Chapter 1: The Beginnings

After so many years, it is hard to figure out exactly where to start. There are so many twists and turns along the road that who is to say which ones were mistakes and which were the right ones to get here where we are today? I guess that the best isn’t trying to determine which route was the best, but rather to take you back to the beginning and show you the path as I remember it. That way, you can determine where the wrong turns and the right ones are.

It all started, I guess, back in the early 80s. My family had just moved back to California after living in Washington (the state, not the District of Columbia) for 6 years. I wasn’t too thrilled with the move, but at the same time 1) I hadn’t wanted to move to Washington 6 years earlier, and 2) at least I wasn’t in my last year of high school like my older brother, Ron.

That had to be the worst, moving right before your senior year: all of your friends and the things you knew being left behind. Looking back however, maybe that is exactly why we were moving back. My parents at the time had said it was for “the ability to start a business,” but it might have had more to do with the troubles my brother seemed to find himself in on a regular basis. He had gotten mixed up with the “wrong” crowd: beginning to use drugs and “getting in trouble.” There’s no need to go into those details too much; this story isn’t about that portion of my life, but rather how that period got me to where I am now, 25 years later.

We came back to Central California to live in Stockton, a few miles south of where I was born and where my father’s family lived. How strange, now that I think about it, we moved to Washington to be closer to my maternal grandmother who had moved there and to give my father an opportunity to do something different than what he was doing as a cabinet maker in California. We moved back to California, after creating somewhat of a gap after so many years away from his family, to be closer to his family again and to give him an opportunity to do something different from the life as a cabinet maker that he had continued in Washington state. Ironic, isn’t it? The two most ironic parts is that 1) those moves seemed to be what made me feel less part of my own family and 2) many years past the time when he should be doing such labor intensive work, my father continues to be a cabinet maker.

Don’t get me wrong, my father does a fantastic job at what he does. It was his constant work on cabinets or something made out of wood that has left me even today, years later, with a feeling of nostalgia any time that I smell sawdust. He is one of those “old school” workers who really take pride in the quality of his work, and it shows. I have things that he made all over my houses with which people are always impressed. Plus, he never has to look for work; people search him out to ask him to do work for them. He always has more requests than he has time to complete. Besides, even though it is labor intensive work, he is truly an artist at what he does. The thing is: he still works longer and harder hours than he ever should at this point in his life. Again, that is another story all unto itself.

When we moved back, we were living in North Stockton in a relatively new housing development. It was the first house that I had lived in for quite a few years that my father had not built. This was the 7th time in my 15 years that we had moved. This movement and always being the new kid in class had a lot to do with making the personality that I had, at least the outward one. I had the reputation of being the class clown. This reputation had gotten me into trouble a few times throughout my life, but never anything serious. I was always too studious to get into serious problems. I prided myself on being able to do math quicker than just about anyone in class and was constantly reading and writing as I was growing up.

I remember starting in 3rd grade to write stories about each of my friends, and turning their qualities, as I saw them, into superhuman powers. The fastest kid in class became a Flash Gordon, running around the hospital in lightening quick time as soon as he was born. The kid that liked science became the 3 year old mad scientist who created robots that began to destroy the world; until he was able to come up with a new invention to stop them. That was my escape from always feeling out of place with everyone else that had known each other for years. I would go off into my own worlds.

Living in North Stockton, meant that we lived within Lodi Unified School District. Why Lodi Unified had decided to incorporate land that was 15 miles south of Lodi still surprises me, even though I worked within the school district for two years. At that time, there were two high schools within Lodi Unified, both of which would require the ride into Lodi either in a car or by bus. We were given the opportunity to choose which high school we wished to attend. My brother and I both chose Lodi High. I’m not sure why Ron chose Lodi High, but I knew that I wanted to go to school where some of my friends from 6 years earlier were attending. My sister, who was beginning a rebellious period in her life, chose to go to Tokay High instead just to be different. Little did I realize at the time, that my decision to go to Lodi High was going to be so critical in the determination of what has continued to be my life. At the time, it didn’t seem like much: go to a high school where there are some people you already know or be a new person once again. It didn’t seem like much of a decision.

Life began its normal routine: get up, shower, eat, ride with Ron to school, ride with Ron to go home again: nothing out of the ordinary. I ended up taking all of the honors classes: trigonometry for math (even though everyone else in the class was a year older), Honors English, chemistry, physics, etc. I remember wanting to be in the band since I had enjoyed being in the marching band in junior high, but it didn’t fit into my schedule. Ron was able to continue being part of it, but he had been in the band all throughout high school. Music was the love of his life.

I can remember riding with Ron every morning to school. If he wasn’t playing music, he was listening to it. I can remember listening to a lot of Queen, AC/DC, Van Halen and Pink Floyd on the drives from Stockton to Lodi. I wasn’t driving yet, since I didn’t turn 16 until later in the year. Then the change happened: Ron was going with the band on some sort of trip, and I was going to have to ride the bus into Lodi. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, that seemingly simple event was going to change my life completely. I never rode with my brother again to school.

Maria had come to the United States from Colombia when she was 14. The situation that she was living in there had forced Maria to grow up a lot faster than most people. Her father was an alcoholic with the bad habit of coming home to create a situation of domestic violence. Maria had on many occasions had to stand up to the violence to protect her mother. She had also been instrumental on helping her mother put together their escape to the United States to live with her mother’s family in California. None of that situation was something that a young girl should have to go through, but it all allowed Maria to become the self-assured and confident woman that she is today.

That self-assurance and confidence was needed once she arrived in the United States with the rest of her family. The four of them arrived to Modesto where her mother’s family lived. They arrived with little more than the individual bags that they carried and the clothes on their backs. The drive from the airport in San Francisco to Modesto seemed eternal as Maria looked out into the darkness of the unfamiliar country. The family had decided, since none of them could support the four of them together, each would be going to a different household: Maria’s mother with her sister, Gloria; the middle sister, Ximena, with Alfa, another aunt, and her husband Tom; the youngest sister, Sonia, with Irma, another aunt; while Maria would be housed with her grandmother and uncle, Dario.

What a struggle! Not only were they now living in an unfamiliar country, but they were separated for the first times in their lives. It was very difficult for each of them, especially Maria. In Colombia, most households, unless they are very poor, have a live-in maid who cooks and cleans. Maria’s uncle and grandmother were very used to that type of situation. With a young lady now living in their household, they naturally expected that she would take that role, cooking and cleaning for them. The problem was that since Maria had grown up in a similar household, she had no idea how to cook. She had to spend what little free time she had between school and homework, reading through recipe books trying to figure out how to cook something that they would accept. That is far from an easy task for someone who had never had to step foot in the kitchen before except to ask for something.

Maria’s struggles continued at school. Because she had just arrived to the US, the school counselors assumed that she did not have enough English to be successful. Maria had been in a bilingual English-Spanish school run by British teachers while in Colombia, so while she did have an accent, she was able to speak, read and write English quite well. The classes that she was assigned to, however, were for the lowest level English Learners reviewing complicated subjects like “This is a pencil. Can you say pencil? Pen . . . cil!” Maria had to ask to be reassessed, to get into the highest, college bound classes. After each test, they would put her in a slightly higher class, where again she would have to push for another reassessment. Luckily, her self confidence allowed her to continue to push until she was finally able to get into the most advanced classes. She would have to repeat this same scenario at each of the four high schools that she attended in the United States.

Maria didn’t keep her self-confidence to herself. When she found out that her sister, Ximena, had been placed in 4th grade because of her family’s perception of her English instead of 7th grade, where she should have been because of her age, she found a solution. She took the morning off from school, found out which school Ximena was attending and walked there with her mother in order to change her to another school.

“I’m here because my mother doesn’t speak English,” Maria told the school secretary. “My sister was put in the wrong school on accident. She is 12 years old and should be in 7th grade.”

The school secretary was not sure if she believed a 14-year-old, but the proof of Ximena’s age left her no option. She called Ximena out of class, explained to Maria where the middle school was and left the three of them to walk to the new school. Upon arriving at the middle school, Maria merely told the school that they had just arrived from another country and she was enrolling her sister. She did not bother to tell them about the elementary school where her family had already enrolled Ximena.

I know of very few 14-year-olds who would have concerned themselves with their younger sibling, let alone to go through what Maria did to get her sister in the right class. That wasn’t the last time that she would do something amazing to get what was needed for herself and her family.

The bus stop was filled with a lot of people. There were about 20 Lodi High students being picked up. Like most high school students, there was a lot of talking. Most of the kids had known each other for a while, since they were neighbors and rode the bus to and from school every day. I was the new one. I stood a little off to myself because I didn’t know anyone in the group. That didn’t seem to matter to anyone; they were all busy talking with their groups. The bus pulled up and everyone piled inside. I found a seat to myself, but before too many stops the bus began to fill up. I didn’t talk much on that first day riding the bus, but my lifelong experiences of being the new student all the time wouldn’t keep me quiet for too long.

Maria arrived in the middle of the school year. It was already her fourth school in three years, after spending her first 12 (including preschool) in the same school with almost all of the same friends. That was another drastic change, but nothing compared to the change of coming to a new, unknown country. Like in all of the schools in which she had entered in the US, she had to fight to get into the more advanced classes. The most difficult battle, this time, came from the English teacher, Mr. Maclise. Maria knew that she wanted to get into college; and to make that happen, she would need Honors English. Mr. Maclise listened to Maria speak a little and was sure that she would not be able to be successful in his class. He didn’t know her very well.

“You’re way behind,” he told her. “If you can finish a book report to catch up with the rest of the class, I’ll let you in.”

“No problema,” thought Maria. “I’ll finish this little report and he’ll let me in.”

“Unfortunately, this is the last book available. All of the others have been taken already.”

Maclise showed her a 600 page book. On top of that, the report was due in four days. Maria would only have the weekend to be able to finish the report. Like she had done so many times before, Maria accepted the challenge and started to read and sum up the book when she got home. She had to spend the entire weekend, locked up in her room reading the book with a dictionary at her side, struggling to comprehend the long text. Then, she had to try to sum up the entire thing in a report. It was an incredible undertaking--difficult if not impossible for most native speakers of English. Imagine how difficult that it must have been for someone who had just arrived in the US a mere three years earlier! I’m sure that the majority of the class, including myself, would not have been up to the challenge, but Maria sure was.

On Monday, she met with Mr. Maclise before school in order to turn the report into him. He was incredulous! He didn’t think that there was any way that this young lady could possibly finish reading the book, let alone write a report to the high standards that he was reading. Who would have believed it? But there was the prove, in his hands! What could he say? He had to let her into the class.

When the time to go to English arrived, Maria was really excited. With such a rigorous test to get in, this must be a top notch class. She expected to find a classroom full of anxious learners dedicated to intelligent, high-level discussions of literature. What she found was far from that. What she found was, unfortunately, very typical for public high schools, even in honors classes. Most of the students, me included, were very intelligent, but we didn’t always use that capacity wisely. To Maria it appeared that we were wasting all of our time playing around and being disrespectful to the teacher. There didn’t appear to be much time dedicated to real learning. It wasn’t what she wanted to see at all. And even less, she didn’t want to see a boy that seemed to always be in the middle of the jokes and wasted time. Why would she want to see a class clown like me?

On about the 3rd day of riding the bus, I noticed that one of the girls getting on at the same stop was in my Honors English class. I hadn’t noticed her before since she was very quiet, and I was one of the more rambunctious ones in class. I’m not sure what it was that made me continue to notice her: maybe it was her eyes, her smile or the seemingly exotic look about her. Either way, by the end of the week she was all that I could think about. There she was in my English class, obviously intelligent, incredibly interesting, and I didn’t even know her name. On top of that, Ron would be back on Monday to continue driving me to school. I couldn’t let that happen! I had to find out more about her. I found a way to sit close to her on the bus, and began to talk with her and her friend, Nina, a Pakistani girl that lived close to us.

After coming back from the bus tip, I decided that Ron was going to have to drive to school by himself. There was no way that I was going to stop riding the bus. Not now that it had gotten interesting. Don’t get me wrong; it is not exactly that I was a lady’s man. I hadn’t even had a real girlfriend before. There was one in Washington that I secretly liked and left poetry in her locker, but she didn’t even know who I was until right before we moved back to California. I was not exactly “experienced with the women.”

I was finally able to convince my parents to continue allowing me to ride the bus every morning, “As long as you make it home everyday, it is the same to us.” It wasn’t difficult to find her name; all you had to do was listen, while others were talking to her either at the bus stop, on the bus or in class. It was “Maria,” a seemingly simple name, for someone who turned out to be anything but simple. She had the cutest accent. Obviously, she was fluent in English or she wouldn’t be able to make it into the Honors English class, but it wasn’t for a while before I was able to find out why she had an accent.

I found a way to sit close to Maria every morning and every afternoon. And we talked about everything. I loved being able to talk with her about class, about other kids, about anything. It wasn’t until later that she told me that these conversations were what attracted her to me. I wasn’t her “type” since she had only gone out with Mediterranean looking guys before (dark hair, hairy, muscular), but I was different. In comparison to this type who spoke a lot about themselves, I listened and showed interest into what others, including Maria, had to say.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only guy on the bus talking with her. It wasn’t as if we were in an isolated location. We were in a crowded bus, full of other kids, some nosier than others. It wasn’t the prime location to start a relationship, even though that is exactly what I was doing.
One of the others that were talking with Maria was a boy named Randy. Randy wasn’t in any of our classes, but did live close to us, getting off the stop before Maria and I did. Randy was a little effeminate, but was a nice enough person. He was never too far from where Maria was sitting, and so was part of some of our conversations. On April 29th, close to the end of the school year, talk turned to swimming.

“Hey, there is a pool close to my house,” invited Randy. “Why don’t you come over and we swim for a while this afternoon?”

“That sounds like fun,” Maria responded, “but I would have to take my sister. Is that all right?”

“No problem. Who else is coming?”

“I’ll be there,” I added. “How do we get there?”

Randy tried to explain how to get to the community pool, but he wasn’t the greatest at giving directions. “Why don’t we just meet somewhere, and I’ll show you how to get there,” he said finally.

“Great! Where do we meet?” I asked.

“Well, Maria’s house seems to be about halfway between all of the others. Why don’t we meet there?”

“Ok,” we all responded.

Boy, was I nervous! Not only was I going to be able to find out exactly where Maria lived, but I was going to be able to spend some time in a pool with her. I could hardly contain my enthusiasm. At the same time, I couldn’t be too overanxious. That is definitely not a good way to impress a girl.

Ok, what did I need? I had to have my swimming trunks, a towel, and a change of clothes. Then I needed my bike to be able to get to where we were going. Anything else? I hoped upon hope that I wasn’t forgetting anything important, and then let my mom know that I was going to visit a guy that had a pool. She didn’t need to know anything about any girls being involved. And away I went.

I got to Maria’s house in about 5 minutes. Unfortunately, Randy was already there. And he didn’t show up riding a bike. He had a motor scooter. That was quite an upgrade from my rickety, old bike. That’s OK. At least we were all still going together. But how to get there? Randy was going to take the lead on his scooter; and I was to follow, as well as I could, on my bike. Maria would go with one of us, while her nine-year-old little sister, Sonia, would ride with the other. My heart sank when Maria announced, “I’ll ride with Randy, and Sonia can ride with Rick.”

All my excitement about being able to spend the time with Maria, and I was regulated to pedaling her little sister around. Not exactly what I had in mind. Maybe she wasn’t meant for me after all. Maybe she liked Randy more. Maybe I was just wasting my time.

I sat Sonia on my handlebars and tried to keep up with Randy and his motor scooter. That would be the worst: to get lost while carrying this little girl around on my handlebars. Sonia and I talked a little bit, but there is not much that a high school boy and an elementary school girl have in common. In the meantime, I pedaled as hard as I could, careful to watch where and how Maria put her arms around Randy in order to not fall off.

Finally, we arrived at the pool. We swam, splashed, and talked for quite a while. Finally, Maria got out of the water and lay down by the side of the pool. Randy was playing ball with Sonia, so I took the opportunity to sit next to Maria to talk. I was sure that my legs were shaking as I did so. There was a slight breeze that blew over us as we were there, Maria lying on her stomach and me sitting next to her, as nervous as I could be. My heart raced a million miles per hour as we chatted. It only accelerated more when Maria said, “I’m chilly.” What else could I do? She was cold. I had to put my arm around her to warm her up with my towel. I had won out after all.

It wasn’t until about 15 years later that I learned that Maria wasn’t really cold, she just wanted me to put my arm around her. I was a little mad when I first found out, but I guess that it was probably better off that way. I was way too nervous and inexperienced to know how to make a move. If she hadn’t pushed me that first time, I probably would have done nothing more that keep talking with her.

Going back to Maria’s house, Maria, Sonia and I walked together while Randy stayed at his house, across the street from the pool. I got even more time to spend with Maria once we got back to her house. Sonia went inside and Maria and I sat on the front porch talking. I’m not sure how long we spent talking, but it seemed like an eternity. I had to say goodbye finally because I had to get home before I got in trouble. But I knew that Maria liked me. Maybe almost as much as I liked her. I felt like I was soaring as I rode my bike home! MARIA LIKED ME!