My mom is pretty pragmatic. She doesn’t dwell and tries to finds solutions rather than sit there and overanalyze. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m quite the dweller. I’ll think of a solution and get it handled in the moment, but then I’ll go back after the fact and think, overanalyze, ruminate, question and drive myself crazy.
Most people say they don’t have regrets because every decision they’ve made has made them the person they are. Sooner or later you’re supposed to always get an answer to your “why,” right? I’m currently at a phase in my life where I have an unanswered “why.” Of course, in my domino effect of a brain lacking the answer to this “why” connects to many things, even my car. Yes, I’m that much of a looney tune. Hey, at least I’m self-aware!
When I was talking to my mom about this she said to me:
Agua pasada no mueve molino.
(Bygone streams don’t power windmills.)
Honestly, I don’t know when in her life she’s ever, if ever, lived near a windmill or where this refrán (saying) came from. What I will say is that when she said this to me it rattled my mind, and I laughed. Point is, she made me feel better by referencing some mythical windmill, and it was a nice reminder of why I go to her.
She doesn’t have an answer for everything, because no one does, but she always pulls through with just the right words.
Victoria Moll-Ramirez is a broadcast journalist based in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Miami, FL and had the great fortune of being raised by the sassiest, spunkiest, wisest, most hysterical Honduran woman in the world. Victoria’s mother, Bélgica, is 60-years-old, resides in Little Havana (Miami) and enjoys a good margarita accompanied by a heartrending ranchera. Victoria blogs about her mom’s funny and wise sayings on, “In My Mother’s Words.”
Barbara Aliprantis (Photo/ Kaitlyn Elphinstone/ Cayman Cultural Foundation)
Barbara Aliprantis jokes that she started listening in utero. She was born with a superb memory, an expressive voice, and a vivid imagination – the recipe for the perfect storyteller.
“I remember the day I left the fishing village of Paros, Greece, when I was two and a half, as though it were yesterday,” she says. “I was on a donkey and my sister was on another donkey…my mother was crying – everyone was crying – that image stayed with me all my life.”
It was 1937 when Aliprantis left her native island in the Aegean Sea with her mother, brother, and sister, to join their father in New York.
“I found myself in a neighborhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn…I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood,” says Aliprantis, explaining her Jewish-NY accent.
Her immigration story was the first she ever told. It all started when her first grade teacher asked her to introduce herself, and her different background, in front of the class – and she’s been telling that story ever since.
“I didn’t even mind an audience even then,” she says, laughing. “I loved to tell stories and put on a show at the drop of a hat, and I’m doing that now. A teacher affects your eternity. It’s so important to let children know it’s good to be different.”
Aliprantis did not know at the time that telling her story would eventually lead her to becoming a professional storyteller who would produce workshops and events, in voice and sign language, in theaters, schools, libraries, community centers, and festivals all over the country.
“I have worn many hats in my life,” she says about her life before professional storytelling. “Being a Greek girl growing up in a Flatbush, Brooklyn [in the 1950’s] I [was expected to be] a nurse or a secretary. Three months into nursing training at Brooklyn College, I decided it wasn’t for me. I went to business school to study typing – it was probably the saddest part of my life.”
She then went to business school for six months, while what she really wanted was to get a job in show business.
“My first interview was at CBS,” recalls Aliprantis as if it were yesterday. “I was so nervous, I failed the typing test.”
She says she ended up getting a job at a corporation working for six men.
“Being a girl of the ‘50s – oh my God – it was whatever they wanted,” she says about the job that paid $85 a week – enough to pay the rent for her apartment in Queens. “It was a different time.”
Aliprantis married at 21, and 10 years later – in 1968 – she quit her job and went to Greece to adopt a baby boy. Three years later, she gave birth to a son. She says it was one of her dreams to be a mother – so she decided to stay at home and dedicate her time to raising her two boys.
In 1980, when her boys were bigger, she took a full-time position as a storyteller at a school for the deaf in the Bronx.
“I fell in love with it immediately,” says Aliprantis. “I started learning sign language on the job. I loved it. It changed my life.”
After 10 years there, she left to work with high schoolers in Queens.
“I will be forever grateful to the students and staff at both schools who taught me new ways to listen to the world and tell my stories,” says Aliprantis.
Back in 1985, while working at the school for the deaf, she had enrolled in Queensborough Community College to finally study acting and theater production – what she had always wanted to pursue as a young girl.
“I was the oldest one in the class, and the only one who did all the assignments,” says Aliprantis, who two years later enrolled in SUNY Empire State College and graduated in record time. “I got 89 life experience credits, and graduated in a year and a half with a BA in the performing arts and concentration in sign language and performance.
After graduation, Aliprantis taught an introductory course in sign language communication and storytelling at QCC for almost 30 years. Throughout the 1990’s she was a member of QCC’s Professional Theatre Residency Program and co-founded a not-for-profit community organization called the American Center for Theatre and Storytelling – now called the New York Story Exchange.
“In 1997, I established the Second Tuesday of the Month Evening Series at the famous Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village,” she says. “It is the longest running evening series for adults in NYC.”
The program entails three featured tellers, plus ‘Open Telling’ for three or four volunteer tellers to share a 5-minute story.
“The biggest misconception about storytelling is that it’s just for children,” says the woman who was honored at NY City Hall for her work. “It brings people together.”
What advice about life would she tell her younger self if she could now?
“Nothing is ever lost,” says Aliprantis.” Everything happens for a reason. Every obstacle is for a reason. Sometimes the reason doesn’t reveal itself until later on.”
My last semester in college I was the morning show intern at a Spanish language radio station. One of the segments on the morning show was called “Oye Que Te Cojo” (“Hey, I got you.”) Basically, fans would call in with ideas for a prank call and the main host would execute it and play it on air. Well, one day he asked me why we didn’t play a practical joke on my mom. I was ALL for it.
We started brainstorming, and he suggested maybe telling my mom I was pregnant. I told him she wouldn’t believe that. However, the one thing my mom ALWAYS worries about is drinking and driving. That was it! I would call my mom and tell her I got pulled over and arrested for a DUI.
The next day, I called her and told her I had gotten pulled over after a night out. I put on my best crying voice, exaggerated the story, and said I argued with the cop and even flicked him off. It was two weeks before graduation and I told her I didn’t know if I’d be allowed to graduate. NOT ONCE did she get mad. All she kept saying was:
Ayyy Victoria! Por qué, Victoria?! Por qué?!
(Ohhh Victoria! Why, Victoria?! Why?!)
Then, in the middle of it all, the host of the morning show starts talking to her about the situation without even introducing himself. The most bizarre thing was the fact she didn’t question who this strange man talking to her was! He finally told her it was just a prank, and none of it was true. Poor thing. When I called her, after the fact, she told me when she answered my call she was driving and had to pull over because she got cold sweats.
What I will say is that was a reminder of the unconditional love my mom has for us. She could’ve lost her mind, she would’ve had every right to. She wasn’t mad – she was disappointed, which is arguably worse. She didn’t yell, curse or condemn me. Knowing her, she was racking her brain to figure out how to fix this for her daughter – a daughter who pulled a horrible prank on her mother for thousands of people in the city of Orlando to hear.
Victoria Moll-Ramirez is a broadcast journalist based in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Miami, FL and had the great fortune of being raised by the sassiest, spunkiest, wisest, most hysterical Honduran woman in the world. Victoria’s mother, Bélgica, is 60-years-old, resides in Little Havana (Miami) and enjoys a good margarita accompanied by a heartrending ranchera. Victoria blogs about her mom’s funny and wise sayings on, “In My Mother’s Words.”
Almost everything Maria Esposito knows about cooking, she learned from her grandma who raised her back in Puerto Rico. She brought those cooking chops to the Bronx where adaptation was key. Now a grandma herself in Warwick, N.Y., Maria imparts her culinary wisdom to you wonderfully hungry viewers in this DOUBLE-DISH feature on pernil and arroz con gandules (roast pork and rice with pigeon peas) which includes fresh-picked greens from her garden. You’ll need to take a page out of her recipe book (in fact, you can once I finish up the “Cooking with Granny” recipe book!). Enjoy this mouthwatering episode!
Caroline Shin is a multimedia journalist based in NYC. Recently, she launched “Cooking With Granny” – a Web series in which grandmas teach how to cook traditional dishes from their cultures while simultaneously sharing their funny, sad and surprising experiences with immigration and multiculturalism in a world that’s very different from today’s. Shin was previously a video editor at New York Magazine and holds an M.A. from Columbia Journalism School.
Sister Consuelo Morales (Photo/Victor Hugo Valdivia)
Ever since Consuelo Morales was a small child in the northeastern metropolitan city of Monterrey, Mexico, she says she remembers feeling the unceasing urge to help others. She quickly learned doing so is what made her the happiest.
One day, when she was in elementary school, Morales recalls encountering some poor children who didn’t have any shoes.
“I took them to the shoe store where my mother bought my shoes, and I talked with the salespeople there to sell me 23 pairs of shoes,” says Morales. “I told them my mother would pay for them.”
Her mom was shocked when she got the bill later on. What also surprised her mom, Morales says, is when she was a little older and decided to become a Catholic nun.
“When I finished my BA, she sent me to Canada for two years to see if I could forget that I wanted to be a nun,” says Morales. “She was expecting me to marry, or anything else, but even there, I found some way to work with poor people. It is something I have inside of me.”
Morales spent many years working to help indigenous communities and children in Veracruz and Mexico City, and she returned to Monterrey in 1992, when she heard her home city was in dire need of help – from abuse in state-run orphanages to the forced displacement of people from their lands. It was then she helped found Citizens in Support of Human Rights (Ciudadanos en Apoyo de Derechos Humanos, CADHAC), and she has devoted her life to that cause for the past two decades.
Her work has been especially challenging from 2007 through 2012, she says, when the drug war started to reach a peak and the narcos started killing and kidnapping innocent members of the community. She has served as a support system for family members of the victims. According to the latest figures, it has taken the lives of nearly 23,000 people – and counting.
Courtesy CADHAC
Morales, now 67, still arrives at CADHAC around 8:30 am every morning. Throughout the day, she has appointments with people needing help with justice or violent situations.
“They come and ask questions and share information with us, and we help them resolve their problems,” says the nun. “We may help them, and stay beside them, but never in front of them. We help them with the tools to get justice.”
Most recently, Morales is one of the protagonists of a documentary film, “Kingdom of Shadows,” which speaks about the consequences of the U.S. – Mexico drug war.
“We all are involved in this, and we have to give the little we have to support and make a change in this situation,” she says.
What advice about life would she give her younger self with the wisdom she now has at this age?
“Try to be in harmony with yourself,” says Morales, adding, “Treat others as you would have them do unto you.”
Victoria Moll-Ramirez is a broadcast journalist based in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Miami, FL and had the great fortune of being raised by the sassiest, spunkiest, wisest, most hysterical Honduran woman in the world. Victoria’s mother, Bélgica, is 60-years-old, resides in Little Havana (Miami) and enjoys a good margarita accompanied by a heartrending ranchera. Victoria blogs about her mom’s funny and wise sayings on, “In My Mother’s Words.”
