but for my Nana’s sake, I will not forget what he did. I will paint a full picture. I will not vanquish the ugly parts to history. I honor him, but also honor the truth.

He, who at age 15 ran away from an abusive father, who beat him till he was lame for disobeying and riding the prized stallion on the family ranch. Yesterday’s equivalent of a teen taking the expensive family sports car for a spin, but who would lose their mind over this to the point of disabling their child? Its unconscionable. Once he had healed, my grandfather left. He walked - - no matter the limp- - all the way from Jalisco to Arizona, where he got a job laying railroad racks to San Diego, toiling in the sun, hand driving spikes into the railroad ties. That’s roughly 375 miles. It’s approximately 3,250 wood ties per mile. Do the math. Never complain about your job, is the message here. In those early years, he followed the work back and forth between two states, building his new country’s infrastructure by the sweat of his brow and the toil of his body. After the railroad line was completed, he moved on to paving streets and making roads. He was a union man. And the limp remained for the rest of his life, affecting even his stance. Because of it, we can identify him in early work photos, even from afar.

Meanwhile, you stayed home in San Diego raising the eight children alone during long extended stretches. During the depths of the Depression, you kept the family afloat by cooking. You and your young daughters would get up early every morning to make empanadas to sell to the workers at the nearby canneries. Mom said that during those hungry years, you never turned anyone away who needed food. You understood desperation and hunger. She said that you helped neighbors and strangers alike. That this persisted during WW2, when the days were especially long. Your daughters would get up at 2 AM and help you make empanadas to sell to the workers at the 5 AM shift change, afterwards the two girls would hurry off to school and to jobs in the airplane factories. When they’d return home, the house was filled with servicemen, who were missing their own families and their mom’s cooking. You welcomed them to the table for home cooked meals because you hoped that somewhere, someone would be doing the same for one of your four sons, who were also serving in different branches during the war. It is not lost on me that all those years later you were still likely missing your own mother’s home cooked meals. She left your side when you were 11. I imagine that as a child she taught you to cook, just as you taught your daughters. Did you learn family recipes at her side? Was the empanada recipe you made your daughters swear to secrecy first sworn to you, by her? Did you learn your empathy from her, as well? Who cared for you when your parents accidentally lost their lives? You left two older brothers behind in Baja California Sur, so I imagine they were making their own way and couldn’t care for you. So many questions for which there may never be answers. Still you kept your spirit, you set forth and you sang your song.

Mom said that you were always singing, but that you “didn’t have much of a voice”. I wonder what you sang? I remember one time a song came on the radio and my mom said you loved that song and were always singing it. Later my mom couldn’t remember which song it was, only that it was frequently broadcast on a radio station whose signal you used to pick up from across the border in Tijuana. A station that played popular songs in Spanish.

It is not lost on me that I have the gift of song, that music is my livelihood, that I do not have to toil and toil, as you did. I wonder, did your mom sing to you? Did she have the gift of song? Did it skip a generation or two? My mom never sang to me, not even when I was a baby. On the rare occasions when I heard her sing, it was hard to tell if she could hold a tune. I guess not. Was it shamed out of her?

You didn’t care what others thought — you sang. Maybe you sang because it was the only place where you did have a voice, a choice. Here in California, you were a young woman unable to communicate in your native tongue. When you arrived in this country women didn’t have the right  to vote. As an “alien”, you didn’t have a voice. In your own Mexican, macho, male-centric culture and community, you were never given the voice to air your grievances, express your hardships and share your suffering. You had to keep quiet, and you did for many years. Over time, these unspoken words turned inward, festering, creating inner turmoil.

The pain was turning you bitter and resentful, the suffering suffocating you and eventually turning into an auto-immune disorder - - long before this was a recognized condition. When I asked how you died, my mom said it was horrible. She said your lungs filled with fluid and it was like you were drowning on dry land. And by all accounts you were. Drowning under the weight of the shame brought to you by your philandering husband, who bedded your sister-like cousin and had children with her. Drowning under the sorrow of seeing your son’s murderer never brought to justice and set free by a corrupt and racist judicial system.

It is not lost on me that I have many freedoms that were hard-earned gains, not for your sake, not enjoyed by you, but established for the benefit of your children and grandchildren and generations to come. It is not lost on me that we are living your American dream, living in safety, prosperity and enjoying luxuries you never had. Something as simple as a washing machine, when you did laundry for a living, scrubbing clothes by hand. We are thriving, and contributing, some of us in jobs you could have never imagined, in industries that didn’t yet exist, or in the arts, in music, which you loved. Your son, my uncle, had the nickname “Canary” because he too, was always singing. His son, grandson and great granddaughters are all accomplished musicians. And I am a singer.

It is not lost on me that you sang because it was the only acceptable way you could express yourself; your own feelings masked and woven into the popular songs, which spoke to you. It was the only way you could express the heartaches and the sorrows and even the joys, taking the lyrics as your own, making them into personal monologues. Did anyone guess your secret? Did anyone suspect you were singing your own story through the songs? Singing kept you aloft while you did the laundries, raised the vibration while you scrubbed the floors, danced with the broom, and while you sang life into your own cottage industry making empanadas to sell to the cannery workers. You were a female entrepreneur. You made something out of nothing, in an industry open to women. Singing was the only way to express it all, despite the men and the circumstances that suffocated you and took away your voice.

Yes, Nana, I am your voice. I sing for you. I am the keeper of the kin, ensuring that you are now heard and known and listened to, by all your progeny. I love you and I’m so proud to be your granddaughter and to know that my mother’s egg that created me was first formed in your very body. Your essence lives in me. I’m grateful for you and the knowledge that my DNA goes back to such a strong, fearless, resilient and capable woman, who put family above all else, ensuring that we are all here now reaping the beauty and the benefits, thriving as proud Mexican Americans because of your selflessness. Ever grateful for your maternal love. Your prayers protect us still and your story, your sacrifice and your song is not forgotten.