Meeting La Famalia

Besides my dietary habits (no meat, no dairy) the thing that perplexes people most in Mexico is the fact that I do not have a boyfriend. Two of the most common questions that I am asked are Tienes novio? and Por que no tienes novio? (Do you have a boyfriend? Why don´t you have a boyfriend?) While there are plenty of chavos willing to fill the role, no one but me is bothered that I am at least five years older than most of them and I can´t fluently speak their language.

Apparently people have been praying for me, and lately I have been seeing enough of someone (Fernando) that I was invited to his end-of-the-year work party. As is common here, the party was preceded by mass, and it took place on one of the biggest celebration days of the year, the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Mexico´s patron saint.)

So on Saturday, Fernando picked me up for the party. He arrived on time (something that is not to common here) and then we went to the parish to fetch the Deacon who was to say the service. Of course the Deacon wasn´t there and we waited outside while Fernando exchanged phone calls with a friend who was supposed to accompany the Deacon. In the interim, a nun from work passed by and waved. This made me a little nervous because upon seeing us together a few weeks prior at Mass, one of the nuns from work had commented ¨Be careful with the boys here. They seem nice at first but then they´ll beat you.¨ If having a date that took place in a church was cause for concern, I wasn´t sure how me being in a parked car with a guy would go over.

We were supposed to meet the Deacon at 3:30 and the service was to begin at 4:00 but it wasn´t until 5:00 that we tracked down the Deacon at a house where he had said a different service. As he had been working all day and the services are followed by fiestas, it appeared that he had been celebrating Mass and celebrating afterwards. On the car ride to the party, the Deacon chatted incessantly and quoted Bible passages and portions of Mass.

The service took place at Fernando´s workplace, which is a shop where theater sets are constructed. Everyone was wearing jeans and I felt overdressed in a skirt. More awkwardly, Fernando works for his familys´ business, so I found myself being introduced to a slew of relatives.

Though I was obviously the foreigner who didn´t belong, the Deacon decided to make sure it was evident. During one of the few parts of his homily I could decipher, he asked who wanted to be a missionary. I raised my hand, and the Deacon looked at me and said, ¨Si, Caro esta una missionara.¨ At a portion of his homily where immigrants were mentioned, he talked about how I had come from a different country.

After the service, a group of seven-year old girls gathered around me and stared. As a white girl in dress-up clothes, I suppose it was as if a giant Barbie had walked in for them to play with. While I tried to think back to what sort of conversations grown-ups had with me some twenty years ago, I noticed a group of older, male cousins staring at me as well but at least they kept their distance. Two people trying to ignore me were Fernando´s young second cousins who also happen to be my English students; I´m sure they were perplexed to see their teacher at a party.

Everyone ate and then Fernando and I took a much more subdued Deacon back to Santa Fe. While we were gone, pinatas were broken and when we returned, the girls immediately presented me with candy. I was introduced to more relatives, including an uncle who asked Fernando ¨Is this your girlfriend?¨

Since this was a conversation that we haven´t had, I tried to joke my way out of it by saying ¨I don´t speak much Spanish.¨ The uncle took me seriously, asked me a few more conversations and then said, ¨Pero estas aprendiendo. La guerrita esta aprendiendo.¨ (But you´re learning. The white girl is learning.)

More difficult was talking with Fernando´s father. He sat down next to me and after some basic chitchat about where I was from, he declared ¨And then next year, you´ll go back home and break my son´s heart.¨ He said this several times using hand gestures to make sure I understood.

Though I tried to tell him who knows what could happen in a year and that Fernando could break my heart, the father kept before asking me to dance. Then came salsa dancing with the uncle, who basically spun and threw me around the dance floor.

By the time the evening ended, the uncle and father were very spirited and they came with Fernando and me back to Santa Fe. The father kept repeating what he had told me earlier until I finally said. ¨Yes, that´s why I´m here, I´m going to break a new heart every month and then I´ll go back to America.¨ The uncle, who had been listing all the words he knew and English as well as the places he knew of in the United States, laughed and shouted comments about me that I couldn´t understand in which I was referred to as the guerrita.

Despite how uncomfortable it all may sound, anyone reading this who has attended one of my family reunions knows that Catholic ceremonies, tipsy uncles and a father with a faulty internal sensor are nothing out of the ordinary for me. Thus, other than whiplash sustained from the dance floor, meeting the family in Mexico felt pretty familiar.