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.

My mother would have the light display fired up and ready for the official lighting ceremony (yes, we DID have an official lighting ceremony, complete with music that cued me to activate different strings of light) after Thanksgiving dinner. For at least thirteen years running, she has entered and won trophies in the City of Downey Holiday Home Decorating Contest (for Lawn/Roof Display). People came and lined up to see our house. When I was in high school, and classmates visited me, they’d say, “Oh, you live in the Christmas Light House.” I’d come home late at night and the lights would still be on, warm and colorful. Baby Jesus and Santa welcomed me.

From then on it was hidden presents–being forbidden to look in my mom’s trunk, especially not under the sheet she covered the lumpy boxes with. Her twelve days of Christmas, giving my sister and I stocking stuffers and singing a customized line from the song (i.e. “On the first day of Christmas, my mami gave to me…..a really really fa-aancy pen!”). Watching the tree on quiet nights, with our tubby white cat Frosty lying underneath it.

While some traditions have changed since I left home, some stay the same.

Nothing compares to the all-out insanity of Christmas Eve.

Picture 20 Cubans, all out-talking each other, reaching over you at one long crowded table and trying to serve themselves lechon (a roasted pig), yucca, rice and beans. A couple of years ago there was almost an “incident” as my mother and her twin sister battled over the last slice of avocado in the salad. Then throw in the occasional poor bastard that my sister or I bring along. That, to me, is the true test of a relationship. If you can handle this shit, I’m yours. I can’t imagine what my red-headed, freckled Uncle Al (an honorary Cuban) thought the first year he was exposed to it.

After the food has been hurled through the air, it’s time to hurl presents. We pack up the table and chairs, and assemble in the living room under the enormous tree (my mother got herself a hydraulic tree–goes up and down at the push of a button), next to the even more enormous piles of presents. One or two callers, like auctioneers, read the tags and launch gifts. “To Helen, from Tio Flaco.” “To Aunt Bi, from the Yoakums.”

The frenzy subsides and we are left covered in shreds of wrapping paper. Full of food and excited to play with their new toys, the families go home and my mom starts to clean and prepare for the next day. I go see Edna, my best friend. I’m glad to say that’s a tradition that will be returning this year.

When I come back home it’s important not to look in the direction of the tree, because my mother has put our big gifts, our “Santa” gifts, underneath it.

In the morning she fries the leftover yucca (my favorite!) and we drink Cafe con Leche, then open our gifts. It’s the day I don’t shower until well after noon.

I used to spend the rest of the day cleaning out my room, making places of honor for my gifts. Now I just lounge around, enjoying the quiet of the house and chatting with my mother while she puts the kitchen back in order.

I think looking forward to that is enough to lift anyone’s spirits.

In case you haven’t had enough,this is the entry I wrote last year about Christmas. I still feel sad about that little tree, more this year than before. I’m not going to put it up anymore, I think I’ll get a new one.

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.

Wade�s comment and the pic of that costume yesterday got me all nostalgic for Halloweens gone by.

Halloween was always such a great time to look forward to. Despite the tales of razor-blades embedded in treats, that famous serial killer who was supposedly loose and possibly in my neighborhood, and the fact that most of our costumes were just collections of safety hazards, we had a great time. My hood had one of the old dudes who gave out full-size candy bars, a guy that wore like a fake hanging eyeball and acted really creepy when you reached into his bowl of candy, and one house where every year there was a fat scarecrow on the porch swing that was actually a man who would JUMP UP AT YOU when you walked past him. I think the first year he did it to me I cried and was scared, and he gave me extra candy.

Then I became too old to go asking for candy with my mom, and instead got to wear sexy costumes to foggy, dark Halloween Parties where Thriller played. Or Bauhaus.

That got me thinking about all the great (and not-so-great) costumes I�ve had throughout the years. I�ll skip the not-so great ones (like that time I was four and insisted that I was dressed as Wonder Woman even though I was just in my underwear with some stickers on it) and tell you about my top five:

Age 7- Butterfly. A very nice store-bought costume that was worn with a leotard and tights. Blue satin �exoskeleton� with silver glittery accents. Pretty gauzy wings. And springy antennae. Loved it, wore it ALL the time. Even in March. It lived in �the costume bag� until it completely deteriorated. I think some part of it is still in my mom�s garage. We had a Halloween party that year and I was pissed I didn�t win first prize. My mom tried explaining that I could have any of the prizes I wanted later, since we had bought them and there were more. But I was still pissed. Adam is probably laughing right now. And Rina. My mom is probably remembering how I ALWAYS wanted to win first place at my own parties.

Age 11- Bride of Frankenstein. Got a cool old white gown from a family friend, tore and dirtied it. Did my hair up in a scary fro and painted the white stripes in. That year we threw a Halloween Party at my grandma�s house. All the kids in my class came. It was awesome. I had a little bust and it showed in the dress. I think one of the boys was flirting with me.

Age 15- Magenta. I found a magenta-colored French Maid outfit, did the make-up just right, and teased out my bad perm. Fishnets. Heels. Time warp.

Age 16-19 Flappers, Greek Myths, Season Fairies (I was Winter), Black & White Television Icons. These were fun because they were group and matching costumes with my girlfriends from High School.

Age 21- Bride of Frankenstein II. This time I bought a wig for the purpose (getting that fro out had been a painful task) and added the stripes. Scary make-up. It wasn�t flattering. At. All. But it was the first �couple� costume I wore with a boy. Adam was Frankenstein. He looked pretty cute, actually.

Some of my friends now are old enough to be taking their own little ones trick-or-treating. Some are still partying like nothing else matters. Some are already old cranks, who will probably sit inside with the lights off. To those friends I say, every egg you threw will one day return to you.

I�d like to know what everyone else�s favorite costumes and Halloween memories are! Please leave obscenely long-winded comments so I feel better about this long-ass entry.

Dude. My mom just totally called my ex-boyfriend an asshole on my web page. And I think she threatened him.

He got sick after we broke up and hasn’t been able to shake it. I asked him if he knew why. And he said, Some crazy Cuban curse you put on me? I told him that was close, but not quite. There are at least three women in my family (not to mention Rina) putting bad juju on you. You are gonna have bad juju for as many generations as I have behind me now. Your grandkids will have bad juju.

Of course, I was joking. My mother had said nothing about the matter besides consoling me and telling me he was a turd (which I already knew). But now I’m not so sure. And I know once my aunt gets out of the hospital, their freaky twin powers will activate and I will be at strength 10 or something.

Get well soon, Tipsy, because I would like to make his dick not work this weekend.