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Choosing the Perfect St. Valentine's Greeting

(Editor’s note: This puppy-love Valentine was written for Hispanic Link News Service 24 years ago. Author Elsa and boyfriend Paul have been married for nearly…

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(Editor’s note: This puppy-love Valentine was written for Hispanic Link News Service 24 years ago. Author Elsa and boyfriend Paul have been married for nearly two decades now — but not to each other; they ended up choosing different spouses. Elsa and her husband Darryl Wong reside in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., with their young son and two teenage daughters, who find their mother’s early romance amusing and now have added Chinese to their cultural heritages to pick and choose from.)

Boy, boy, girl, girl, boy. I was No. 4, the youngest daughter. Three of us were short, dark and stocky like our mom. Two turned out more like our dad, lighter and taller.

Our Anglo father usually spoke to us in English. Our Mexican mother used Spanish.  But on one matter, I found it hard to believe them in either language.

Endlessly, they told us how lucky we were to be their kids. More than a thousand times — maybe 10,000 — they told us, “You’re double lucky. You’ve got two great cultures to choose from. You get to pick and choose the best of each.”

To know that it wasn’t true, all I had to do was look in the mirror. Along with two of my brothers, I had the dark skin, the short, stocky body and the chubby cheeks. Nobody had offered me a choice.  I was one of the “Mexican” ones.

While we were growing up in California, I wanted so much to look like my older sister. I was jealous of her fair skin, her high cheekbones and her slim body. I envied her for the friends she had and the boys she attracted.

Regularly, I shared my adolescent agony with my mother, who would assure me that my brown skin was beautiful and that my day would come. “Paciencia,” she would counsel.  Patience.

It took till after high school for me to lose my baby fat. I grew a few inches, to my present five-feet-one-and-a-half. The chubby cheeks will probably stay with me till I die. Time and diet helped mollify my physical concerns, but still I was bothered by “differences.”

Whenever I visited the homes of non-Hispanic friends, I was uncomfortable.  Maybe it was the bread on the table, instead of tortillas.  Maybe it was the orderliness of their houses and the formal, almost impersonal way they spoke to each other. 

In college, I became adept at shifting back and forth culturally — to be a Chicana in Chicano crowds and to act Anglo among Anglos.

In my sophomore year, when I started dating a tall, breadstick-shaped Anglo named Paul, I’d just put on my Anglo face to relate.

But it didn’t work when I took him home to meet the family. In our home, Hispanic culture rules.  Paul was engulfed with tortillas and abrazos and the noise and outrageous jokes that I grew up with. He wasn’t allowed to stand back and observe. He was grabbed by his blonde hair and thrust into our family by my brothers and parents and their compadres. They teased him mercilessly about his pale color, his basketball height, his “white” mannerisms, even his inability to gulp down jalapeño peppers.

He survived the initial culture shock. The tortillas he liked right away. He learned to dance Chicano-style, displaying the same enthusiasm and lack of rhythm that are my father’s trademarks.

He came back for more. At college in Sacramento, after an afternoon of studying together or a movie, instead of going to McDonald’s for a hamburger, we’d go to the nearest kitchen and prepare ourselves huevos con chorizo.  He continued to eat chorizo even after reading the list of ingredients on the label.

He enrolled in Spanish class and developed an interest in Hispanic issues like bilingual education and affirmative action, and in our history and culture. A good student, he’d take extra pleasure in correcting my Spanish when I would use poor grammar or the wrong tense. Sometimes I wondered who was the native speaker.

Still etched in my memory is the void he would occasionally describe to me “growing up as an all-American boy.” He’d say how fortunate I was to grow up part Mexican, too. He’d tell me:

“You’re so lucky, you have culture.”

Sometimes I wonder if I took Paul a little too far and a little too fast with his initiation into my second culture. Today he walks around the University of California, Santa Barbara campus claiming to be mexicano. He signs his letters “Pablo” and answers to “Huero.”  Whitey.

Now I’m in Washington, D.C. He is still in California. Our Valentine’s greeting to each other will be in Spanish, I know.  It’s a language better suited to express love. “Te quiero mucho,” we’ll tell each other.

For my parents, I’ll get a card with a special bilingual message. That way they’ll know that they don’t have to give me the “pick and choose” lecture anymore. My friend Paul/Pablo has convinced me. (Email the writer care of [email protected]).

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