Guest Post by SANDRA RODRIGUEZ BARRON
In 1978, President
Jimmy Carter signed a proclamation declaring September 13th as National
Grandparent’s Day. The purpose of the day was “to help children become aware of
strength, information, and guidance” that older people can offer. As writers,
we often probe our grandparents’ lives in order to understand our own. Much of what our parents love, admire,
despise, or struggled to understand in their youth comes back to these four
people. From them we inherit our culture, our beliefs, our traditions. But to
escape the trap of generalizations and Hallmark clichés typical of
grandparent-grandchild portrayals, I think it helps to isolate one infinitely
particular characteristic of one grandparent and go from there.
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| El Salvador, 1965. My grandmother standing beside my mother, who was ceremonial queen (reina) of a Red Cross gala |
Much of what I
remember about Nelly, my maternal grandmother, has to do with a single
traumatic event. When she was 12, living in El Salvador in 1935, Nelly
contracted the poliomyelitis virus. In the early 20th century, paralytic polio
was the world's most feared disease. “La polio” as she called it, was a
pandemic that would paralyze or kill over a half a million people around the
world in the 1940s decade alone. The consequences of the disease left victims
marked for life both physically and psychologically. My grandmother had an
atrophied leg, and she hobbled around aided by leg braces, canes, and crutches.
The asymmetry in her spine, hips, and knees caused her pain and compromised her
mobility her entire life.
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| Image from Wikimedia Commons of child in a leg brace--credit: "R.W. Lovett" |
Not surprisingly,
stylish shoes, bright pedicures, ankle bracelets, toe rings--any foot ornamentation--caught
and dragged my grandmother’s eyes like a lure cast out from a former life. I
vividly remember a day when I was headed to a nightclub in San Salvador in a
mini-skirt and pair of high-heel sandals. Abuela Nelly was mesmerized by my
stylish footwear and by my “perfect” symmetrical feet because they represented what
polio had stolen from her. It dawned on me then that in addition to all her medical
challenges, she had never had a chance to enjoy her own body in this way, a
luxury most of us take for granted.
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Paralytic polio
wasn’t the only thing that happened to my grandmother. She lost two siblings
while she was still a teenager. Her husband was alcoholic. She had breast
cancer, and suffered the tragedy of her son’s early death. But instead of
retreating into melancholy, she remained generous and engaged with her
community. She became mayor of her hometown of Gotera, was a Red Cross
volunteer, and her house was always full of people who loved and depended on
her. But as she got older, fear and hypochondria set in. While we had been
close during my childhood, I began to emotionally disconnect from my
grandmother in my late teens. I found her letters so painfully intense and
paranoid that I left dozens of them unopened long past her death. Only recently
have I been ready to absorb and appreciate those letters. Most of all, I find myself humbled by my
grandmother’s instinct to transform her pain into service and concern for
others. So to celebrate National Grandparents Day and Hispanic Heritage Month, I begin by both writing down memories
and deepening my knowledge of the historical circumstances that defined each
one of my grandparents’ lives. In the act of joining what can be researched with
what is remembered, I am receiving a deeper, far more complex layer of understanding.
If you are a
grandparent, or if you’re lucky enough to still have living grandparents, here
are a few links to get you thinking and writing about your connection to one
another.
Happy National
Grandparents Day,
~~Sandra
Rodriguez Barron
Bio: SANDRA RODRIGUEZ BARRON
is the author of The Heiress
of Water (HarperCollins), which won first place for fiction at the 2007
International Latino Book Awards and was a Borders Original Voices selection.
Her second novel, Stay with Me, was a finalist for the 2011 Connecticut Book Award. She was born in
Puerto Rico, grew up in El Salvador, and now lives in Connecticut. You can
follow her on Facebook, Twitter (@RodriguezBarron) or visit www.sandrarodriguezbarron.com.
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