Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá
Preparing for a homecoming.
I’ve broken the only rule I made for myself for this newsletter - write and post before noon every Friday. No excuses, I’ve let my 107 subscribers down! I hope you’ll forgive me.
Today marks one month since I started this newsletter. A huge THANK YOU for all the support - especially to my three paid subscribers: Hanna, Tony, and my mom! I have no paid content for you … yet! But I so appreciate your support in my writing.
I’ve been preparing for a trip to see my grandparents next week in Mexico, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the saying:
“Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá”
Neither here, nor there.
Not from here, Not from there.
I can’t remember why or how this even came up, but I remember being asked in the classroom in 2nd or 3rd grade, where my parents were from. I said my dad was from Michoacán. The teacher said, “Michigan”? Hmm, must be the english way to say it,I thought, so I said yes! And for a while there, I believed it. Until we learned the US states and capitols and I realized very much so that no, my dad was not from the midwest state of Michigan.
I grew up in Southern California, a place where Spanish words are used instead of their English counterparts. In Santa Ana, California, where more than 77% of the city’s population is Latino. Where California-Mexican food is its own thing. A place where, even then, I knew was a pocket unlike the rest.
History lessons in school were rooted in showing that all the atrocities made were all in pursuit of the American Dream. I learned about Jim Crow Laws in the South. I learned about the missionaries creating these beautiful missions, which for some reason every 4th grader in California had to recreate one, but at the expense of forcing Native Americans to abandon their ways of living and torturing them to do so. I learned about Operation Wetback - the largest mass deportation in America. These lessons taught me that the American experiment may only be for a small percentage of people that perhaps may not include my family and I.
So then I would look back to Mexico and think, maybe I belong there? My dad left when he was 17 from not-Michigan, and my mom, who mainly grew up in Tijuana, Baja California, left when she was 18 to work for a bit. And when they met here, they both didn’t look back. Soon, they found themselves becoming more American themselves. Yes, we still had tortillas at every single meal, but it was in their mannerisms. In their language. In what they became accustomed to. But they were from allá. The allá shaped who they were as adults, and that wasn’t the case for me. I didn’t belong there.
“Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá”
Part of the reason I didn’t get to writing this newsletter sooner is that I’ve been preparing for a trip to visit my dad’s home. I haven’t been back in seven years - the entirety of my relationship. (Happy First Wedding Anniversary to my husband!)
By preparation I mean that on this visit, I’m coming armed with a camera, a microphone, and a tripod as I seek to capture some family oral history. I feel a calling to preserve stories, names, recipes. I want to capture a grandmother who has spent her life in motion. A mother to nine kids. Half of whom left the country in search of better opportunities. What must that have been like? To see her children leave her in a time with less communication and letters that got lost in the mail. Some able to visit, others not. Years passing on without ever having all nine of her kids together again. Who was she before all of it?
I want to sit with her. Listen to her. Capture her. Because as long as I have her around, sí soy de allá, I am from there. This place that made my dad who he is holds a piece of my heart, and a part of my identity. Because the Mexican story of migration is just as much an American one. De Aquí y De Allá.
Happy Solar Eclipse! May you find peace in this time of change.