Stories 4 Women

I saw my sister as someone I was chosen to protect, to look after and to set an example for. We weren’t in competition — we were on the same team.

All those years I shunned, made fun of and tortured her came crashing down on me in one instant. I was shattered.

How in the world could I have been so cruel?

She didn’t want to take my parents away from me; she was simply a gift who added to the family circle. She wasn’t trying to steal my identity by copying me; she just looked up to me so much that she wanted to do everything I did, the way I did it.

— Chance made us sisters

It’s a blessing that my father always has been an active participant in my upbringing.

It was Dad who took me shopping for my first training bra and bought me my first diary.

It was Dad who taught me how to ride a bike and gave me the “birds and bees” talk.

It was Dad who encouraged me to pick up the violin and supported my girlhood career ambition of becoming an artist.

It was Dad who helped move me into my first apartment and offered me sage advice during my first real heartbreak.

— Thank heaven for him

Each of us dealt with Mom’s death in our own way, and selfishly, we all thought about the milestones in our lives that she would miss — weddings, grandchildren, college graduations, et cetera.

In actuality, I lost my mom months prior to her passing. As the tumor in her head grew, it took her personality away, which, in a way, prepared us for the day that we would no longer physically see her.

Her mobility almost was gone and her speech hardly made sense.

She wore a diaper and her life came full circle, as did our relationship. I cared for her innocent life as she did mine when I was a child.

— Full circle

That Friday night, we met some of my friends at the enlisted club. We made our way to the bar and ordered cocktails; I probably had either a Seven & 7, rum and Coke with a splash of grenadine, or a white Russian — those were my drinks of choice back then. We sat with my friends and consumed our drinks before heading off as a group to the dance floor.

The sights and sounds began to blur. I felt strange.

Time passed without memory.

One minute, I was enjoying myself at the club, the next I was in a dark room. I was in a bed and my date was on top of me.

I blacked out.

— A forgettable night

Sometimes the fear and uncertainty threaten to choke me to death in my sleep. Sometimes the tears and the pain and longing, the weight of homesickness feel like they may crush me, suffocate me, bury me alive. But I need to be here; it’s this innate “knowing” of that fact, but for what, how long and why, I don’t know. It makes it hard for others to understand my need to up and leave home to be here, with no plan, no concrete idea of where I’m headed or what I plan to do. And no one is more frustrated by this than I am. Do they think this is easy?! All they see is me, running away from the safe, the concrete, the familiar, to be with him, but you can’t help who you love or what you need to do to keep it. Or control whatever it is your destiny sometimes has to drag you, kicking and screaming, to do.

— My own

There’s something about the calm that overcomes your mind as you wash the dishes that have piled up during a week’s worth of stressing, late nights on the clock and perfecting concoctions that loosely resemble “dinner.”

Sometimes silence does more than any words can to let you know that everything is going to be all right. Now that I’m out living on my own, I am left with my thoughts and can loudly hear what speaks to my heart. I am alone but not lonely. Tired but not broken. Together, yet in complete disarray. Simultaneously satisfied and longing for what life has in store for me. I am doing things the way I want to, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

— Independent bliss

I met and interviewed Chicana activist Dolores Huerta, who walked side by side with Cesar Chavez during the grape farmworkers’ strike in