Tejana Yo

By Andrea Theisen

A short collection of essays and poetry about growing up Latina in Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrea Theisen
• Release date: Oct 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310616198

Andrea Theisen

Mrs. Theisen was born and raised in Uvalde, Texas. At around the age of 13, she dropped out of school halfway into the 7th grade. She is an ex-migrant worker who always felt the need to write, but her lack of a formal education held her back. After the age of 40, she began submitting essays about her life to her local bi-lingual newspaper, La Voz de Uvalde, where she was. encouraged to continue submitting stories."Tejana Yo" was originally self-published locally under the title, "Voices in my Head." Mrs. Theisen has won several awards for poetry in n various creative writing contests, and a few have been added to this e-book..Mrs. Theisen is married, has 4 children, 5 grandchildren and 3 great-great grandchildren.

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Tejana Yo

by

Andrea Zamarripa Theisen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Andrea Zamarripa Theisen

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Tejana Yo

A SHORT COLLECTION

OF ORIGINAL ESSAYS AND POETRY

Written by:

ANDREA (ANDY) ZAMARRIPA THEISEN

The voices in my head clamor to be heard;

Seeking liberation from deep crevices of grey…

The pressure of my thoughts may have turned them into diamonds

Or into dull and smooth cold pebbles

Forever skipping over placid pools of bittersweet tears

The voices in my head ache to launch their ripples;

To make you think, or smile, or cry;

Or perhaps to caress your loneliness

Andy Zamarripa – approx. 19 years old

I dedicate this updated and expanded version of Voices in My Head to my family and friends, with special thanks to my husband, Bob Theisen. I salute Mr. Alfredo Santos c/s, previous owner and editor of the bilingual newspaper, La Voz de Uvalde, who encouraged me to write.

(All photos are from the private collection of the author)

(All rights reserved.)

Table of Contents

Tia Petra

A Uvalde Teenager

Las Vistas

Texas Rain

Songs In My Heart

Thanksgiving in July

Mother’s Day

Grafton, North Dakota

Daddy

School Days en Uvalde

Winters in Uvalde

Summer in Uvalde

The Old, Ugly Cross

The Healing

On, Wisconsin

Life Threw a Party and I am the Piñata

My Father’s Face

Barbas De Oro

Shiloh (Place of Peace)

Time

Vietnam Vets

Warped, Tenuous World

To Children Everywhere

Tia Petra

She was like a birthmark upon the countenance of my family: visible yet unobtrusive; attractive to the onlooker, yet a blemish to the owner. Her devoutness and innocence were traits I accepted as a child, bemoaned as a teen, and now recall fondly as an adult.

For as long as I can remember, Tia Petra, my mother's oldest sister, was part of our family, albeit on the fringe, never quite belonging. Born under the stigma of grand mal, or epilepsy, she never married. Her entire life seemed to consist of helping raise countless nieces and nephews, rolling out hundreds of tortillas, and supervising our religious studies.

My Tia Petra was a slender, dark-haired woman with sad, doleful eyes. She wore her hair in a bun at the back of her neck; she never wore shoes around the house (nor even outside, for that matter) and always wore an apron. Tia Petra always kept busy, but her main duties seemed to be washing dishes and making tortillas. She washed dishes in an old, battered basin, standing at the kitchen counter, one bare foot resting over the other, a dishtowel thrown carelessly over her shoulder.

Tia Petra didn't smile much, perhaps due to life in general, but probably because of the sad state of her teeth. At that time, dental care was practically nonexistent for us unless we traveled to Piedras Negras, which was 45 miles away, where Texas met Mexico. Another reason could have been her proclivity for smoking. She would hoard her nickels and periodically send one of her never-ending trail of nieces or nephews running to Concha’s, the neighborhood store just past the railroad tracks, to purchase Kite, Prince Albert or Bugle tobacco for her. (She would roll her own.) I now wonder at her audacity to dare smoke at that particular time, (early fifties) given the strictness and customs of the day, especially in the ‘Mexican’ community!

Tia Petra was a humble and devout woman, who was consistently asked to pray the rosary for recently departed souls. She never refused and because it seemed that people were constantly dying and needing to be prayed for, this took up a lot of her evening time. Never having attended school, she could neither read nor write and had learned all the prayers and responses by rote. She therefore marveled at our reading ability; she loved to hear us children read aloud, even in English, a language she never learned. She especially liked to hear us study for our catechism; placing a palm upon her cheek, she would gaze at us with wonder and admiration as we lurched our way through the Apostle's Creed.

Due to Tia Petra's admonishments about proper religious decorum, I was a picture of angelic behavior in church during most of my childhood. I was always quiet and never looked around or behind me, even when I heard noises, or saw other children craning their necks here and there. My eyes always remained dutifully fixed upon the altar, concentrating on my prayers, as I had always been taught. This changed, however, when I was about 10 years old and finally dared to peek over my shoulder during Mass.

Instead of the devil pouncing gleefully upon my lost soul, I was dumbfounded to discover that it was NOT the angels who were singing, as my grandma and Tia Petra had always told me, but my Tia Carmen and assorted neighborhood ladies! There they were, perched on the balcony, eyes lifted to the heavens, singing their hearts out. Their bodies powdered by talc to combat the Texas heat, their corsets firmly in place, they looked like soft, saintly, veiled pigeons, sans, of course, their everyday aprons.

In spite of this momentous discovery, it still took me another year to gather up enough courage to bite the communion wafer rather than allowing it to dissolve, where it ALWAYS stuck to the roof of my mouth. When I was not immediately struck down, a phase of my life ended. Tia Petra's teachings were relegated to the same dusty, dilapidated shelf in my mind, where the tooth fairy and Santa Claus had already been unkindly deposited.

As I entered my teens, I became convinced that all adults were incredibly obtuse and of course, Tia Petra became the epitome of this very obvious conclusion. My worldly sophistication simply could not cope with this burden, but regardless of my wishes to disassociate myself from her, she was there to stay and there was nothing I could do about it.

It would embarrass me no end to see how she greeted one of her five brothers. When one of them came to visit, she would actually go out to meet him at the door and humbly KISS his hand! And, to top it off, they would actually stand there and let her do it! My mother would try to explain that this was how they had been raised; that respect was an important, fast-vanishing trait of our culture, but I would roll my eyes and sigh in disgust. Adults! It smacked too much of Old Mexico to a young, silly girl, desperate to impress her peers with her own modern Americanization.

Tia Petra would continuously do embarrassing things, but my family, being unfortunately very thick-skinned and extremely less cultured than myself, never seemed to be affected by anything she did. One particular incident stands out that caused me intense mortification: On our way to the sugar beet fields of North Dakota, we experienced car trouble and had to stop at a service station. We all clustered together while the car was being fixed, except for Tia Petra, who was simply flabbergasted to see the car being hoisted