Victoria’s mom, Belgica, dancing with her brother. They’ve been bolero-ing together since the ’70s.
I have a tendency of being a bit of a dweller. I think about things and analyze them time and time again. Frankly, it’s borderline torturous. Many times the person forced to listen to me and my “what ifs,” “could haves” and “should haves” is my wonderful mother. When she gets to a point where she thinks I truly need to get over it, she says,
“Ay, Victoria! Olvidate de ese tango y baila bolero.â€
(Direct translation: Oh, Victoria! Forget that tango and dance bolero.)
My mother has always pushed forward. She left her country, and pushed forward. She raised two kids on her own, with no family around, and pushed forward. In 2015, I’m going to do a better job of pushing forward.
A new year is a new opportunity. Some things will be great, and others will not be so great. When they’re not so great, just remind yourself to move on. Forgive yourself, and move forward.
In 2015, I hope to do a little less tangoing and a lot more bolero-ing. It seems to be working for my mom just fine.
The one thing my mother truly laments about her life is not being able to get an education. Being a woman from a third world country made this incredibly difficult for her. She’s always said if she would’ve been given the opportunity she would’ve been a teacher.
This is one thing, among many others, my mother never wanted us to feel. She never wanted us to lament not having an education. Frankly, my brother and I didn’t have a choice. As kids, I remember her always telling us:
For the record, neither of us became either of those but her whole point was to ingrain the idea of higher education in our minds. I thought this was the norm. I thought this is what everyone was told at home. I was wrong. I was also incredibly lucky.
Having raised us by herself she talked to us about a lot of intense topics early on. One of those included what she wanted for us if she passed away before we finished our schooling. These were always her words to us:
“Si yo me muero y ustedes no se han graduado de la universidad, el dÃa que se gradúen ustedes van a mi tumba y me dicen ‘Mami, cumplÃ.’”
(If I die and you guys haven’t graduated college, the day you graduate you will go to my tomb and say, “Mom, I did it.â€)
As an adult, I can’t imagine how hard it is to say those words to your children. Today is five years to the date that I graduated college. I’m a journalist and my brother, who also graduated, works as a marketing manager in Chicago. She told my brother and I the exact same thing when we graduated:
“Ya usted cumplió conmigo.”
(Loosely translated: You’ve done all I’ve asked of you.)
That’s all she ever asked of us, to get an education. She said it was the only gift she could give us. It will forever be the greatest gift she gave us.
Barney Smith is a retired master plumber from Alamo Heights, Texas. At 93, he still treasures the trade that was passed down to him from his father by memorializing damaged toilet seats.
Every day, Smith goes to work in his garage to create art on toilet seats. He houses all of his works of art there as well, as he refuses to sell any. There are so many currently in his garage, that it is now known as the Toilet Seat Art Museum.
“Number 1,156 is the one I’m working on now. I’ve been working on it for several days,†says Smith who spurts out the toilet seat pieces by number, as well as the significance of each, with ease. “I have a catalog, but I have memorized many…â€
Smith has made toilet seat art with everything from state license plates to sea shells. He gets inspired by experiences he wishes to remember, and the materials he has available at the moment. Sometimes visitors come by and bring him materials to work with. He says once he even had a visitor came from Seoul, Korea who stayed for three days.
“I get a bunch of stuff, and I say, ‘Okay, what am I going to do here?’,†says Smith, saying his latest project developed because a scooter club member walked in with a light bulb and some spark plugs.
Smith says joyfully that it takes him anywhere from 20 to 200 hours to completely adorn one toilet seat cover.
“It took me 200 hours to find rocks in the Rio Grande River and polish them,†remembers Smith as sharply as if it were yesterday. “My wife and I spent hours on those rocks. We went all the way to Laredo to try to find some pretty ones.â€
He says he’s traveled a lot – from NYC (for appearances on “The Today Show,†“The View,†and “The Montel Williams Showâ€) to the Auschwitz concentration camps in Poland.
“I wanted barbed wire from the concentration camps,†says Smith. “I put it in my pocket and took it home, and put it on a toilet seat – that was in 1995. In 1996, we went to Germany and saw the Berlin wall, and all the way down to Austria. We saw the mountains from ‘The Sound of Music’…I picked up a rock and nail from the Berlin Wall and two flags, and I put a piece of the rock from one side of the wall, and the piece of barbed wire on a toilet seat. I’ve got a lot of history hanging up in the Toilet Seat Museum.â€
Smith says he got the idea to use toilet seats as his canvas when he was still a plumber. He had gone to the plumbing supply house to purchase materials for a job and noticed a pile of slightly damaged toilet seats that were going to be discarded.
“I took about half a dozen toilet seats to my apartment,†remembers Smith. “I went back to the job, and when I got through that night, I started my artwork. I went back and showed the manager of the store what I was doing, and he told me I could have them all. So I had almost 50 seats to start out with.â€
Until this day, Smith says he calls plumbing supply houses for damaged seats. Sometimes, people even bring them to him.
Smith says he gets so many visitors that he now only opens up by appointment only.
“I can’t afford to open up every time someone passes by in their car,†he says, taking his work seriously. “I got someone saying they want to come by this weekend from Georgia.â€
Smith says he still has lots of energy to keep making his art, and if he is lucky to still be alive in May, he will be making his 94th birthday seat.
“I have two decades worth of birthday toilet seats,†says Smith, who tries to fit all of his birthday cards for each year on each birthday seat. He has three daughters, seven grandchildren, and 12 great grandchildren.
If he had one piece of advice to give his younger self, what would it be?
“I have been married for 74 years. I lost my wife a year ago,†says Smith, adding he met her at the age of 18, and she was 17. “I advise to keep God in the arrangement. Anything that comes your way, ask the Lord if this is His will, or don’t do it. That will keep you together..If God is in the arrangement, you will want to stay together. Our long-lived marriage is because of God in the arrangement. That is my advice to anyone.â€
As mentioned in my previous post, my mother has always had to deal with having a daughter who is unable to sit still, literally and figuratively.
As far back as I could remember she would always tell me,
“No corras antes de caminar.”
(Don’t try running before you can walk.)
Throughout my life, it’s applied to multiple scenarios.
Me:Mom, me quiero rasurar las piernas
Mom:Victorita, no corras antes de caminar.
(Me: Mom, I want to shave my legs. Mom: Victoria, don’t run before you can walk.)
Me:Mom, ya no aguanto! Quiero salir corriendo!
Mom:Mija, ten paciencia. No corras antes de caminar.
(Me: Mom, I can’t take it anymore! I want to run out. Mom: My daughter, be patient. Don’t try running before you can walk.)
She then likes to go on and tell me how ironic it is that I’m always “running†when I was lazy and took forever to learn how to walk as a baby.
The moral is that everything comes in due time. We spend our lives rushing through every moment, every phase. Sometimes you just gotta sit back, drink a mimosa and enjoy the moment.
Baker extraordinaire Dorie Greenspan never attended culinary school, yet she has won the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award three times for her numerous cookbooks and culinary magazine articles. Her 11th cookbook also hit shelves just in time for planning desserts for Thanksgiving.
“Baking Chez Moi†is a culmination of Greenspan’s delicious dessert discoveries while traveling around Paris. For the past 20 years, Greenspan has been dividing her time between New York, Connecticut and Paris, but she says she feels most at home in Paris.
“Every time I’m getting ready to go, I’m excited as the first time,†says the 67-year-old in her sweet manner. “I love the way of life, the rhythm of life…There seems to be more time to have dinner together, or meet for a drink, or a coffee at a cafe. I love the way people love food in France. You can buy a little tartlet, and it’s wrapped so beautifully.â€
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Greenspan remembers vividly her first trip to the City of Lights 43 years ago.
“I came back and went directly to my parents’ house and told them they made a big mistake – I was meant to be Parisian,†she says.
Her love of the kitchen, however, wasn’t as evident to her in the beginning.
“I made French fries when I was 13 years old and almost burnt my parents house,†remembers Greenspan. “I started cooking from cookbooks when I got married [while I was in college]. It was a good feeling to cook for my husband and friends. I loved the whole process – the preparation – I loved having people around the table. That’s when I fell in love with it – as I was learning.â€
But she still didn’t think to pursue the craft as her career at this point. She graduated from college, started working, went to graduate school and had a child.
“I thought I was going to be an academic in gerontology,†says Greenspan. “But my fabulous husband said, ‘You really love baking – why don’t you make that your career?’â€
That’s when she finally gave in to her calling. She self-taught herself with books and people who inspired her.
“I was really lucky when I think about it,†recalls Greenspan. “I went to work for Elle magazine when it launched in America. It had a wonderful food section – so I got to read about the fabulous French chefs. Daniel Boulud had a huge influence on me, and then I worked with Julia Child. I wrote ‘Baking with Julia.’ I didn’t go to culinary school, but I learned from the best.â€
These days, she likes to get up early and starts working around 8am.
“What I try to do is write in the morning and do recipe development in the afternoon,†says Greenspan, who spends most of her day in the kitchen – with happy music playing in the background – and sometimes forgets to leave her house until 7pm.
She doesn’t love all the dishes she has to wash afterwards, but it’s all worth it to her.
“I love the sense of happiness that you get when you’ve made something,†says Greenspan. “I’m inspired by ingredients…and there’s something wonderful about starting something from scratch, and then sharing it with other people and making them happy. I love what I do, and because I write about it, I get to pass it along.â€
Greenspan says what she’s most grateful for, this year and every year, is her husband and son. She’s spending this Thanksgiving in NY.
Slow-roasted pineapple (Photo/Alan Richardson)
“I’m such a last-minute person, but I know I’m definitely making my slow-roasted pineapple recipe and the custardy apple squares,†which Greenspan says are two of her favorites from her new book. “I think I’m also going to make the desert roses, which are corn flakes treats.â€
Custardy apple squares (Photo/Alan Richardson)
Greenspan seems to flow with ideas, which seem to pour effortlessly onto the pages of more books. She’s already working on her next one on cookies.
If she had one piece of advice she could tell her younger self, what would it be?
“What I would tell my younger moi is say ‘yes’ to everything,†says Greenspan, explaining she wishes she started younger doing that herself. “Be fearless, try things.â€
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.â€
