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dedalus_1947Voz de la guitarra mía
Al despertar la mañana
Quiere cantar su alegría
A mi tierra Mexicana.
Yo le canto a sus volcanes
A sus praderas y flores
Que son como talismanes
Del amor de mis amores
México lindo y querido
Si muero lejos de ti
Que digan que estoy dormido
Y que me traigan aquí
Que digan que estoy dormido
Y que me traigan aquí
México lindo y querido,
Si muero lejos de ti.
(México Lindo y Querido: Chucho Monge)
Two days before the start of the new 2017 year, Kathy and I had dinner with my last living Mexican uncle, Eduardo Villalpando Nava (whom we called “Lalo”), his wife Lilia, and the family of their youngest daughter, Silvia. We traveled to Mexico City for the expressed purpose of seeing him. His brother, my uncle Pepe (Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava), had died earlier that year, leaving my mom and Lalo as the last surviving siblings of the once large Villalpando-Nava clan. When Kathy and I first talked about this trip, I told her that I probably wanted to go to bid farewell to Mexico and say goodbye to the baby of the eight children of my long deceased grandparents Mima and Adalberto Villalpando. My mom was 92 years of age at the time of this visit, and her health and mental acuity was fading quickly. I wanted to see my remaining uncle for myself and give him a verbal and face-to-face update on her condition and the status of her children. It proved to be a wonderful evening of conversation, laughter, and nostalgia at a downtown restaurant specializing in Spanish cuisine. I had purposely requested a Spanish restaurant when Lalo first asked for my preference of meals. I wanted to reconstruct a 45-year old memory – when Lalo and Lilia invited my cousin Gabino and me to the famed Spanish restaurant and nightclub of the 1960’s and 70’s called Gitanerías. There one could dine and be entertained by exotic flamenco dancers and Spanish gypsies reciting verses of the famous Andalusian poet Garcia Lorca. My adult life was just beginning back then, in 1973, and being with Lalo allowed me share in the taste and milieu of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan Mexican intellectual and successful professional.
At dinner, on the third night of our stay in Mexico City, I talked with Lalo and his wife Lilia all night, my Spanish fluency improving as we went along. We spoke of current happenings and events, avoiding the past with its sad chronology of deceased brothers and sisters. Both he and his wife were retired educators and professionals, and Lalo had just finished a manuscript on Educational Leadership and Practical Administration. Their conversation was focused and exact, demonstrating none of the vagueness or time confusion that I observed in my mom when I visited her. Lalo was the youngest in the family, born 6 or 7 years after her, and he still retained all his mental and rational sharpness. The nostalgia only arose as the evening came to a close and I was overwhelmed by a strong sense that I would never see this uncle – with whom I had spent so much time during my many trips to Mexico City – again. That prescient sentiment was confirmed last week when, on the morning of July 18th, I received notification from his daughter Silvia that he had died at the age of 87.
As I’ve come to learn, with age and correction, all stories are suspect, and personal essays and memoirs are outright lies. One is fiction and the others are reconstructed events told from an entirely personal and biased perspective. I plead guilty to the latter. Because of my lack of specific dates and biographical facts about him, the Lalo I remember is a collage of fading memories – a mobile of swaying and changing scenes, images, and events that shift, change shape, and reform over time. The images and scenes that I recall seem concrete and real at one point, and then undergo a type of sublimation with the passing of time and the vagueness of memory. This is the case when writing about my Uncle Lalo in this piece.
My earliest memories of Mexico always revolve around the Villalpando family home on Calle Chopo, in the Colonia de San Cosme, across the street from the Museo de Antropologia, a massive glass-faced structure, with two towering metal steeples. In an ancient, stucco, two-story colonial townhouse, my grandmother, Mima, maintained a home for her remaining three unmarried children, Maria Aurora (Totis), Jose Manuel (Pepe), and Eduardo (Lalo). The residence was part of a large complex, built around a rectangular central plaza made of weathered, granite blocks. My uncles and aunt were just beginning careers at that time, while also attending school. Totis, beginning as a secretary, would eventually become a homemaker and secondary teacher of English. Pepe would pursue a writing career and become a university professor of Philosophy and Education. Lalo, the youngest, would teach history and practice Law, eventually becoming an adult school principal. This is the household that my mom and her family of four children resided in every 4 or 5 years, when we visited Mexico during the summer. In that home, during those early years, those uncles and aunt were our first “crushes” – the first people we fell in love with. Yet my brothers and sisters and I, always gravitated more towards the younger Lalo. He was the kind, soothing, and gentle uncle who was patient, easygoing, and funny. Lalo avoided the biting humor and sarcasm of Totis and Pepe. He was kind in his corrections of our language and behavior, and treated us as with adult care and attention. He took time to tell us stories of Mexican history, taught us words in Nauatl (the indigenous language of the Aztecs and the Mexica natives), and wove in tales of myths and legends. He pointed out the large family portrait in the dining room, whose eyes, he warned us, would follow us everywhere in the room. He taught us how to roll tortillas into tacos of aguacate (avacados) at the dinner table, and showed us how to eat the sumptuous local Mexican fruits – tunas (the prickly pear) and mangos – we bought in the open-air mercados of San Cosme. He took us to movies, accompanied us to Chapultepec, the large central park in Mexico City, and took us rowing on its lake. After Pepe and Totis married, Lalo and our grandmother eventually moved from Chopo into a smaller apartment.
When I traveled alone to Mexico in 1966 as a high school graduate, and enrolled at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico for the summer, Mima and Lalo were living with Helen, the widowed eldest daughter of the family, and her son Gabino. Lalo had matured by then into the family lawyer and counselor, and a sophisticated man-about-town who was starting to think of marriage. Lalo, in those years, presented a dual persona. He was a solid professional by day, and the closest thing to a swinging bachelor, as the Villalpando family would produce, by night. As best as I can remember of those days, his routine consisted of an early morning breakfast with Mima and Helen, who would serve the meal and then joined him to review his day. Dressed in starched white shirt, suit, and tie, he proceeded to his despacho, or downtown law office, for morning and afternoon clients and court, and be home for dinner at 2 pm. La cena was the formal meal of the day where the family, consisting of Mima, Helen, Gabino, and I would come together to eat and talk about the days activities, current events, and family matters. I usually had more questions about school and travel than providing information. Lalo was the titular head of household, the pater familias, and would respond first, with Helen and Mima chiming in with commentary or corrections. When his advice was solicited he responded in a characteristic fashion. First he would give a Cheshire Cat smile, accompanied with a long pause, and routinely begin his response with the preface, “Bueno…”. To me it sounded like melodious wisdom coming from a fresh-faced venerable sage. I trusted him completely. His advice was always sane and reasonable, albeit somewhat conservative. If I wanted to hear risqué or adventurous suggestions I would ask Uncle Pepe. Lalo was our trusted counselor and we were his family clients, and he always had our safest interests in mind.
After supper, he proceeded to his second career as adult-school teacher (and later principal). Dual careers were common among university-educated professionals in Mexico at that time, especially teachers and lawyers, because separate salaries and fees were insufficient for full time employment. Most days Lalo would return home in time for “la merienda”, or a light, late supper, unless he had an evening date – which would be the topic of conversation the next day. Living with a dating professional bachelor was the height of coolness for two high school grads that were just beginning college. Gabino and I asked him about night clubs, restaurants, coffee houses, and dating strategies. He recommended locales in and around La Zona Rosa, the hip “Pink Light District” of Mexico City in the 1960’s and 70’s, and sending flowers after the date. The only topic he wouldn’t discuss was the identity of the women he dated. All the women Helen or Gabino mentioned as candidates were, according to Lalo, past history. It was only late in the summer that the identity of the mystery lady who was dominating his mind and attentions was revealed. As Lalo finally described her, she became more and more exotic and fascinating in my imagination. Her name was Lilia. She was a young, attractive, Japanese-Mexican scientist, who taught at the Polytechnic University. She was a lovely and successful professional with an established career, but who, according to Lalo, pretended indifference to his attentions and amorous stratagems – never quite amplifying on what those amorous stratagems were. I learned later, after leaving Mexico to begin school at UCLA, that Lilia finally succumbed to Lalo’s charms and grace, and the two would soon wed.
On every subsequent trip to Mexico after 1966 (seven or eight, I think), Lalo and Lilia’s family grew in prosperity and size. First came Lilia (Lili), then Eduardo (Lalito), and finally Silvia (Silvi), who all married and had children of their own. Unfortunately, in the more recent visits, more and more of my aunts and uncles were missing – first there had been Carlos, years before, then Helen, Chita, Totis, Beto, and finally Pepe two years ago. It was like watching the fading process of an old color family portrait that has been exposed to the bleaching effects of the sun too long. The colors wash away, and the distinctive lines and features of faces and forms slowly dissolve into an indecipherable hazy glow. Lalo’s face was the last to disappear.
It was probably during one of my random conversations with my sister Stela, as we sat together keeping our mother company as she slept in the hospital or nursing facility, that I mentioned the last supper Kathy and I had with Lalo and his family in Mexico. Stela gave a long sigh and said it must be sad being the last surviving sibling of a family of eight. All your brothers and sisters have preceded you in death – one by one – leaving you alone to live with their memories and stories. The impact of those words didn’t hit me at the time. Mom was still alive (barely), and Lalo appeared hale and hearty with many years still ahead of him. How foolish that sentiment seems now, eight months later. I cannot imagine a lonelier feeling than realizing that all your brothers and sisters are gone – having dropped away, piece after piece, over the years, like a row of cascading dominos in slow motion. No one is left except for the children they sired and the stories they recite to their own children of times past, and lives gone. The Villalpando-Nava family seemed immortal once – in my childhood and youth. They lived in a remote, almost mythical place called La Ciudad de Mexico, an ancient city of Aztec legend, Spanish conquest, and colonial independence. That myth has evaporated with time, and I find myself doubly saddened by the news of Lalo’s death. It’s like re-experiencing my mother’s death again – only differently. While Lalo lived, his eye-witnessed stories and memories of my mom continued. With his death they are truly gone. I suppose this essay is my meager attempt to keep his memory, and the memories of his brothers and sisters, alive for one more moment through my words. They are a poor substitute. Lalo’s passing has left Mexico a place of sorrow in my heart. It will never be the same again.
Al despertar la mañana
Quiere cantar su alegría
A mi tierra Mexicana.
Yo le canto a sus volcanes
A sus praderas y flores
Que son como talismanes
Del amor de mis amores
México lindo y querido
Si muero lejos de ti
Que digan que estoy dormido
Y que me traigan aquí
Que digan que estoy dormido
Y que me traigan aquí
México lindo y querido,
Si muero lejos de ti.
(México Lindo y Querido: Chucho Monge)
Two days before the start of the new 2017 year, Kathy and I had dinner with my last living Mexican uncle, Eduardo Villalpando Nava (whom we called “Lalo”), his wife Lilia, and the family of their youngest daughter, Silvia. We traveled to Mexico City for the expressed purpose of seeing him. His brother, my uncle Pepe (Jose Manuel Villalpando Nava), had died earlier that year, leaving my mom and Lalo as the last surviving siblings of the once large Villalpando-Nava clan. When Kathy and I first talked about this trip, I told her that I probably wanted to go to bid farewell to Mexico and say goodbye to the baby of the eight children of my long deceased grandparents Mima and Adalberto Villalpando. My mom was 92 years of age at the time of this visit, and her health and mental acuity was fading quickly. I wanted to see my remaining uncle for myself and give him a verbal and face-to-face update on her condition and the status of her children. It proved to be a wonderful evening of conversation, laughter, and nostalgia at a downtown restaurant specializing in Spanish cuisine. I had purposely requested a Spanish restaurant when Lalo first asked for my preference of meals. I wanted to reconstruct a 45-year old memory – when Lalo and Lilia invited my cousin Gabino and me to the famed Spanish restaurant and nightclub of the 1960’s and 70’s called Gitanerías. There one could dine and be entertained by exotic flamenco dancers and Spanish gypsies reciting verses of the famous Andalusian poet Garcia Lorca. My adult life was just beginning back then, in 1973, and being with Lalo allowed me share in the taste and milieu of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan Mexican intellectual and successful professional.
At dinner, on the third night of our stay in Mexico City, I talked with Lalo and his wife Lilia all night, my Spanish fluency improving as we went along. We spoke of current happenings and events, avoiding the past with its sad chronology of deceased brothers and sisters. Both he and his wife were retired educators and professionals, and Lalo had just finished a manuscript on Educational Leadership and Practical Administration. Their conversation was focused and exact, demonstrating none of the vagueness or time confusion that I observed in my mom when I visited her. Lalo was the youngest in the family, born 6 or 7 years after her, and he still retained all his mental and rational sharpness. The nostalgia only arose as the evening came to a close and I was overwhelmed by a strong sense that I would never see this uncle – with whom I had spent so much time during my many trips to Mexico City – again. That prescient sentiment was confirmed last week when, on the morning of July 18th, I received notification from his daughter Silvia that he had died at the age of 87.
As I’ve come to learn, with age and correction, all stories are suspect, and personal essays and memoirs are outright lies. One is fiction and the others are reconstructed events told from an entirely personal and biased perspective. I plead guilty to the latter. Because of my lack of specific dates and biographical facts about him, the Lalo I remember is a collage of fading memories – a mobile of swaying and changing scenes, images, and events that shift, change shape, and reform over time. The images and scenes that I recall seem concrete and real at one point, and then undergo a type of sublimation with the passing of time and the vagueness of memory. This is the case when writing about my Uncle Lalo in this piece.
My earliest memories of Mexico always revolve around the Villalpando family home on Calle Chopo, in the Colonia de San Cosme, across the street from the Museo de Antropologia, a massive glass-faced structure, with two towering metal steeples. In an ancient, stucco, two-story colonial townhouse, my grandmother, Mima, maintained a home for her remaining three unmarried children, Maria Aurora (Totis), Jose Manuel (Pepe), and Eduardo (Lalo). The residence was part of a large complex, built around a rectangular central plaza made of weathered, granite blocks. My uncles and aunt were just beginning careers at that time, while also attending school. Totis, beginning as a secretary, would eventually become a homemaker and secondary teacher of English. Pepe would pursue a writing career and become a university professor of Philosophy and Education. Lalo, the youngest, would teach history and practice Law, eventually becoming an adult school principal. This is the household that my mom and her family of four children resided in every 4 or 5 years, when we visited Mexico during the summer. In that home, during those early years, those uncles and aunt were our first “crushes” – the first people we fell in love with. Yet my brothers and sisters and I, always gravitated more towards the younger Lalo. He was the kind, soothing, and gentle uncle who was patient, easygoing, and funny. Lalo avoided the biting humor and sarcasm of Totis and Pepe. He was kind in his corrections of our language and behavior, and treated us as with adult care and attention. He took time to tell us stories of Mexican history, taught us words in Nauatl (the indigenous language of the Aztecs and the Mexica natives), and wove in tales of myths and legends. He pointed out the large family portrait in the dining room, whose eyes, he warned us, would follow us everywhere in the room. He taught us how to roll tortillas into tacos of aguacate (avacados) at the dinner table, and showed us how to eat the sumptuous local Mexican fruits – tunas (the prickly pear) and mangos – we bought in the open-air mercados of San Cosme. He took us to movies, accompanied us to Chapultepec, the large central park in Mexico City, and took us rowing on its lake. After Pepe and Totis married, Lalo and our grandmother eventually moved from Chopo into a smaller apartment.
When I traveled alone to Mexico in 1966 as a high school graduate, and enrolled at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico for the summer, Mima and Lalo were living with Helen, the widowed eldest daughter of the family, and her son Gabino. Lalo had matured by then into the family lawyer and counselor, and a sophisticated man-about-town who was starting to think of marriage. Lalo, in those years, presented a dual persona. He was a solid professional by day, and the closest thing to a swinging bachelor, as the Villalpando family would produce, by night. As best as I can remember of those days, his routine consisted of an early morning breakfast with Mima and Helen, who would serve the meal and then joined him to review his day. Dressed in starched white shirt, suit, and tie, he proceeded to his despacho, or downtown law office, for morning and afternoon clients and court, and be home for dinner at 2 pm. La cena was the formal meal of the day where the family, consisting of Mima, Helen, Gabino, and I would come together to eat and talk about the days activities, current events, and family matters. I usually had more questions about school and travel than providing information. Lalo was the titular head of household, the pater familias, and would respond first, with Helen and Mima chiming in with commentary or corrections. When his advice was solicited he responded in a characteristic fashion. First he would give a Cheshire Cat smile, accompanied with a long pause, and routinely begin his response with the preface, “Bueno…”. To me it sounded like melodious wisdom coming from a fresh-faced venerable sage. I trusted him completely. His advice was always sane and reasonable, albeit somewhat conservative. If I wanted to hear risqué or adventurous suggestions I would ask Uncle Pepe. Lalo was our trusted counselor and we were his family clients, and he always had our safest interests in mind.
After supper, he proceeded to his second career as adult-school teacher (and later principal). Dual careers were common among university-educated professionals in Mexico at that time, especially teachers and lawyers, because separate salaries and fees were insufficient for full time employment. Most days Lalo would return home in time for “la merienda”, or a light, late supper, unless he had an evening date – which would be the topic of conversation the next day. Living with a dating professional bachelor was the height of coolness for two high school grads that were just beginning college. Gabino and I asked him about night clubs, restaurants, coffee houses, and dating strategies. He recommended locales in and around La Zona Rosa, the hip “Pink Light District” of Mexico City in the 1960’s and 70’s, and sending flowers after the date. The only topic he wouldn’t discuss was the identity of the women he dated. All the women Helen or Gabino mentioned as candidates were, according to Lalo, past history. It was only late in the summer that the identity of the mystery lady who was dominating his mind and attentions was revealed. As Lalo finally described her, she became more and more exotic and fascinating in my imagination. Her name was Lilia. She was a young, attractive, Japanese-Mexican scientist, who taught at the Polytechnic University. She was a lovely and successful professional with an established career, but who, according to Lalo, pretended indifference to his attentions and amorous stratagems – never quite amplifying on what those amorous stratagems were. I learned later, after leaving Mexico to begin school at UCLA, that Lilia finally succumbed to Lalo’s charms and grace, and the two would soon wed.
On every subsequent trip to Mexico after 1966 (seven or eight, I think), Lalo and Lilia’s family grew in prosperity and size. First came Lilia (Lili), then Eduardo (Lalito), and finally Silvia (Silvi), who all married and had children of their own. Unfortunately, in the more recent visits, more and more of my aunts and uncles were missing – first there had been Carlos, years before, then Helen, Chita, Totis, Beto, and finally Pepe two years ago. It was like watching the fading process of an old color family portrait that has been exposed to the bleaching effects of the sun too long. The colors wash away, and the distinctive lines and features of faces and forms slowly dissolve into an indecipherable hazy glow. Lalo’s face was the last to disappear.
It was probably during one of my random conversations with my sister Stela, as we sat together keeping our mother company as she slept in the hospital or nursing facility, that I mentioned the last supper Kathy and I had with Lalo and his family in Mexico. Stela gave a long sigh and said it must be sad being the last surviving sibling of a family of eight. All your brothers and sisters have preceded you in death – one by one – leaving you alone to live with their memories and stories. The impact of those words didn’t hit me at the time. Mom was still alive (barely), and Lalo appeared hale and hearty with many years still ahead of him. How foolish that sentiment seems now, eight months later. I cannot imagine a lonelier feeling than realizing that all your brothers and sisters are gone – having dropped away, piece after piece, over the years, like a row of cascading dominos in slow motion. No one is left except for the children they sired and the stories they recite to their own children of times past, and lives gone. The Villalpando-Nava family seemed immortal once – in my childhood and youth. They lived in a remote, almost mythical place called La Ciudad de Mexico, an ancient city of Aztec legend, Spanish conquest, and colonial independence. That myth has evaporated with time, and I find myself doubly saddened by the news of Lalo’s death. It’s like re-experiencing my mother’s death again – only differently. While Lalo lived, his eye-witnessed stories and memories of my mom continued. With his death they are truly gone. I suppose this essay is my meager attempt to keep his memory, and the memories of his brothers and sisters, alive for one more moment through my words. They are a poor substitute. Lalo’s passing has left Mexico a place of sorrow in my heart. It will never be the same again.
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