Blood and Guts: Helena Lazaro

I was just thinking about the women in my life. I’ve never really had lots of girl friends. In the last two years of high school there was a little pack I ran with. But aside from that, I usually keep just a very few, very close friends. They are all women I admire. And I think that has to do with my family. From childhood, I have been surrounded by women who are doers. They are not weak, they are not incapable, they are not delicate. They are women who solve problems, thrive in the most adverse conditions, face challenges without even imagining the possibility of failure.

I am so happy for that. I have never thought that there was something I needed a man to do for me (well, aside from the obvious). In fact, I think that for the most part, I’ve been more of a “man” than lots of the guys I’ve been with. I don’t balk at heavy lifting, the usage of power tools, or spiders. Not even really big spiders.

My grandmother, mother, and aunt gave me a wonderful start–as a result, I’ve been able to do countless things I would never have dared to before. I would never have been the only woman on a rowdy fifteen person crew for a two-week shoot…and returned with my sanity intact. I would never have felt able to hold my own in a male-dominated industry. I would never have been able to celebrate my independence, want for nothing, be self-sufficient. I take a great deal of pride in doing things myself, and knowing that I can do anything I want to–and I know this is because they made me.

Yes, it’s a pretty sappy post. But its purpose is to congratulate the women in my life and thank them. For my friends, know that I chose you because I admire you. For my family, know that you’ve given me everything I have, because I wouldn’t have it at all without you! You are all amazing women.

I wanted to write about it sooner, but I thought it was best to wait a little while and let everything settle. I hope that everyone’s Thanksgiving weight gain has stopped feeling depressing at this point. Oh, I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it. Well.

As a result of this year’s dinner, and in order to end the bloody “Salad Wars” that have been raging these five years now, my family has adopted the following legislation.

The Avocado Treaty

There will be provided one avocado, per family member, per holiday. If any one family member brings along a guest, the family member in question shall divide their avocado with said guest(s) (unless there has been notice in advance of thirty days, in which case the guest shall receive their own avocado). This will hopefully reduce wooden-salad-spoon-related injuries.

The Crouton Clause

In an attempt to further reduce aforementioned injuries, each dinner guest shall also receive a ration of 5-7 croutons, per person, to dispose of as they see fit. If they wish to barter these croutons in exchange for additional avocado, they may do so.

Lastly, any available leftovers will be equally divided (based on number of household members, to include any mammalian housepets) into take-home containers.

Leave it to a bunch of Cubans to bring socialism to the dinner table.

Yesterday my mom and I were talking while she shopped for Christmas presents. She said she had just walked by a Cabbage Patch Newborn, and almost got it for me. I must have been nine or ten the year that the Cabbage Patch Premies came out (their heads smelled like powder!), and she fought tooth and nail with every other mom in the 562 area (then still the 310) to score one for me. I laughed, but we both agreed that the $40 could be better spent. On, say, booze!

When she walked out of the store, she asked me, “What’s happening tomorrow? People are sleeping out here!” I told her I wasn’t sure, but it was probably video game related and said, I bet you’re glad you never had to do shit like that! She said “No, I never had to sleep anywhere but I DID have to go to some Chinese woman in East L.A. to get you that darn Super Mario Bros. 2 game.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, she told me she only had two left, and I better hurry up.”

“Wow. Thanks mom! How on earth did you find her?” I imagined a dark shop selling mogwais and bootleg NES cartridges.

“I looked! That was before eBay and the internet, before your fingers could do the walking.”

“When your legs had to do the walking?”

“Yes, exactly.”

This morning I got into work and she had left me a voice mail saying, “You know what else I went through hell to get you? That damn Monchichi!”

I called her back. “I don’t even remember HAVING a Monchichi.”

“Yeah, you were like seven, and you had your Christmas list all ready. Then on December 15th I passed by it and–it still makes my stomach cramp up to this day–you had crossed out like FIVE items and put next to it, Monchichi. And I didn’t know what was the monchichi, so I had to ask you. And you said, ‘You don’t KNOW?’ I said, no, I don’t, what is it? And you said something about the song, and I made the mistake of asking you about the song, and you started singing the stupid song [mom sings] Happy Happy Monchichi, Monchichi. So I went to the Toys ‘R’ Us in Cerritos and asked them for it. They were out. Then I went to the Toys ‘R’ Us in Baldwin Park. And THEY were out. Then I went to some third one I-don’t-know-where and they were out, and I started to panic. One of the employees told me that the monchichi was, I quote, The hottest item of the season, and that people had been waiting for three weeks or more to get one. I looked at the calendar and realized there was no way.

So I came home and tried to talk you out of the Monchichi. But there was the added challenge that you still believed in Santa Claus. So I told you, ‘You know when Santa gets late requests that sometimes the elves don’t have enough time to make those toys,’ I made up a whole bunch of bullshit so you wouldn’t want the Monchichi. And you turned around and said, ‘Santa doesn’t have to make it, it’s on TV! He can buy it at Toys ‘R’ Us.’ And right then I wanted to sue the people who had started advertising a toy on December 15th. But because you had been willing to sacrifice FIVE items from your list, I knew I couldn’t NOT get you that one thing that you really wanted.

So I went down to that Toys ‘R’ Us and waited. They had three left, and they were on hold. But if they weren’t picked up by twelve o’clock, they were up for grabs. So I waited there. For hours. And at ten seconds past twelve I walked up to the guy at the counter and told him, ‘It is now 12:00 and ten seconds, will you please give me my Monchichi.’ And I got it. I stole some other kid’s Monchichi, and I brought it home. And when you opened it up I was so disappointed! I mean, it was so small, and I don’t even know what it was!”

Here I interjected, “I think it was like half-monkey, half-human.”

“Yeah, something like that. And it didn’t drink, or burp, or talk, or anything! After all that!”

“I still don’t remember it.”

I just wanted to take this moment to thank all the mothers and fathers of the world (or really just the US because I can’t imagine this shit happens in, say, Africa) for going to the lengths they do to get us the things we really want. Seriously, there should be trophies and prizes. Even an awards ceremony. Like, “And Best Use of an Oversized Handbag goes to…Elba Lazaro for her performance in The Barbie Aisle. Let’s watch!” She would also probably win best Foreign Language Battle. Lazaro v. Lee in the heart of East L.A.

Thanks, mom.

So, I’ve been greatly cheered by a round of Christmas shopping and looking forward to Christmas Eve/Day with my family.

I love everything about this time of the year. I love Christmas music on the radio. I love the occasional rain we get that signals the winter-ish season is upon us. I love going to the drugstore and seeing the aisles packed with toys, cards, decorations, candy, everything! This holiday is important to me because it was the happiest time in my home. It meant my mom was in high spirits for a month or more, that family was coming, that I’d get to stay home and read books and watch movies while the clouds outside got gray and fat.

The lead-up to Christmas began in November.

Continue reading Studio Christmas: Part II…

Here are a few pictures from my family dinner last night…

With cousin Janet and her daughter Daina

Janet’s son, David. He requested that I take his picture, then struck this pose with ZERO instruction from anyone.

Aunt Tipsy, mom, and cousin JJ during after-dinner poker. Tipsy cleaned everyone out. She made two dollars, which was bickered over as my mom cashed her out using nickels.

And here is the story that sums up our family Thanksgiving experience, from last year. If you’ve already read it, tough. I’m too freaking full of Turkey to write something new.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m really lucky to have had my family healthy and happy, and together. To the people I love who I wasn’t with tonight, you know who you are, and you know you were in my thoughts. I miss you. I love the rituals my family has created (like the poker) and wonder what other people’s holiday rituals involve?

At my mom’s house, surrounded by family and family friends eating guayaba pies, drinking coffee or beer, telling jokes and stories–it doesn’t feel like we just came from a funeral. It feels like a party. The inevitable sound of the poker chips signals the start of a game.

I sit apart, taking a moment to recharge from all the emotion spent the last few days, and reflect. Last night at the wake, the atmosphere was close. Intimate. A reunion in many senses. There were friends and relatives not seen for years. A vanished aunt and cousin resurfaced, I hugged them and felt I was hugging two people–a stranger, and inside of that stranger someone I used to know and love. Much different was the appearance of my best friend of seven years. When I hugged her, and talked with her, it almost seemed that four years had not passed since we last saw one another. For reasons that I can’t explain now, reasons that made sense to me until I told her out loud, I’d let this friendship go. I missed her wedding. I missed her baby being born. All because of the things I couldn’t say, things I couldn’t ask for. Still, she came. And her coming showed me how wrong I’d been, it reminded me that she had always offered me devotion and friendship that are of rare quality. I’m so sorry that I squandered it. But thankful to my grandmother for this, because it brought a healing that I’ve needed, that my family has needed.

It has not seemed like a tragic occasion by any means–sometimes sad but never somber. I don’t know if that’s a function of my family’s collective personality (it’s only a matter of time until someone starts cracking jokes, like my mother AT the gravesite with empty folding seats on either side of her, “Somebody had better sit in these chairs. Grandma paid for them!”) or due to the fact that this was a death that came with so much warning.

In any case, it’s been a kind of bonding for my family that I’ve rarely seen. For a moment I worried that, without grandma to tie us to one another, we’d lost the common thread. But now I realize that will never be the case. There will always be that shared history, the experiences and memories, that keep us together, and keep her with us.

At 11:00pm, I didn’t know what to do. I’d come to my mother’s house early from work, without even a change of clothes. Grandma was finally sleeping, but there was no telling how long it would be. Did I go home for the night and risk being away when I would have wanted to be there? Or throw together a bag and come back to stay the night? I opened my purse to look at the time on my phone, and an old fortune fell out. It read “You are almost there.” I got chills all over, sped home for my toothbrush, and returned.

At 1:30am, the house had cleared out. I sat with my laptop in the living room, trying to distract myself, stay occupied. I wrote my entry.

At 1:54am the machine stopped.

At 3:00am, the hospice sent someone to pronounce her dead. I thought, What a shitty job that must be. He spoke softly.

At 4:00am the man from Rose Hills arrived and began asking questions. I can see how this might disturb some people. But I actually found it amusing.

Cause of death? Oh, heart failure, renal failure, fluid in the lungs, and probably cancer too. Yes, it took ALL THAT to kill her. When she was taken to the doctor’s the day before she died, she said to my Aunt, “No one’s fooling me, I know something’s wrong. They brought me here for a reason!” After examining her, the doctor concluded that she’d had several heart attacks, which may have contributed to the dementia she’d exhibited as early as last Friday. Heart attackS. Several.

Any previous surgeries? I laughed out loud at that one. Even I know that grandma had been sliced and diced in so many ways that you could take a stab and name any procedure–just guess one–and she’d probably undergone it.

It took five doses of morphine to induce sleep.

You’d never think it, looking at the frail little person she’d become. She was deceptive, that way.

Thursday was the last day she was out and about, the day she saw the doctor. After the doctor, they took her to dinner at a Cuban restaurant in Downey. They offered her soup. But she wasn’t about to have any pansy-ass soup. She wanted a Medianoche sandwich. One of those monstrous, heartburn-inducing, artery-clogging creations made with pork, ham, cheese, egg-bread, pickles, and mustard. It turned out to be her last meal. I think maybe she planned it that way.

At 5:00am, it was all over. And something else began.

The oxygen machine whirs and hisses rhythmically, lulling me into a sort of waking dream-state. Nothing at all, I’m sure, like the haze brought on by morphine dripped carefully underneath the tongue. Still, a sense of peace exists here now.

The family and friends who came to say their goodbyes have gone to their respective homes. The gasps for air and quiet moans of a fuzzy-headed matriarch have been reduced to dry sleepy breaths. Her daughter sits at the foot of her bed, ready for the moment that comes next.

Some of us feel that way: ready. Some of us do not. Thought this was another false alarm. Thought this was one more unbelievable feat she would accomplish. Castro and Death are both worthy opponents…she managed to escape one, but the other is not so easily defeated.

Though she’s given him the slip on many occasions, and had more than her fair share of comebacks, something says that this time she will not emerge victorious.

I’m afraid to go to sleep, because she might not be here when I wake up.