Why "El Cuco" Still Bugs Me Out

I’m going to confess that at 35 years old the mere thought of “El Cuco” still freaks me out. Demons, spirits, ghosts and ghouls do nothing for me. I can watch shows and documentaries on those topics all day and night without a worry. Of course I follow that up with some comedy just to wash the willies away, but there is almost no cure for mention of “El Cuco.” I’m guessing the Anglo equivalent would be the boogeyman. But at least the boogeyman has been somewhat defined by its name. BoogeyMAN. No one could say what “El Cuco” would look like when he came to get you. How many arms and legs? Would there be arms and legs!? What do I look out for so I know when to run! Or maybe I’ll just know. With a name like “El Cuco”, I’m guessing I’ll know alright.

As a kid “El Cuco” was a discipline technique. “Don’t do that or “El Cuco” will get you at night.” “Be nice to your sister or “El Cuco” will know and come get you.” “You better get to sleep quickly before “El Cuco” comes.” Add to that the effect of my Father bulging out his eyes every time he said “El Cuco” and terror was inescapable. Not to mention that EVERYONE seemed to know of him and all agreed about his predatory nature. My Abuela didn’t have to budge to settle a fight between my siblings. All she had to do was say “El Cuco viene si no paran de pelear.” And two wide eyed, quiet children would suddenly be looking for somewhere to sit with their backs against something so that “El Cuco” could not sneak up from behind and scare them.

I spare my kids “El Cuco” as tempting as it is sometimes to have those magic words at my disposal. I half consider it cheating and half consider it unkind, and wholly consider it unnecessary for them. So it’s one of the cultural details I will leave out for them. I’ll let them laugh at me about it later, when I’m in my 80’s, living with one of them and still need a night light.

Do your kids know about “El Cuco”?

I Stand Alone - Far From The 'Round The Way Girl

One of the running themes of my life have been “I stand alone.” There has almost always been something to set my apart from the pack. I am the tallest in my family, setting me far apart from my much shorter South American and Caribbean cousins. Aside from my milk white mother, I am the lightest and most resistant to tans as well, not only setting me apart from my family that is filled with beautiful skin tones ranging from café con leche to a rich Indian red, but from a Hispanic community that generally recognizes their own by the skin tone and features I never inherited. In my childhood Italian neighborhood, I was the lone Menudo fan in the midst of an entire population of Michael Jackson fans.

As a very proud and deeply rooted Hispanic, I don’t know that I can adequately express how frustrating it is when other Hispanics don’t recognize my ethnicity. Now, I can understand under most circumstances no one is going to pick out the tall, white girl as the girl who goes home to chuletas and platanos. But when I’m reading the Spanish paper, or at the Spanish mass and they turn to me to politely force the best English they can to communicate with me, I wish I didn’t stand alone so far. How I envied the colors and features of my cousins and even my own siblings, who tan so beautifully. How I wish I could look less like a “white girl” and more like a “’’round the way girl.”

I’d love to know, are there others out there that stand alone like me? What are your feelings and thoughts?

My Little Translator

One of the coolest things my first daughter would do was translate. I spoke to her exclusively in one language and her father in another and although she would routinely witness us communicated in English, her little, still-developing brain did not put two and two together. She would stand between us, ask her dad a question, he would answer it no more than four feet away from me, and she would turn to me and translate. “Papi, can we go to the park today?” “Sure Mama, we’ll go after lunch ok?” “Mami, Papi dijo que después del almuerzo nos podemos ir al parque.” Then I’d have act like she had just enlightened me to his message. She felt so useful and so smart. And she never proved herself wrong!

With time, you could almost see her wheels turn as she tried to decipher the relationship of these two languages. She would often ask me questions about what this word or that word was in English. And when I would tell her you could almost see her feel the word in her mouth as she mulled it in her head and rolled it around her tongue. One clear summer evening, the moon was large and beautiful. We were driving back from the mall and I pointed the moon out to her. “Mira Mama, mira la luna que bella. Es una media luna, porque no está llena.” And I saw her work that over in her mind and soon I heard her little voice say to herself “media luna… sock moon.” It was one of those priceless moments.

I’d love to hear about a priceless moment when your little one was processing the languages. Share them here today!

Feeling Kind of Silly

I remember when I first started to make good on my resolution to raise my daughter bi-lingual, I felt more than just a little ridiculous. I wasn’t cooing or counting piddies, like other new moms in our Gymboree class. I was finding myself basically narrating her life to her in Spanish. I didn’t know what else to say. I mean, it was me and her alone in the house and I was completely unaware of how to have a one way conversation, in Spanish. My Spanish was usually used for hearty conversations about family bochinche and animated exchanges with others whose opinions were as strong as mine. But now I had to talk AT this little human whose blank looks gave me nothing to work with.

Through my sheer exuberance of my love for her, my daily greetings went as such : “Mama! Mama la bella, mama la linda, mama la dulce!” That’s how she got the name Mamala. And the rest of the day was me just going on and on. “¿Que hacemos hoy? ¡Yo no sé si va llover, pero no importa, que de todas maneras vamos a divertirnos!” Blah, blah blah, blah, blah, was all she heard. And after all that conversation, after two years and more, all she would say was “ma ma ma.” But I kept going, seemingly boring her with the details of her life, in español. My poor husband would sit there, completely lost in the noise of my voice, as he waited for me to translate so that he too could participate in the conversation.

Then it happened one day; as I was looking for a particular plate in a cupboard, I heard a little voice behind me say “¿Que buscas Mami?” It was sudden, it was out of nowhere and it was flawless! And suddenly I stopped feeling silly and started feeling awesome.

When did you hear your child first speak? Which language was it? What strategies do you use to raise your child as bilingual?

A Fourth Grade Mofongo Lunch

I had a bit of pride as I packed my daughter’s lunch yesterday morning. She was positively salivating at the mere thought of what her lunch would be later that day. We had ordered some take food from a marvelous restaurant in Jersey City, called Delicias De Puerto Rico, after mass on Sunday. We ordered plátanos rellenos, alcapurrias de yuca, ensalada de bacalao and of course mofongo con pernil.

The smells of the restaurant are heavenly and bring me back to my grandmother’s kitchen so many decades ago. Their asopao de pollo tastes as if my own Abuela had made it herself. It is the pure perfection that quiets the soul and soothes the body all at once. It is that which makes you ache for a time gone by, while filling you with that bitter momentary joy of having relived it all too briefly.

Food is one of the defining factors of any culture; cultures a large as societies and as small as families. I believe it is because the way each culture has transformed mere sustenance into the flavors, aromas and experiences they have in their foods, carry the stories of the people and the traditions. Those most cherished traditions bring us the most sense of pride when we pass them down to our children. When we do our part to create a future for the history that helped define us and guide us, we too become immortalized.

So my daughter brought her garlicky mofongo to school. And while some showed interest or curiosity, and others turned their noses up at the strange food, she gleefully dived in to her lunch enjoying every bite, unwittingly bringing forth the essence of our ancestors and their traditions into yet another generation. You can see why I was filled with pride.

Do you have food traditions that you've passed on to your children? Do your children resist or readily accept the foods of your traditions?

A Bit About Me

My name is Melissa. I am second generation Puerto Rican and first generation Ecuadorian. Essentially this means I was raised by a father from the old country and mother raised by a single mom from the old country. There was a mix of cultures, Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian being so different with just a base of sameness. And a dilution of cultures as well, as time went on and time drew us further from our roots. Being the oldest I had the most exposure to my roots, and even had the exceptional experience of spending two elementary school years in a bi-lingual school. Living the longest with my Puerto Rican grandmother in our home, I resist the most a complete divorce from what made her real and spectacular to me.

I have four children and I try to raise them as if my Abuela were still here. In the forty plus years she lived in Brooklyn, she never learned more than she absolutely needed. She’d go into any neighborhood store, make her selections, place them up on the counter and ask “How mush?” Every clerk knew what she meant and she got along just fine. Otherwise, at home, it was all Spanish all the time. And as she got older and her arthritis got worse, she would have me write the letters she would dictate to send to her sisters back home in PR. And as soon as I could, I was reading things to her also when her tired eyes needed the help. And so, my kids now speak, read and write in Spanish. And most importantly, they learn our religion in Spanish so that they could recite El Padre Nuestro as my Abuela would have taught it to them.

I’d love to know: what is your impetus for raising your children bilingual? Do you have any family members who have never, or could never learn English? Do your children communicate with them well?