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When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books. I wanted to write poems about golden retrievers and first loves. I would find rhyming words and write poems that I hope none of you ever read. I never pursued it. Instead I started a blog with horrible grammar and incorrect spelling, all rolled up with a little sarcasm and whole lot of honesty.
The story I’m about to share with you is only partially mine. It’s mostly my parents story, as well as my grandparents story. If we had a nickel for every time someone told one of us that my parents story should be made into a book, we’d have quite a few nickels. This is my way of telling my parents story.
I was thinking I could make into a series. Because let’s be honest, I’m gonna be all over the map, with no structure.
I could do one post about an experience we had, or a post about a really significant thing that happened to my parents. Tell me your thoughts. Yes? No?
There’s just so much to share, and so many things that come up along the way it’s impossible for me to keep track, or to do this in order.
But here’s a start.
I’m Canadian. I was born in Canada. I get asked where I’m from almost daily. I think people wonder why I’m tanned and don’t have an accent. My family (more so my parents) get a lot of ignorant comments. I think a few of us live in this beautiful bubble where we believe that racism is a thing of the past. I’m here to tell you that it’s fine that you live there. I think it might even be a great place to live. But I’m also here to tell you that racism is still here. And I truly believe that it will never go away.
And I’m not talking about the “go back to your country on your banana boat” comments. Even though a man told my dad that three years ago while on a road trip in the States when he asked this man for directions. I’m not even talking about the guy who told my mom “you immigrants come to OUR country and steal our jobs” while at work while she was trying to help him settle his case. Hey buddy? If you want her job, go for it! It’s there. My mother just happened to work her butt off for 8 years in UNIVERSITY getting herself a pretty little paper that says MASTERS DEGREE. You go and do that and you can have her job. I’m not talking about the guy that yelled at my brother “get off the road you dirty Mexican!” while walking home from high school. Or the people who called him a wetback. I’m not even talking about the guy in a truck that yelled at Dane and me to “stick to our own kind” when we were walking home from getting ice cream. Um, sir? If what you mean by “own kind” is that he gets triple decker ice cream cones and I get a small, and he still somehow doesn’t gain an ounce, I 100% could not agree more. But I don’t think that’s what you were talking about. These comments don’t really effect me a whole lot.
You know what effects me? Hearing my parents stories of when they first came. The story of my dad who was working in a house and he found a jar full of quarters. He had literally no money. No money for food. So he stole a handful of quarters. He remembers a few hours later, he saw a police car drive up. He was so terrified he went and hid in a closet and cried. In the end, the owner of the house was a police man coming to see how things were going. But in those moments, my dads world was ending.
There are stories of my dad getting kicked by men in positions of power. There are stories where my dad was exploited by men in positions of leadership, where these men thought they could treat him as if he were just the gum off their shoe. Those stories hurt.
Those are the stories that I wish I could find those men and tell them “you thought you could break Americo Exavi Campos. You thought you could win. I’m here to tell you you were wrong. And that the 20 year old boy you thought you were keeping down, well, he won. He won at this life. And you? You lost.” There are moments, when I want to do just that.
I could tell you stories about my 18 year old mother. I could tell you how her manager at a factory cutting fabric put a banana in her face and said things to her that should never leave the lips of man. My mother didn’t use some hashtag to prove that “time’s up.” She couldn’t wear an all black dress to an award ceremony to take her stand. My mother went home and told her 20 year old husband, “I’m not going back that place. I’m going back to school.” And her 20 year old husband said “Ok.”
I could tell you that when she become pregnant with me, she finished her high school diploma here in Canada, with her feet so swollen from severe edema that she went and wrote all of her diplomas barefoot. She literally went to high school with no shoes, in a country she barely knew, with a language she didn’t know, because that’s the kind of fire my mother had in her.
I could tell you how in the first stages of her pregnancy, her doctor referred her to a different clinic, to which her and my dad went to. Why? Because they were the doctors, they knew better. And my parents didn’t speak English.
Turns out it was an abortion clinic. Her doctor was too ignorant to think it possible that they might have planned me or wanted me. Shame on you Sir, but, I’m here and I made it despite you doubting my parents.
There are nights when my husband is laying next to me sleeping, and my mind won’t shut off, and it wanders to my parents. Or my childhood. My husband does not even know this about me, but on those nights, I cry quietly to myself. I let the tears fall. I don’t hold them back, mostly because I spent most of my early life trying not to cry. I didn’t want people to see that I felt inferior to them. Or that I was insecure about who I was. Or that I didn’t want people to think my parents were lesser people because of their skin colour, or where they were from. I cry because when I hear stories and I see my dad choking back the tears, I wish I could be 30 year Claudia and hug 20 year old Exavi. I wish I could be me, the woman that I am today, and tell him “Dad, keep going. Keep fighting. You make it. In the end, you make it. And your life is beautiful.”
I wish I could be 30 year old Claudia and hug 18 year old Noemi. I wish I could look her in the eyes and say “Momma, you do it. In the end, you get your degree. In the end, you travel the world with your two babies and your husband. You fight and you win some of the hardest battles life has to offer, but because you’re so strong, in the end… you come out victorious.” Those are the thoughts that race through my mind on the nights that the tears flow freely and my husband lays next to me.
I wish I could go back in time and say those things to my young parents. Because I will never understand or know all the hardships they went through, and I can only imagine what kind of lonely nights they must have endured. Or how bleak their futures must have looked to them. I mostly just wish I could hold them in those moments, and tell them how proud I would become of them, 30 years later. Because I am. I really, really am. Those are the thoughts that race through my head at 2:00 in the morning, while my husband sleeps. Or pretends to sleep, because who wants to deal with a crying wife at 2:00 in the morning without ice cream in the fridge?
My parents are immigrants from El Salvador, considered to be one of “s**t hole” countries Mr. President so eloquently put it. They moved to Canada in 1984, due to the civil war in El Salvador. My parents have seen dead bodies on the streets with blankets covering them. They have heard gunshots over and over again, daily. They know what it means to have a 6:00 pm curfew or be shot. They have seen their peers hanging from trees, outside of their school. They’ve heard the marching of soldiers outside their homes. Their mothers telling them to back away from the window in case a confrontation between the guerrilla and military broke out. They know war. They know what war sounds like. They know what war smells like. They know what war looks like.
My grandfather was kidnapped by the military. The day it happened was a normal day. My dad was in the auto parts shop that they owned, which was attached to their home. He and my grandpa were there. My dad says a black van pulled up, men were all dressed in black. They wore masks. They held a machine gun to my dad’s head and told him not to move, scream, or say a word. My dad was 17 and he had to watch as his dad was put into the back of a van and taken away, all the while he had a gun to his head. My dad remembers he could see his mom in the courtyard, and he so badly wanted to scream for her. But he couldn’t. Looking back now he says it was probably for the best. If he had screamed they might have all ended up dead. The second the van took off, he went and ran to his mom to tell her King (That was my grandpa’s nickname and what my dad and uncle called him), her husband, her children’s father, had been taken by men in a van.
What happened next, quite literally shapes the rest of ALL of our lives. My dad’s, my mom’s, my brothers and mine. The life of my grandmother’s on both my parents sides. I would even go as far as to say the life of Olive. If it had not been for this monumental moment, I would not be here. My family would not be here. My parents could quite possibly be dead. This is the story of a strong boy named Americo Exavi Campos, and a beautiful girl named Rosalba Noemi Lopez. These are my parents, this is their story.
To be continued……………………………… what a cliff hanger!
