They said I came
out crying, "llorando mucho" my father said.
Unprovoked, no spanking required.
Mother said it was as if I had already lived a full life and knew the sorrows my new life would bring. Crazy, huh?
How can an infant,
barely one minute old have lived so much?
Funny, huh? how in an instant, we assume other people's identities and are left to figure out how these will play out in our lives.
Rivas was my father's name, Gingerich my mother's. I had no choice, these were my given names. I was born at exactly 4:45 P.M., May 5, 1967. Rivas Gingerich. Sounds foreign, huh? It was foreign! It belonged to people I barely knew. I didn't know where they came from, all I knew was that I was theirs and that I would be going to their home, now my home.
Rivas Gingerich was I.
"Watch out world, here comes La Llorona!" That is what my father said when he presented me to his friends. "Don't be fooled", my mother would say. "She is strong willed".
"La Llorona", The Crying
Woman. This was my father's term of endearment for me. No, he wouldn't
always call me that, only when I was troubled. But not the normal kind
of trouble kids would get into like using walls as canvas, or cutting
your little sister's bangs; but only when he would see me in my room,
playing alone, talking to myself or, like when I would shy away from
playing with others, preferring instead to be an observer, his little
wallflower. I remember times like that. It wasn't that I didn't want to
play, it was that I didn't know how to play this particular game. Even
though it was the same game played each time, it was always different.
Different because the players were different. One day it was Anita,
Jose and Ricardo; another day it was Jane, Bobbie and James. Different
because the setting was different. One day it was at the park, another
day at the country club.
Mother was different. Different than my father. We were alike, my mother and I. I felt comfort in knowing deep inside my gut that I was not alone. That she had taken the same path I was about to take. Even though she never said it aloud, she too called me Llorona. I could see it in the way she looked at me. She and I were the same. Lloronas, my mother and I.
click on image to begin story #1
