If You Are Born To Be A Tamale

By J.T. Dodds

Step into a tale of intertwined destinies over the millennia that crosses continents, captures the essence of hope, love, and resilience. In this evocative novel, If You Are Born to be a Tamale, author J.T. Dodds, paints a vivid portrait of two individuals whose paths converge across two borders, against the backdrop of a changing world.

It begins in January 1992, when two adventurous snowbirds from Winnipeg find themselves drawn to a picturesque village in Mexico. For Harriet, a retired librarian in search of her own destiny, the journey becomes a trans-formative experience, reigniting her sense of self and purpose. Her love for her garden, her casa, and the vibrant Mexican village she adopts envelops her in a newfound joy.

Upon the Gregson's arrival in Mexico a young hombre named Jesus Ramos Rios embarks on a quest following his elusive American Dream. Leaving his pueblito of Ajijic, and as an illegal immigrant, he navigates the challenges of his new life in El Norte with the help of familia in San Diego, from the vineyards of Sonoma, to ultimately reaching his destination of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jesus melds into the Hispanic community, and creates his own nuclear family. As the new millennium dawns, the political landscape shifts, and the plight of undocumented immigrants moves to center stage. Jesus's dream morphs into a haunting nightmare as political animosity and hostility intensifies. With limited options, after the death of his wife Judith, he must make the wrenching decision to return to his former home in Mexico, with his ten-year-old daughter Zoey.

In this poignant and timely story, John delves deep into the human spirit, exploring themes of resilience, identity, and the enduring power of family. As the threads of Harriet and Jesus's lives intertwine, readers are moved along a parallel narrative that tugs at the heartstrings.

Prepare to be captivated by this compelling tale that examines the complexities of migration, the bonds that transcend borders, and the strength of character that is accessed in the face of adversity. A masterful blend of literary craftsmanship and emotional depth, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking a profound and resonant exploration of the human experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.T. Dodds
• Release date: Jul 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223419105

J.T. Dodds

John, a citizen of the United States and Canada has been writing poetry for over half a century delving into themes such as relationships, spirituality, creativity, and his passion for life, John has self-published a collection of 15 volumes including two enchanting children's books composed in verse, namely A Sneaky Twitch of an Itch and The Journey Home, as well as a compilation of essays and poetry centered on the subject of aging, titled Comes A Time. While permanently living in Ajijic, Mexico, with his artist wife, Candis, John has penned 5 novels under the pen name J.T. Dodds: a trilogy titled To Each Their Own Goodbye, consisting of Book 1: Anywhere Except Yesterday, Book 2: A Long Way From Nowhere, and Book 3: When Tomorrow Is Never Enough, two standalone novels, If You Are Born To Be A Tamale, and Wanting To Breathe Here In.

Book preview

For Zoey

Leaving It All Behind

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Winterpeg

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On the morning of her first day in Mexico, Harriet Gregson pulled back the curtains, and peered out the open second floor casement window of her no frills hotel room to something she’d never experienced in mid-winter Winterpeg, Canada—a beautiful mild sunny morning. She inhaled a deep breath of clean, brisk air, and exhaled to the peeling church bells in the campanario, welcoming her to her first day in her arcadia. A place in Greek mythology offering peace and contentment she had dreamed of for what seemed forever. Harriet could see the bell tower from their window. She had read the bells called the faithful to Mass, celebrated festivals, and mourned the passing of villagers in their pueblito.

She watched as a young hombre wearing a long alpaca coat with a mochila on his shoulder as he passed in front of the Cathedral of Saint Andre the Apostle, his right hand automatically going to his forehead, below his heart, and then left to right shoulders: in the name of el Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Harriet automatically followed suit with a little cross on the forehead, lips, and heart, the way she knew Mexican mothers would greet the morning.

Harriet’s ritual blessing was a prayer of thanksgiving for the first morning in her new homeland. Jesus Ramos Rios’s blessing was a plea for hope and protection on his journey into the unknown. He stopped and looked up at the second floor window of the Hotel Giglio Dell’Opera, and witnessed a woman also making the sign of the cross and thought, maybe it was an omen of good luck. As he continued on and disappeared under an umbrella of red roof tiles, Harriet had no idea the young man she observed would someday find a place in both her heart and her home.

***

Looking back to when the journey to her Arcadia began it was only a couple weeks prior to the sound of those Cathedral bells, yet a lifetime ago, when Harriet sat by the bay window on her mother’s favorite Queen Anne Wingback armchair, Ayn Rand her Russian Blue cat curled on her lap. In her hand she held a well-traveled illustrated vintage postcard with the graphic, Get your Kicks on Route 66, displaying in glorious Technicolor tourist stops along the way: Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and a genuine Hopi War Dance. Outside the afternoon sun had turned the bare maples into a carnival of lights with the remnants of the previous night’s ice storm. She stared into the hot ashes below the grate in the fireplace, the sparks replicating a distant village of candle lit windows. While listening to A Walk to the Paradise Garden, an exquisite interlude in Frederick Delius’s opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, she drifted away in her mind to a perpetual paradise where gardens grew year round, and ice was only for margaritas. Harriet seldom missed an afternoon listening to the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday Matinee Radio Broadcasts. This winter’s day was special; the opera was perfect, and the ice storm was the last she’d planned to ever have to endure.

Her husband Walter would be coming home late in the day smelling of cigar smoke and scotch, a little tipsy from his retirement party. She knew he wasn’t interested in her finalized details of their retirement plans. His attitude all along about his pending retirement was if he ignored Harriet’s fanciful journey into an imaginary Shangri la, she’d come to her senses. Outside of watching golf and The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey on T.V., he had no personal expectations for the future outside of the status quo. Walter was The Big E, the handle given to a Chief Engineer on the Canadian National Railroad, and one with plenty of seniority, or whiskers as it was called. On his last reluctant day he was presented with the engineers traditional gold plated T Eaton Pocket Watch fronted with a Canadian Railroad Dial face, and Walter was sidetracked onto a line leading to a terminal. Walter, nicknamed the Iron Horse by his union brotherhood, would have worked until the trains stopped rolling.

Harriet, however, had taken hold of the Iron Horse’s locomotive, grabbed hold of the cranky reverse lever labelled a Johnson bar, and slammed on the brakes. Working in the library system she’d thoroughly researched her pet project, and found her place in the sun with a climate to die for; two seasons, a dry winter and a rainy summer, all in expectation of the day Walter would pull into the train station for the last time. She had put the inherited home her parents had bequeathed her, where she’d shared domicile with Walter, up for sale and had recently closed the deal. The curmudgeon she had decided could follow her dream, or take his golf clubs and find a new caboose to call home.

Harriet was decidedly old school, and just having turned sixty she’d aged like the doily that graced her mother’s armchair. She was like the crocheted linen thread, with white fretwork and cross hatched with fine lines. She was never concerned about other’s opinions, and who she was clearly showed through. She maintained her charm and gentle beauty over the years, and in keeping with her profession as a librarian she was an open book. She held on to the traditional values of her Catholic upbringing even though she never joined the nunnery as her Ukrainian parents had hoped. She’d met Walter in their high school senior year. He was the yearbook’s stubborn smile, a tall thin Scot with blue eyes and wavy hair, and the promissory note under his picture was full of accolades proffering his potential. Harriet’s photo by comparison displayed her pale complexion, ash blonde hair, and green eyes as they peered out from beneath her dark rimmed glasses. In capital letters below her picture, it read the #1 BEST SELLER. A blurb she never could figure out.

Harriet had been in Walter’s radar for some time, and his attention put an end to her parents chosen career path straight to a nunnery, after a fateful Catholic Youth Organization dance, and a romp in the back seat of Walter’s parents 1950 Pontiac Chieftain Catalina Coupe, resulting in Harriet’s pre-graduation pregnancy. Given the close knit Catholic society in Winnipeg, and his pending engineering scholarship, Walter had no option but to marry the maiden. Her acceptance changed the direction of her life from handmaiden to God to handmaiden to Walter. Neither God nor Walter had Harriet’s interests and dreams as their primary focus, and her schooling in the art of a diligent Ukrainian daughter blended nicely with their dominant male psyche.

After high school Walter continued on with his dream and became an engineer, entering a lifetime coupling with the Canadian National Railroad. Harriet, after miscarrying their daughter and being told she was at high risk to conceive another child, accepted her fate with God’s good grace. In the years that followed, Walter was content to spend his days riding the rails. Harriet, embracing her love of books became a librarian who roamed the stacks of the library with thousands of authors and stories—and lost sight of who she was.

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Walter’s Capitulation

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When retirement was beginning to look like an undesirable reality Walter initially ignored the idea of moving anywhere, least of all to Mexico. It was all foreign to him. Like the French Frogs in Eastern Canada, he complained to whoever would listen, they don’t even speak English. The only point of reference he had for Mexicans was the boys in the railyard calling them, Beaners, that he assumed was somehow related to Mexican jumping beans. He took to the idea of retiring in Mexico in his usual condescending manner until Harriet sublimely led him to believe year round golf might be an improvement over sitting around the house wearing winter clothes for half the year.

When it came down to a permanent move the Gregson’s had their first all-out argument. It ultimately resulted in Walter’s capitulation, followed by a long consultation with Johnny Walker Black. Walter and his golf buddies at the Tuxedo Golf Course convinced him Harriet would eventually get over her Mariachi romance, and would settle sensibly on a condo in Myrtle Beach, close to a golf course. For the time being he went along for the ride and left the details up to her, his usual modus operandi. The house was sold furnished, and with Walter’s insistence they put everything else but the bare necessities in a storage unit to be shipped once they were finally settled. Harriet knew his pension from the railroad was more than adequate to partially pay for the storage. She packed what she held dear, and left her baggage behind.

In 1976 Walter had bought a brand new two door subcompact Sunbird. His father had owned Pontiacs and he kept to the family tradition. Walter mainly used the car to run errands and commute to the Golf Club. The only passenger the backseat ever saw was Ben Hogan disguised as a bag full of golf clubs. For the trip south Harriet insisted on a vehicle bigger than a lunch bucket, and he was forced to trade his Sunbird in for a 1990 Pontiac Transport minivan.

Harriet had never obtained a driver’s license, nor had any desire to drive a car for in Winnipeg buses were plentiful and she could take public transportation anywhere she wanted to go. The library was a couple blocks from home, and when she did need a vehicle, which was seldom, other than for groceries, her Walter did the chauffeuring. She had not expressed any misgivings over driving three thousand kilometers with Walter though it played on the back of her mind. Harriet, brought with her only what she deemed relevant which included her mini library of favorite books and music. Walter on the other hand would have needed an extra caboose to keep everything he wanted to cart along if not for Harriet’s stern protestations.

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Harriet’s Itinerary

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Harriet’s itinerary was seemingly simple, or so she thought. Zigzagging a thousand kilometers from the Canadian border to the Mexican border should have been as easy as locating any one of a thousand books on the library shelves—a skill she had mastered over the years. She had meticulously mapped out and memorized the fastest route through the States to El Paso, with only one detour to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which would include a short drive along Route 66, maybe as far as Arizona, to fulfill her dream of following the vintage postcard she had cherished for years. From the Mexican border, it would be a two-day drive to her paradise. The challenge was dealing with the conversion between Canada’s metric system, US miles, and Mexico’s back-to-metric system. However, speed limits and distances posed no problem for her, and she had diligently studied Spanish language lessons to understand Mexican road signs. As the co-pilot, Harriet felt well-prepared for the open road. Walter’s preparation for the five-day journey was another matter altogether and would require patience and reinforcement. Thankfully, she had everything planned out in stages, thanks to the assistance of the Winnipeg Automobile Association. They had provided insurance for driving through the States and into Mexico, as well as a list of pet-friendly Howard Johnson Hotels along the way. Her Russian Blue cat, Ayn Rand, would be her front seat passenger, with her litter box safely stowed behind the driver’s seat. Among Harriet’s collection of favorite books was Max Apple’s The Oranging of America, which recounted entrepreneur Howard Johnson’s quest to find spots for relieving himself and building his hotels on the road.

Their first stop on day one was Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where they would spend the night. Day two was to be an overnight stay in Kansas City, Missouri, then onward to Joplin, Missouri, and finally stopping over in Tulsa, Oklahoma. From there, they would connect with Route 66. She knew that the Mother Road, a pseudonym for Route 66, had been decommissioned in 1984, with only a western portion remaining drivable, but that didn’t matter as I-40 paralleled the old route, and they could still follow her cherished postcard after Santa Fe. From there, after satisfying any capriciousness she might have along the way, the trajectory would be due south, and all downhill to the land of sunshine. She had organized her maps to rival the Dewey System, placing them in sequence on the dashboard to keep her focused on maintaining her tight schedule—and that was the way it was supposed to unfold.

In her planning, she had focused on two distinct objectives while traveling through the States: one literary and one historical. As a young girl living a cloistered life in Winnipeg, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, had captured her imagination. She found his memoirs of growing up on the Mississippi River fascinating, a river that flowed south into the warm Gulf of Mexico, unlike the Red River defining her world in southern Manitoba that flowed north into the frigid waters of Lake Winnipeg. The poet, novelist, and playwright Langston Hughes, from Joplin, Missouri, a benchmark along her path, once wrote: Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. This quote resonated with her as she researched her destination in Mexico. Another piece of classic writing she loved was The Grapes of Wrath, the story of the Joad family leaving Joplin, Missouri, and journeying along Highway 66, heading for a new life in California. The Mother Road, or The Road of Flight, as Steinbeck called it, eventually worked its way into American lore and further into Harriet’s vivid imagination. Then there were Will Rogers and N. Scott Momaday in Oklahoma. Harriet’s list was a literary map on the road to paradise. They all had homes on the shelves in her library and in her mind. Like the Joad Family in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Harriet was fleeing from the stagnation bordering on depression that had slowly been turning her soul to dust.

Her destination was an unpronounceable Axixic, which predated the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. She had a decent grasp of Spanish, but translating the Nahuatl or Aztec morphology was complex, as fragments of words had their own meaning. Axixic meaning Where the Water Springs Forth stretched the imagination. Tomato would be the only Nahuatl word Walter would ever be able to pronounce. El Tomate would be a challenge. Harriet had envisioned a leisurely drive to the Mexican border, singing along with Nat King Cole’s Get Your Kicks on Route 66 and stopping along the way at the Howard Johnson Hotels, visiting places that fed her librarian’s innate curiosity and exploring the culture and histories of each state. However, her plans were not as smooth as she had hoped.

She was well prepared for this long drive, having waited half a century to make this move. With the CD Learn Spanish in 10 Easy Lessons, 3.6 kg of unsalted mixed peanuts within easy reach, and Ayn Rand curled on her lap, Winnipeg, hopefully, would soon be a distant memory by the time they reached the Mexican border. Not that she didn’t love the home of the beaver, which, despite its historical blemishes, was a multicultural society where diversity and social activism were accepted. Now, as the Winnipeg skyline—Winterpeg as she pronounced it—no longer appeared closer than it was in the passenger mirror, she leaned back in the bucket seat, listening to Mozart’s Magic Flute with its strong female characters, her constant companion on her lap, while outside her passenger window Mr. Winter waved adios. She was more than ready to be Walter’s co-pilot to keep him on the straight and narrow.

Over the years living with the Iron Horse, their communication had become a series of instructions, signposts, and directions for navigating a marriage that traveled on a narrow gauge track. Driving thousands of kilometers with little or no conversation was not much different than the road she had already journeyed. With her WAA maps within easy reach, her script for the initial phase of the trip was straightforward: follow this lane, follow that one, turn here, turn ahead, left lane, right lane, keeping heavy-footed Walter close to the speed limit.

By the time they reached their first destination after a full day’s drive, the only respite having been a short lunch break at a rest stop, the stress of sitting for hours staring at a yellow line had aggravated the aches and pains of Walter’s osteoarthritis. His normal irritable self put a chokehold on the steering wheel. Too stubborn to seek treatment, Walter’s arthritis had progressed unheeded for several years. A gravity-prone girth and a sedentary occupation cooped up in a locomotive cab for days on end further aggravated his affliction.

When the first Howard Johnson they stopped at added an extra charge for the pet-friendly room and stipulated they must stay with the animal at all times, the gout in his big toe took over, and Harriet had to step in. She stayed with Ayn Rand and had her meal delivered to the room. Walter had previously suggested, citing the assumed lack of pet-friendly hotels, that they find a home for the cat, as he referred to the feline, and leave her behind. His early preference for man’s best friend had fizzled when Harriet refused to be a lap dog and perform the necessary maintenance of such a critter. Any thought of leaving Ayn Rand behind vanished with the look Harriet gave him, reminding the Iron Horse of a runaway train; a highball signal waving a lantern in a high semicircle, with the switch thrown, causing him to immediately swerve into a siding, avoiding a head-on collision—the subject had been laid to rest.

Walter retrieved Harriet’s maps from the van to have a look-see while he ate in the restaurant, leaving Harriet and Ayn Rand to enjoy a quiet meal together away from the grump. Her nerves were a little frazzled from Walter’s driving. He was lead-footed and tailgated as if he were coupling train cars, motoring along like he was the only vehicle on the road, paying no attention to other drivers. By switching CD’s from Opera to Spanish, closing her eyes, and