This post prompt came 24 hours after my grandmother turned 100 years old! Reminiscing about her life as an immigrant as a woman, A mother, a daughter, a grandmother, a cousin, a hard-working income provider, a single parent all of these memories she has and not often shares with us. Still, with age, she’s become softer. She’s become kinder to herself and others. It has me thinking a lot about how much she has inspired my life as an artist, traveler, and woman who speaks her mind.
When I was growing up, my grandmother was very strict, and she said things that were cruel with laughter included. I remember one time my sisters and I were getting ready to go out, and she walked into the bathroom singing a song that said, the children of my daughters will my grandchildren be, but the children of my sons in doubt will remain. This was such a strange moment because my sisters and I looked identical to my dad. He looks just like her. When I look at her face, I see my reflection. When I see pictures of her in her youth, I see myself my beauty, my big lips, and round eyes, my smile, my hair texture, my body type…
I remember a powerful woman who lived alone and would take no shit from anyone. I remember a powerful woman who had found sanctuary in the Catholic Church to relieve herself of her shame. A shame that was imposed by society upon women who are independent women who left their cheating lying husbands women who wanted more for their children and themselves. I can only imagine the trauma she must’ve gone through in such a strange error when women were nothing without a man. When I visited my grandmother and her daughter three years ago, maybe for now, with the pandemic, I can’t tell its Time goes. They often remind me that I am nothing without a man. I respond, then what are you if you’re to widows? I don’t see a man inside, but I see two strong women.
My grandmother, the last one of her siblings, be alive! A woman who made me beautiful dresses when I was a child to set me aside from the rest to stand out to know fashion and style and the power of wardrobe! A woman who began hugging her children in her 80s. A woman near-death is smiling and laughing and telling us all stories about how difficult her life was. A woman that I see healing before making the next transition in life. She inspires me because she kept herself true she kept evolving although these changes were small, they have been significant. I am so grateful to be Leonor Jaramillo’s granddaughter!
Freudian Slip Club 