I’m going to bookend this week with trips to my parent’s house and spending time with the family. A lot of family – not just my parents and siblings. This past Saturday was Ana’s baby shower (there were more friends of hers than there was family, but still…) and this coming Saturday is my uncle’s funeral.

I keep starting to write something about my uncle but my throat always catches and my stomach churns and I have to stop and erase what I’ve written. He is perhaps one of three members of my father’s immediate family that we were closest to. The other two were my grandmother, who died when I was eleven, and my Uncle Luis. He was probably the most light-hearted of my dad’s siblings and had the best Popeye laugh since Willy Costello. He was two years younger than my dad and one of his most constant companions in life.

It’s hit me pretty hard, but I figure my feelings are equal parts grief and empathy with my family, especially my father.

My dad and I have long been pretty close. We used to be really close and excellent at guessing each other’s thoughts. Things shifted seven years ago when he retired and I went off to college. I had my mind widened to the point of obscenity and he came face to face with the fact that he was quickly becoming obsolete. But I still know him best of anyone in my family. When his mood shifts I can practically smell it. I don’t have to look at him to be able to guess what’s on his mind.

Rewinding my aunt’s words in my head “…he passed away on Thursday. Didn’t they tell you?” has less of an impact than remembering my dad’s crushed eyes as he all but ran out of the patio.

Family is funny thing. The concept transcends country, color, politics and ethnicity, but many of us, especially the verbose, artsy-types, I’ve found, spend a lot of time and effort trying to get away from “family.” There was something to it that didn’t quite work for us, or maybe we didn’t fit in particularly well or something…. What’s really funny is how much we miss them when we’re not around them much.

The house I went to on Saturday was a sty. I think it might always have been that way. Five kids and two exhausted parents will do that. But only now that I don’t live there, now that if I want to spend the night I have to do so in a terribly uncomfortable sofa bed, only now do I cheerfully take up a broom or a sponge and “help out.” I help while my mom runs around cooking and cleaning and setting between trips to her bedroom to swap out the robe for a dress, the slippers for nice shoes, to take out the curlers, put on the make up, etc. I help while my brothers do the best to ignore the goings on and try to be as invisible as possible so that they won’t accidentally get caught with nothing to do and get roped into some chore or other. I help while my sister runs into the house and then back out again on an errand and misses the first guests to her shower. I used to hate chores. Now I sort of feel like the house should be razed if they ever want a clean space to live in. But I love that house. I’ve never lived in a different house. I wish I had the money to buy it from my parents.

But I meant to write about familial ties, not things, or even memories.

There’s a lot about my immediate family that I ran away from. In the cosmopolitan world I’ve come to know my parents are depressing throw-backs who honestly believe that if everyone was a good Catholic there wouldn’t be nearly so many problems in the world to day. My dad was raised and did his darnedest to impart upon me several embarrassing stereotypes and my really is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. I’m not sure if she gave up hoping that I’m still a virgin but last night she called my apartment and was honestly upset that I wasn’t in by eleven.

On Saturday it was hard to ignore some of their worst sides – my mother screeching at the boys in a pitch I only get when I’m being dropped down the big hill on the fastest rollercoaster at Magic Mountain, my dad puttering around in his workshop ignoring all of the work that needed to be done in the house – but some how it didn’t really get to me. It doesn’t really get to me any more. Of course they weren’t targeting me with any of it, so I could shrug it off….

There’s a lot to my family that’s common of Latin families – we eat a lot, great conversation will make the best out of anything, great fights are like great sex - unrelenting, loud and can make the heads of the unwary spin.

It was at school that I trained my face to stillness. For as long as I can remember I have either gotten teased ferociously, accused of being angry when I wasn't, or else it was assumed that I was bored and had no interest in what was being said.

It's a direct progression, really. I used to show my emotions clearly and without constraint. Most kids do. And I was teased when I couldn't control them - which of course had downward spiral effect. It was my dad who taught me to just play it cool. To take it easy and joke around. Essentially to give as good as I got. I'm still working on this, and it's a sign of the analytical thought-training that I recieved in school when I stay silent for a while before responding to someone's remarks.

It sounds bad when I say that I had to go to school to learn logic and how to harness reason, but really I had to go somewhere where people couldn't rely on their gut reactions and overriding passions to get them through the day.

I think that's the crux of the matter when I think about the concept that I am "bi-cultural." Why this means something different from being Mexican-American, I'm not sure.

All I've ever known about being bi-anything is it feels like I have one foot on a wooden raft and the other foot on a different raft and it takes all my strength to keep the two rafts from floating too far from each other.

At home I do my darnedest to make sure I don't argue with my parents or give the impression that I disagree too much with them. If we do start arguing anyway (it happens, I just try not to start it) I try gently to point out their logical fallacies while they try, not-so-gently, to remind where their priorities are and where mine should be. We've come a long way from the days when my parents would threaten to, or would indeed, hit me for talking back and when I would walk away crying because I wasn't allowed to say my piece.

But taking it "lying down" is something I never really learned (can you tell?). To this day I value passion over reason (though reasonable passion trumps them both), purely because it's the only way to truly know I'm alive when I feel something.

Blood and guts don't scare me or gross me out, that's all part of the world that we live. Trying to hide away from it all as I've known some of my friends to do is a sort of madness. It might be my own madness speaking but one of the most calming sights I've ever witnessed is my own cut dripping blood. It's very satisfying to feel so focussed and so... whole....

It's a long way to the Rosary on Friday night and longer still till the funeral on Saturday, but it is so calming to know I'll be surrounded by people I don't "get" at all, and yet still understand.

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Post-Script
Not to insult Kenny, our mighty host, but I now have a LiveJournal. The silly thing is mis-named as it's not really a journal, but no one asks me about these things. But hey, now I have my very own personal message board. *snickers*