I heard Mike hammering outside before light--he's determined to get an awning up over the back door before we leave, so we can get to a leather shop in Tool, Texas, before the end of the day--then head east. He's used his present wallet for 25 years, and we're returning to the maker for a touch of repair!
Elena's coming over at nine while her mom goes for a run, and Mike will be working on this project and loading the truck, hoping for a noon departure. I just couldn't leave without one more visit with Elena.
A House of My Own, by Sandra Cisneros, is a terrific book of essays and talks given over a period of many years. She writes about how she always felt like an "other"--the only girl in a family of six boys, the new girl at school with their frequent moves, etc.
At one time or other, we've all been made to feel like the other. When I teach writing, I always tell the story of a moment of discovering and naming my otherness. It's not enough simply to sense it, it has to be named, and then written about from there. Once I could name it, I wasn't ashamed or silent. I could speak up and celebrate my otherness as a woman, a working class person, an American of Mexican descent. When I recognized the places where I departed from my neighbors, my classmates, my family, my town, my brothers, when I discovered what I knew that no one else in the class knew, and spoke it in a voice that was my voice, the voice I used when I was sitting in the kitchen, dressed in my pajamas, talking over a table littered with cups and dishes, when I could give myself permission to speak in that intimate space, then I could talk and sound like myself, not like me trying to sound like someone I wasn't. Then I could speak, shout, laugh from a place that was uniquely mine, that was no one else's in the history of the universe, that would never be anyone else's ever.
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