Mis dos Mundos

My common nick name is Monsi. My complete given name by birth is Monserrat Andrea Vera Figueroa. I share my father’s last name, Vera. Figueroa Leyton is my mother’s last name. My parents and I were born in Santiago, Chile, in South America.  

When I look back on my memories on the city of Santiago, Chile in the 1960’s, every person in our little town really shared the same values because they reflected the cultural customs of our town.  I call the values that we shared  there the “colectivo,” (i.e., commonly held interests) mostly because the ways we were taught to act, the things we were taught to believe, and connections that endured in our community were a part of the fabric that wove us together and enhanced our lives, even when we were not aware that this way of our being drawn together was happening. In fact, our little colectivo culture was so big and strong, that it would implant ideas directly into our community’s blood stream. These ideals shaped and defined for us what our community members should desire to be like, consider our self-worth to be, what we should have for ourselves, and especially, how they impacted our thoughts about where we should (literally and figuratively) desire to go.

EEUU de America, (i.e United States of America) was to the colectivo, the perfect place to go. I and everyone else I knew in our town learned everything about America through the American media broadcasts and music. I remember singing the lyrics from a song about Sacramento California.  And, the TV shows we watched, like Soul Train, Saturday Night Fever!, and the handsome Hollywood men we saw and hoped to meet one day, like John Travolta, were born in the US  and “lived” there. Watching actors like him suggested to us that all people who lived in America were happy, all (or at least most) of the time! “Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a society like that?” we wondered. When I asked myself that question, it began to form my ideals.

As my friends and I in the colectivo thought about wanting to find a way to enjoy “American happiness,” our own thought patterns, our “rumbo,” (the word when translated from Spanish to English sort of means our ways, desires, or sense of direction), began to change in ways that re-oriented our own home spun values. Metaphorically speaking, it was as if we started driving a car in one direction, and then suddenly changed directions to head down a road that was altogether different from the one we had grown accustomed to. We felt this chance to become Americanized was beneficial for us.

The moment our sense of direction changed to one that valued relationships in the colectivo, to one that prized financial gain over relationships in America, the more we started to daydream about what it would be like to live in these United States.  As I grew into my teen years, my friends and I spent a lot of our time thinking and talking about how to imitate the English language while standing in front of my mirror; it sounded so funny to us then! My imagination about what American happiness must be like was endless! But my wanting to change from my native tongue to English also took me further away from my colectivo. 

Ours had been very simple life in the colectivo. We valued being able to be content with having little. We hadn’t felt a need to have access to discos or movie stars and all that being nearer to those things represented. We didn’t need to have the latest high fashion item, or to seek after pairs of expensive shoes. In fact, we’d never once felt the need to imitate anyone else for any reason at all. 

Sharing this remembrance is one of the main reasons I wanted to write this blog! I am defiantly not a hyper self-critical kind of person any longer. I’m sharing all of this with you here because I now recognize that I changed my life. When I relocated to this country, I accommodated America by erasing my heart-connection to the values that I was taught and the beloved culture I shared with my friends and family members in our Chilean colectivo. 

I married my Chilean husband in Chile when I was just 19-years old.

I’d grown up going to Catholic mass when I was a child. I learned about God in the beautiful, old church building located in our barrio. There was a priest that helped us get married even though I was under-age. I hadn’t always appreciated church teachings or the priests I knew. Sometimes I was afraid of them because they seemed to judge me and that made me feel distant from them.  The colectivo culture had also tended to be critical sometimes.   Besides, when I had attended church in Chile, I was more preoccupied with what people were wearing and what was going to be served at the repast after the service ended. I really didn’t have a good reason to think that going to mass in America would be much different for me than it had been in my county. So, I hadn’t given attending church here in America a second thought until I realized that I wanted our children to be rooted in healthy faith-values some years later.

This early stage of my adulthood was paradoxical: I had traded in who I had been; yet, I was excited about relocating to start a new life with my husband and family in a new place that offered us new opportunities in a new culture, while begin submerged in a new language.    

Thirty years ago, my husband moved to America six months before I arrived so that he could secure his green card. I would join him shortly after he’d returned to Chile to fill out tons of paperwork, and then travel back to America to complete that part of our immigration process. I remember that this was the first series of steps we took toward eventually moving though our U.S. naturalization process. Meanwhile, my preparation for arrival on American soil involved my having to do extensive medical tests, take immunization shots, and get my own paperwork in order.  I felt then that even moving through that tedious, time consuming process was exciting! It was part of the “wow” factor that had accompanied my dreams!

Finally, the day arrived for me and our baby to get on a plane using a one-way flight to America! As we on-boarded, all our friends and families waved goodbye to us from the Chilean airport tarmac. I still have a photo of that moment! I’ll never forget it! My husband and I were so over-joyed at that we felt like little children on a Christmas morning! I was nervous about leaving everyone I knew behind, but even that didn’t much matter to me by then!

When our flight from Chile arrived in Miami, the last passenger to deplane and I exchanged a few words. He was the last person that I spoke to that spoke our Castellano language. I was so taken aback by what I saw in the airport that I couldn’t talk! In hindsight, I was a child. I was very shy. And although I had a voice, I didn’t feel that I had the ability to say what I instantly knew.  My first thought on American soil was, “This place isn’t me! It’s completely different from Chile!” I didn’t know how to ask for anything in English, not even to find out where the closest rest room was in the Miami airport.  We stared at the escalators there in total disbelief. The only word that kept coming to my mind was, “wow!” because it all just felt as if I was being dropped into a completely different world.

We had come from a country that was being run by a repressive Army. Still, in the new American environment I found myself, I felt that I couldn’t breathe. Even the weather felt repressive! It was muggy in August when I got to DC. Not even the slightest breeze was blowing. I harbored doubts and started to question myself. “How am I going to be able to find some way to breathe here?” I silently thought while looking for the wind.

I felt completely disoriented. There was no directional frame of reference. I could no longer see the “cordillera de las Andes” (i.e., Andes mountain range) in Santiago that had always let me know where I stood in relation to something else in my community. Now, even that point of reference was lost to me. I didn’t like feeling this way. It wasn’t part of the dream of America that I had so tightly held in forefront of my mind.

I didn’t socialize or talk much after our arrival here. I was traumatized by the white people. They just seemed cold to me. I knew that in my country, white people were not usually welcomed. Some whites were believed by us to be junkies while we thought others might be Ku Klux Klan members. So, we Chileans stayed clear of them. And while visiting in Chile, they’d usually confined themselves to tourist areas. Now having arrived in America, although white people were everywhere, it became clear to me that not all of them looked and acted as nice as had been the TV persona of John Travolta! I had strong biases against white’s back then. (I’ve since grown out of that bias for the most part.)

I cried a lot. I hadn’t finished high school or had time to figure out what I wanted to be. I knew that everyone who lived in the American culture was pushing themselves to go to universities. The two friends I had had children that they talked to all the time about the importance of their getting a good education. My husband’s family members also had doctors and lawyers too. So, again, I felt left out of my colectivo since I wasn’t considered to be a “professional.”

I had grown up in a house with a “parron” (i.e., a small vineyard) and with beautiful followers. My mother would give some to me. She always told me that “you can be without, but you can also have dignity…just stay clean, honest, decent, and loving.”  And she reminded me often that I can use the power of imagination to do just about anything I wanted to do. I loved watching her water her flowers. I thrilled at playing with my friends on our block. Now the focus of our attention in America was on money, money, money and having more money! But I didn’t speak up against that kind of talk because I had lost my voice.

Deep inside, I knew my true self. I had never really worried about money. My mother had one salary and got one payment each month. Since she made it work for us, I never allowed my not having a lot of money immobilized me. And I never lost my Castellano dialectos either!

After I learned to speak English, I talked all the time! I started to sell cosmetic products. I also got paid to clean other people’s houses. I was going to do whatever I had to do to help support our family. It was a matter of pride. The implanted thoughts in my head that I had carried with me from the time I was a little girl in Chile helped me remember that becoming a millionaire wasn’t going to be my goal in life. I just want my family to be well, centered, and at peace with themselves, and to try to make a positive difference in this harsh world. That’s always been good enough for me.

Many years have gone by. We now have three grown children. In fact, our son is an adult now with a child of his own. He wrote me a letter not long ago. In it he said that he is so glad that I tried and succeeded to learn new things and new perspectives. “Life,” he said, “is nothing but a series of experiences. We can let the [challenging] moments pass, and let the future moments come in their own time. We don’t have to worry about things that have happened already. We can cherish the now and meet each day one day at a time.”

He loves the life he’s been leading in California. He’s grown avocados and planted greenery there just like my mother before him. He enjoys the company of all sorts of people. He found his voice because, he says, I worked hard to find my own. He cherishes the little things in life. He knows how much I had so often longed in secret to do that. He knows that I now embrace all of the little things that life on this planet has to offer, every chance I get! 

Life is not about material things for me. That’s a gift from God that I cherish. 

I’m an active baptized Protestae (i.e., Protestant) church member now. I’m learning what the Word in the bible really means. I believe that I and others have value whether I or they give 10 percent of our money away, or not. I have come to believe that God wants the best for me and for everyone. No one should compromise who they are because of what they have, or because of what they lack in their wallet. We learn to find that we have enough as we learn that God thinks our person-hood is enough! Even some pastors and priests compromise themselves by becoming more concerned with what other people are or are not doing when it comes to their money! The experience that I’m having at church now is very different than it was for me before. I try to go deep inside to connect with the Spirit. And I find God’s presence there. 

Over the years, I have been Spirit-led to detach from everyone’s quest to earn and own more than they really need, while remaining in a loving relationship with them. I have detached from my old culture while keeping much of it intact. I’ve even been detaching from my adult children while learning to fall in love with myself. I am also detaching from myths about America while becoming a valuable member of American society. And while doing these things, I am offering myself up to God, as God does with my life all that God wants. I pray that I am becoming wise and that my living enriches other lives. 

I’ve been working on earning my GED this past year. My teacher has helped me write poems about the white snow cover that lay over the mountain tops back home. I will go back to my country to see that view from the patio of our family home in December when the Christmas tree lights are turned on for the children, and they dance and play nearby in the plaza. It is a place where everyone parents everyone else’s child, just as they do their own. I cannot buy that kind of love and sense of belonging here in the States. Nobody can. But I do believe that we can all come together to create that atmosphere in America, if we dare to.

In my experience, I can’t stop the path of someone else who needs to learn from their own experiences. No one can. We cannot change another person’s behavior. But we can live by example for others to see for themselves that if connection and goodness is possible for us…if being as truthful as we can be with ourselves ….and the calmness that comes from our experiencing that with God’s help is possible for us, then it’s also possible for them. 

Personally, I just offer myself by saying, “if you’d like to, we can practice expressing God’s love in community, together.”

I feel the wind on our backs, it’s pushing us all, forward!  I believe that we can choose to pull the air back in our lungs deeply here. We can breathe the way many people of color were once accustomed to again, by the hand of God.