… As my mother tells the story, she was bored, hated Los Angeles and wanted to leave but stayed out of respect for her uncle. She started working at a peanut processing plant and took ESL classes to keep busy until she could return home at the end of the summer or earlier. Her skin had a chronic allergic reaction to the peanut dust but she kept going to keep her day full. English came easily to her as she was always a great student. In Mexico she excelled in school and sports and was finishing a nursing degree at eighteen. Years later she shared academics came easily to her and barely had to open her books to understand any new subject.
When my father walked in the door in his dress uniform she was not overly impressed. She saw a skinny, mostly English speaking teenager. She asked her two future sisters-in-law who this person was and learned he was their older brother.
In Mexico City my mother was in her element. Beginning as a young child, she, her brother and sisters and cousins would roam the city. Her father and his identical twin had married sisters and both families shared a house. See. She had a dog named Bull and he lived on the roof and would walk with her to meet her dad at his bus stop each day after school.