Ol' Yeller? Am I THAT Mom?!

I just discovered that I'm a yeller. Not at home, for the most part. There my tone becomes low and strong when needed. You know, my Mom voice. But it seems that my bilingualism has given me a sense of a cloak of invisibility when it comes to communicating with my children in public spaces. Just today I had to coral my children quickly and get them in the car before the cop I just saw would notice my illegally parked car and issue me a ticket. So at the top of my lungs I yelled their names and then, "¡Vamos! ¡Ahora! ¡Rápido! ¡Papi, anda y dile a tu hermana que venga ya o sino que encuentre donde dormir en el parque!" Don't worry, my kids are used to my sarcasm, but they know to put a spring in their step.

We live in the 'burbs of Jersey. They go to a small private school. The families are all well educated, and quite proper. Political correctness is a code of honor and while the ethnicities are quite varied, the culture seems universally quite WASPy. I, however, wrapped in my invisibility cloak of bilingualism (because if they can't understand you, they can't hear you either apparently), and flaring some of the jibara behaviors I picked up from my Abuela that used to embarrass my mother, I find myself yelling in a most un-WASPy manner. I never noticed it, mostly because I was politely ignored I suppose. It never occurred to me that I was YELLING, and maybe being LOUD. And if it did occur to me, it didn't bother me at all. Until my cloak of invisibility was struck with its antidote: another bilingual Hispanic.

In the middle of my YELLING, I hear "¡Hola! ¿Como estas?" I continued my YELLING, and I still heard "¡Hola! ¿Como estas?" But it was less a question and more a plea for me to stop and notice what I was doing. And when I stopped for a moment to utter "Bien, gracias" as he passed me by I could see in my fellow Latino's face, "Muchacha, no seas tan jibara." And for a moment I thought, oh my, I'm YELLING. But then I snapped back and remembered that sometimes we mother's YEll, sometimes we Hispanics YEll, and the probability that you will YELL goes up when you are a Hispanic mother. So, I'll keep my invisibility cloak and just YELL as required. But I will try to keep it to emergencies like attempting to avoid tickets for an illegal parking spot.

Are you a yeller? Do you find it kind of jibaro? Does it bother your kids?.

Don’t forget to keep tuned into this blog to read about my interviews with celebrities, community leaders and more on the topic of abuse. It will be a series of blogs because there is so much insight and wisdom to share that I have learned.