Dancing with Pap� Chepe
07.29.02 // 11:00 a.m.

You know what the best thing about the party was on Saturday? It was dancing with my Pap� Chepe. He�s 82 years old (today is his birthday), but he can sure dance. However, as the years go by his steps get a little slower and after a few songs he needs a break. Whenever I hear �La Marcha de Zacatecas,� a famous Mexican march, I think of Pap� Chepe stomping his feet on the dance floor with my mom. He rarely dances with my grandmother. Perhaps, I�m like my mom. She tells me about her maternal grandfather, Papayito, whom she used to dance with at family parties. I never met him, but I know that she missed him greatly after his dead in the mid �70s.

While we prepared for the party, I sat at one of the tables with Pap� Chepe eating my lunch. I started to pick his brain and ask him about what he remembered about life as a boy. He has many comical stories about growing up in the small village just a few years after the end of the Mexican Revolution.

I don�t think I ever realized how lucky I was to have my 4 grandparents while I was growing up. My paternal grandparents already passed away, and I regretted never really asking them about their childhood, their struggles or what my father and his siblings were like as children. I never asked them about their parents, and siblings. However, I used my dad for this. I asked him so many questions, and we he responded to them I cried. I guess the tears came out because I didn�t know how fortunate I was. They sacrificed so much for me to have the opportunities I have. It�s amazing.

My Pap� Chepe was born in 1920 in Ciudad Ju�rez, the sister city to El Paso. I didn�t understand why he was born there the first time he told me. �Well, my family left Zacatecas during the war because of the hunger,� he explained to me.

My grandparents are the most valuable connection I have to my past, to M�xico. I�ve read plenty about the immigrant experience and Mexican history, but it means little to me without the actual experiences of my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents to personalize it and make me feel connected to the motherland.

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Me siento: a little hungry
Escuchando: Instant Vintage by Raphael Saadiq (Nieema is playing it)

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antes // despu�s


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