My Words

As Americans, when we think of war, we think of soldiers and the toll their sacrifice has on our families and communities. We think of the financial cost of war. We fight over the righteousness of war. This is not a discourse on the socio-political aspects of war, or even its righteousness. What I am attempting to do is to create a window for you, the reader, to peek through. A window of what war looks like for those of us who have been caught, literally, in the cross-fire. For every soldier who comes home in a body bag, there are hundreds – if not thousands – of lives which have forever been scarred by the violence and mass trauma of civil unrest.

I arrived in El Salvador, my Mother’s homeland, from Spain when I was not quite nine years old with my two older brothers and Mother. We left our Father behind in my country of birth and arrived in a land about to erupt with violence enhanced by Reagan’s war on the Russian encroachment of Communism into the Americas. Of course, I knew nothing of this “bigger” picture. All I knew was that my parents were separating and I had chosen Mother. At the time, I did not know that the war in El Salvador would officially last twelve years and take over 100,000 lives. Unofficially, there is no “set in stone” date. I lived through the “invisible” war which began somewhere in 1976 and some would argue that it had been brewing since the first indigenous uprising at the turn of the 20th century.

The stories and poems you will find here are not linear. I, myself, question the accuracy of the details. Sometimes, one event merges into another to fill the gaps left by the emotional detachment necessary to survive. The brain is an amazing organ. It tries to protect your sanity at all costs because it knows that if it doesn’t, it won’t survive either. It takes the ugly, hard stuff and puts it away deep within its archives. It creates a happy place for you to escape during traumatic events so that its impact in your psyche is minimized. I have spent the better part of thirty years by-passing the archives of El Salvador; discriminately pulling files of memory and putting together some palatable stories. But there are some stories I have not been able to access. And there are some stories which I may never dare tell.

Two years ago, I accidentally came across a picture of my cousin, Jimmy the Poet. A beautiful, talented man who found his strength by choosing to not ignore the burgeoning civil war and wrote of the injustices and atrocities being perpetrated against his people by the El Salvadorean government. He found his strength in his words. He used his words as fists against the deafening silence at a time when most of us kept our head low and eyes to the ground. Unfortunately, not even his high ranking General brother could spare his life and he was murdered one hot, April morning. I have carried the weight of his death in my heart since 1980. I have felt great shame and guilt over my silence for over thirty years. My brain has finally decided that I am sufficiently strong to give voice to those deeply buried files in the archives of memory.

This is a work in progress. Some of the words being liberated in this exercise will be powerful, painful, inspiring, and at times confusing. I have no control over the words. I can try to create a somewhat linear format for you to follow, but I can’t promise much. The best for which I can hope is for you, the reader, to understand what I experienced and be a witness to another side of war.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Reflection

I glance at the image of this middle aged woman looking back at me… and pause

Bright eyes that have seen too much life to allow being as carefree
as she hopes to be
stare back
Soulful eyes
smiling at the irony
that no matter how much she’s hoped to extinguish it
they still hold a spark for life
and a hunger for joy
Graying hair stands as a testament of determination to not buck under pressure
To be inflexible when it comes to defining beauty
A middle-aged woman… no lies in a box is going to change that
Just like the crows’ feet slowly creeping around the eyes
And the stretch marks in unmentionable places
Or the skin tags around the neck
And the age spots on the thinning skin of her hands
where the lines are getting deeper
and more pronounced with each passing day
They are all true
They are me
And if nothing else I am true
I am true to the pain that inspires me
The depth of my sensibilities
The tears which shed so much more easily now
This desperate need to be understood, loved
Yes loved!
So, I stare back at this woman
Whom I know so well and keep hidden
Afraid, lonely and determined
Determined to not be defeated
Full of pride
like a doubled-edge sword
to help pay dues for refusing to cave in
Head held high
no matter what or how deeply the pain has cut
Refusing victimhood
embracing rage and compassion in its stead
Because they can both be held simultaneously
One quietly, secretly
to feed the other
to inspire and feed energy
Energy needed to move forward
even when the weight of this melancholy makes it hard to breathe
and leads to that old familiar condition
somewhere between pain and pleasure
Trapped in the midst of joy and misery
Where neither tears or mirth dwell
Where I’m restless
Uncomfortable without respite

This place which fits me best
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