My Aunt B - Home is where your hat is from

Aunt B with her traditional Colombian sombrero vueltiao

“I think it's possible, why not?! Todos dicen que estoy loca pero yo digo que es cierto.” she continues to insist the mountains surrounding us on the patio of her home in Southern California are some how the same mountain range where she grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia.

Beatriz Bedoya, or Aunt B, was born the youngest of six siblings. Her father was probably 1/2 black but none of the children knew how much African blood they had in them because it was shunned on to be black and common to make racist jokes about black people at the house. These days, my Aunt B is proud of the fact that she's black and often boasts about it. She doesn't bother to specify how much black blood she has in her, just makes sure to let everyone know she's black and how ridiculous it is for anyone to deny it, raising her forearm to show you her skin color or pointing at her face widening her eyes while looking straight at you.

She met Kevin McCarten, my uncle, an intelligent business man, great father, and one of the most generous people I know through her sister in 1969 who worked in the local Peace Corps offices in a nearby town to Bucaramanga. Uncle Kevin had been recruited from the business school at San José State University in a new Peace Corps recruitment campaign to diversify the peace corp mixing in some finance oriented majors with the liberal arts/peace-nic types. She was 21 years old and vaguely aware of anything outside of Bucaramanga. In 1971, they were married and moved to the states. She tells me she made this decision with out really deciding. It didn't completely sink in what she had done until she was here. For the first time in her life, she was surrounded by people speaking fluently in English, the first time she had seen snow and the first time her black heritage was surrounded by all white faces that embodied what her father had been ashamed of and tried to hide while she grew up. Even after living in the states several years, when she walked outside with her kids, people in the neighborhood would ask her if she was the maid which really ticked her off. She returned home at least once a year up until her first child was born at which point her father stopped telling her “I told you so” about her decision to leave her homeland and, more accepting and supporting of her decision, started saying, “No turning back now.”

I didn't know my Aunt too well growing up, just vague memories of her seemingly very happy and always showing off her “Latina” side. She livened up one of our traditional big Thanks Giving family get togethers (my Mom has 7 brothers and sisters including Uncle Kevin plus all their kids) by singing “La Bamba” and banging together some salt shakers.

When my Aunt B first came to the US, instead of going to the English class Uncle Kevin thought she was taking during the day, she took Esperanto, an artificial language that was a failed attempt at creating a universal second language for the world to communicate across cultural and language barriers. “Kiel vi fartas?” she greeted when he came home from work one day. They both tell this story and laugh about it now. She also told my uncle that “Yak Jerk called” once because she confuses her ys and js and one time called “gun shot” in order to get the front seat in the car. Despite these and other funny English mistake anecdotes, Aunt B has been fully bilingual for many years and has a masters degree in education from the states.

Her two kids, my cousins Ian and Alex, who have a blue-eyed blond haired Irish father, and grew up in their later childhood years in a predominately white middle-upper class lifestyle in Orange County, estimate that they are about 1/8 black and call themselves Octaroons (a real word they learned in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

After living on the East Coast for a few years, My Uncle Kevin, followed several jobs in the airline business in different cities in California until buying a house in Fresno in 1976 and then settling in San Clemente in the early eighties when he started a shipping business.

When Alex was 2 yrs old she only spoke Spanish. I remember, when I was about 10 years old taking a trip with her, my Mom, my baby sitter, and my sister. Alex's favorite word was popó. My Aunt B told me recently that her and Uncle Kevin only spoke Spanish to her as a toddler and how she regrets that they listened to her kindergarten teacher who told them she was speaking too much Spanish and it would get in the way of her learning English. Alex grew up speaking English and later relearned Spanish as a second language.

I became very interested in the Spanish language in my young adult years too, which led me to being active in and working in Tijuana and Ensenada to learn. By the time I finished my masters in Spanish linguistics at San Diego State and started a career as a Spanish teacher in San Diego, my cousin Ian (Alex's younger brother) was now a teenage skater and living in their beautiful home on the cliffs of San Clemente. I would often go up and visit. Aunt B is a retired middle school math teacher. She loved teaching and always tried to help latino immigrant children in any way she could. She's always been athletic and liked the outdoors and her and I would hit the beach with a local body surfing club once a week. I would drive up from home in Tijuana where I was doing my final socio-linguistic thesis study. Aunt B and I would talk about the comforting chaos of Latino countries and compare and contrast how a Mexican says something and how a Colombian says something. I was as passionate as someone could be about the Spanish language or anything and Aunt B ate up the opportunity to speak Spanish with me and started to claim me as her Latino son.

I remember a conversation with her and my Uncle Kev about how she missed the fact that in Colombia you could walk outside at 10p and there would be a neighbor to talk to and how that's how it was in Tijuana, but here it's super quiet, and you can't hear or see anyone outside after dark. My Uncle Kev actually enjoys this peace and quiet. Aunt B and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things and started to become good friends.

I remember at my Grandpa's funeral her saying to me, not trying to give grand advice but just as a general comment between good friends and to express how we were both feeling, “Nunca sabes cuándo se van a acabar las cosas. La vida es más corta de lo que uno piensa.”

For some reason my visits kind of dwindled down to mainly only visiting during family get togethers. At one point during this time, I heard that Aunt B wasn't very happy. My cousins Alex and Ian had both grown up and moved out. I went up on New Year's eve one year and hung out with Uncle Kevin. Aunt B had gone to Colombia for a while. “I hope she feels better after getting the chance to go home after so many years” Uncle Kevin told me on our way down to the local pub to ring in the new year.

“Yeah, I sometimes feel like a part of her never left Colombia.”

My visits dwindled even more which I regret. I feel like I gained a real confidant in my Aunt B. We were buds and I wasn't able to share some of the new things happening in my life. I did continue to go up for the annual Super Bowl Party which my uncle calls his “Favorite holiday“ and always makes sure it's a great party. It's recently become the McCarten family get together to the point where even relatives from the East Coast came out for it last year and I've taken friends from San Diego and Tijuana including my professional guitar friend Delfino from Tijuana, who would put on a show after the game for those who wanted to keep partying.  "I love this fucking gringo", I remember her saying one time after a few drinks, jumping into a conversation with her arm around Uncle Kev kind of showing him off to me and a couple of friends I had brought one year.

A few years after the News Year’s eve visit, I did go up just to visit and Aunt B and I took a walk on the beach. I noticed her asking me a question and then sometimes as little as 10 min later asking me the same question. We had dinner a little later with Uncle Kev and when she wasn't there he told me she's been having some memory problems.

My Mom has recently come down to visit on a couple occasions and both times we went to visit Aunt B and Uncle Kev so I've been able to visit and talk with them in the last year more often than the past few years. I live in Tijuana still and despite my attachment there, I have to admit that it feels good to stay in the US sometimes and sleep in a nice quiet suburban neighborhood like the one I grew up in.

“Mira, mira...” my Aunt B kept saying to urge me over again to the sliding glass door to see the little sparrows eating some bread crumbs she left out on the patio. I arrive and see the last one catching a morsel as they fly over the horizon, the trail of bread crumbs leads toward the hills.

“Yo no soy tan loca. Yo digo que sí es posible...” she repeats to me later as we sit together on the back porch, pointing to the mountain range surrounding their new home in San Juan Capistrano insisting once again that it is connected to the range that runs around her home town on the Mesita de Bucaramanga, Colombia.