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Budapest, Travel, vacation to Prague, Vienna

Vacation Preparation

Mona Alvarado Frazier

     You think you’re going on vacation, but you’re wrong, at least on the first day. It takes days for our traveling group (sis and mom) to get ready to go on vacation. It starts six months ahead of time with the airfare watch, Tripadvisor and Frommer sites, travel insurance, locating the passport, and then paying for the whole thing. When the date gets closer the work begins.

     “Mom, the TSA only lets you have a quart Ziploc, not a gallon sized one.” She has improved in this area, her makeup and face stuff that she believes she absolutely must take on board is down to  a one quart baggie. My job is to pack her bags and shut my mouth as much as I can.  In her suitcase, which teeters on the weight limit of 51 pounds, she has large sizes of Scope, shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, perfume, face stuff, bath stuff, you get it. We argued about the Scope-I lost. Then I came across all the ‘track suits,’ her favorites. I threw out two old ones and packed one set. She handled me a pair of her new “Skinny Jeans” to put in.

     “Mom, where’d you get these?” Seems my niece took her to buy some pants and she came out with those things. My mom is 80+, short and round in the middle. She tried them on and I had to stifle the laugh. She looked like Tweedle Dum.

     “Those aren’t as flattering as your dark grey slacks,” I say.
     “You said my track suits were old fashioned, so I bought skinny jeans!”
     “Well I meant that they were old, like used.”
     “Pues, too late, I kinda like them and there stretchie.”
     I will take a photo of those skinny jeans.
  
    Now sis is down from three bags, six pair of shoes, and a carry-on to one check-in and a carry-on. That is a significant improvement. She felt the pain of twice getting busted for overweight bags and decided the shoes weren’t worth it. I just spent twenty minutes walking her through on line check in, and this is from a woman who has traveled several times before, but she’s not a couple anymore and it’s a new ballgame.

     And as for me, I will brag and say that packing is pretty easy because my motto is if it doesn’t fit in the bag I go without and I can buy whatever I forget at a drugstore. My problem is taking care of my household before I leave two older teens/one young adult in the house for twelve days.(Yes, I heard you say PARTY!).
 I have to stock up on plenty of food or our trashcans will overflow with fast food wrappers. The animals (6) are pretty well taken care of by their respective owners, except for our dog. I don’t know why they forget to feed him sometimes, and he’s the hardest working pet we have.

     So the bags are packed, blank journal in tote, snacks, socks, neck pillow, shawl, passport, tickets, and the car is gassed up. I bid you adios and although I did a couple of scheduled posts, to appear later, I doubt I’ll be able to get to an internet cafe to post about Prague, Vienna or Budapest. But you never know. Be well.
 

Boycotts, Cesar Chavez, Chingonas, Faith, Family, Strong Women, Wisdom

Remembering Cesar Chavez and My Mom

Mona Alvarado Frazier

  

                                                                                

I love this photo. The black Aztec eagle symbolizing la causa is so familiar. Every time I see it I not only think of Cesar Chavez, but also of  my mother. I was in grammar school the first time I heard of boycotts, farmworker rights, and la causa. My mom was in night school at Ventura College and went to community meetings at the CSO building. 

One weekend she packed her bags and took off to Delano with several of her younger classmates and community organizers to participate in a march. When she came back she talked with a fervor about Cesar Chavez and farmworker rights. “Did you know he lived in Oxnard? Right here in La Colonia.”  His speeches moved her, she could relate, she embraced his words of “Si se puede.”

Mom was a migrant worker from the time she was a toddler playing  under the sombra of the vineyards until she was fifteen and cutting her hands on the thorny brambles of the cotton bushes, moving from place to place first with her parents, then with her tios when they both died. She hated that her education was interrupted and for that she never wanted to work in the fields again.

Her participation in la causa and community meetings were fodder for several arguments with my uncles. “What the hell are you doing, going to these meetings, isn’t it bad enough you go to night school, you’re never with your kids…”

That rang true, but she wasn’t gone because she was in a bar or with some man, we kids knew that. No one talked stuff about our mom like they did about one of the moms down the street. But sometimes she crumpled under their barrage of words, other times she let loose on them. Whatever happened though, my uncles and their wives were there for us, lending Mom money, bringing us food, and taking care of us.

Years later, when I was in high school we had renewed arguments, this time both my mom and I harangued our relatives. “We’re boycotting Coors, switch beers,” we’d say whenever they visited. “We thought it was just grapes,” they’d yell and add, ‘que la chingada,‘ for emphasis. It took a year of confronting them every time they popped open a Coors, but they stopped buying the brand.

In college I remember boycotting Safeway, standing in picket lines in Santa Barbara, and waving that red flag. By this time my cousin was involved in the Brown Berets and my mom was busy marching for a community pool in La Colonia, addressing workplace issues, and working on her BA at a university. My uncles noted the photos of the Kennedy’s, Cesar Chavez, and the Pope on the walls of our home. ” Is this is why you go to college?”

When Cesar Chavez died Mom went to Delano and paid her respects with 50,000 other people and mourned the loss of the great man who inspired her and gave her the three words she often repeats whenever we get discouraged. 

“Si se puedes,” she says, yes you can. And when I see that iconic flag, I hear those words, remember those sacrifices, and think of Cesar Chavez and my mom.