Thelma Reyna Abuela Memories

Abuela's Imprint on My Heart

Thelma T. Reyna

My maternal grandparents were born in poverty in South Texas and had no formal education. Papá Grande, or Apá, as we children called him, was functionally illiterate, only able to sign his name. My grandmother, Maria Guerra, our Amá, was fond of saying, with understated drama, "Mis pies nunca han cruzado el portal de una escuela." My feet have never crossed the threshold of a schoolhouse...

She, like her husband, was raised in a tiny, dusty ranch populated with a few roosters, hens, goats, and perhaps a horse. In this isolation, she somehow, somewhere taught herself, as she often proclaimed, to read and write in Spanish: beautifully taught, as I saw in letters she wrote me when I left Kingsville, my college degrees in hand, newly married, to start my own family and forge my career in California.

Long before I moved here, Amá had already left her imprint on my heart. She was widowed soon after my parents divorced. My mother, our sole breadwinner, rose before dawn each day, drove 50 miles each way to work, and returned wearily at dusk to her nine children. So Amá moved into our large, aging house to help look after us. She cooked and cleaned, laundered, and fussed to get us older kids out the door to school each day.

Amá sat quietly in a corner on midnights when I studied late at the dining table, the rest of our house asleep. Silently, she kept me company, to show me her support. One particularly humid night, I fe ll asleep, face in book, and awoke to see Amá standing beside me, gently fanning me with sheets of notebook paper.

Yes, indeed, she left her imprint on my heart, my precious Amá, she of the ubiquitous flowered aprons with pockets deep enough to hold her Daily Missal and wire-rimmed glasses. Amá of hands roughened from tending to so many of us.

Amá of the signs of the cross she bestowed on our foreheads before we left the house. Amá of endless dichos for imparting her wisdom to us, especially, "Dime con quien andas, y te digo quien eres."

Amá of gentle eyes and humble voice, of unconditional love for even the rowdiest scofflaw amongst us. My brothers called her "Saint Grandma," for even they, in the scant attention they paid her, recognized her goodness.