Té de Canela

The poems, essays and short stories in this book are written in Tex-Mex (Spanglish) and includes a glossary for Spanish and Spanish slang used in the context of telling a story. It was written in this matter because this is how my mind thinks and also to document a regional slang spoken during a certain time and place in United States history. I was born in 1955 in South Texas, sixty miles from the Mexican border to a Mexican-American mother and a Mexican father. My paternal grandparents lived in Mexico and my maternal grandparents along with my great grandmother (Mama Grande) and my mom's uncles lived in our hometown or within twenty miles from our house. Mama Grande was a wonderful storyteller. I would sit on the front porch listening to her stories while my brothers, sisters and cousins played. There were times when I didn't feel well or I felt triste, Mama Grande would say to me, "ven mi nene vamos a tomarnos una taza de t de canela." Then she would begin her tales with, "I had a dream this week that I went to the pearly gates of heaven and asked God why I was still on earth. He told me it wasn't time for me to go, he wasn't ready for me." God wasn't ready for her for a long time, and we had the good fortune of having our Mama Grande until she was one hundred and three years old. She is the one responsible for my love of story-telling. We all remember the truth differently, especially when it comes to our childhood. It amazes me how some things that happened while I was growing up had a tremendous effect on me, while the same things didn't affect my brothers and sisters at all and vice versa. This collection of stories is my truth, how I remember things. My family, my friends and the people I grew up with might remember a whole different story, might choose to remember only certain incidents or not remember at all because they had no lasting effects on their lives. T de Canela, is the way I remember things; therefore, it is my truth that you will read in the stories collected in this book.