“Do you want to help me”? My wife asks, she is working on her community garden.
“If I wanted to work on a garden” I respond “I would have stayed in Guatemala. I left so I wouldn’t have to do that kind of work”.
“so, you don’t want to go apple picking next weekend”? she is smiling now.
“let’s go wall climbing instead” I respond smiling back “my people are good at that”
I am Latino guy, born and raised in Guatemala, I speak English with a sexy Latin accent. My wife was born in Chicago, she is kind, smart and extremely patience, she is white, but that’s ok, nobody is perfect.
When we first started dating, our friends didn’t like seeing us together, they thought we were not going to last.
My wife starts eating an apple, she takes a few bites and is about to throw it away.
“Don’t do that” I said taking the apple from her. When I eat an apple, the only thing I leave behind is the stem. You can often tell who ate what, by how little or how much was left behind.
She picks a few vegetables form her garden “this is going to make a good dinner”
“Maybe for you” I respond. In Guatemala you ate vegetables when there was no money for anything else “I want some meat”
Later that day, I told my wife. “We need a new dinning set. The fabric on those chairs is all rip up” I said pointing at the dining room chairs.
“there” my wife says, throwing an old towel to cover the rip fabric “as good as new”
We could easily buy a new dining room set. But my wife values the dining room set because it used to belong to her grandparents.
My family arrived in this country with nothing but the clothes we were wearing. I feel both jealousy and admiration that she owns and values her family heirlooms.
But those chairs are just too old. “Let me fix” I said pointing to the towel already halfway to the floor.
My wife shakes her head, whenever something breaks in the house, a light fixture, a fan, an appliance; she wants to call a handyman or a repair man.
She comes from money, growing up that’s what her family always did.
I am a Latino, my family was poor, so you learn to fix things. Sure, I had gotten minorly electrocuted, cut, and burned but that’s how you learn. That’s the way I was raised.
Why pay for someone to fix things when you can fix them yourself?
To my surprise, my wife agrees “Fine, fix them”
That’s all I need to hear, I run to the closet where I keep all my tools, or like my wife calls them “garbage”. I feel like a kid who had just overheard where all the Christmas toys have been hidden.
“Is this going to take a long time” my wife asks “I’m making dinner”
“Maybe a couple of hours, I have to go to the hardware store to see if they have upholstery fabrics”
My wife rolls her eyes, “Oh no, you will be gone for hours and come back with new tools you don’t need for a project you will never get started”. She knows me so well.
“How about these?” my wife says showing me some fabric.
“AHHH” I gasped “No those, we brought those in Guatemala during our honeymoon”
My wife rolls her eyes. I am the sentimental one, the one that remembers our anniversary, the day we met, where we had our first date.
“Try them out” my wife says tossing the fabrics on my direction.
The fabrics look like someone washed them at the end of the rainbow, so many bright colors. I place one of the fabrics on the chair; I like what I see.
A few hours later, am done fixing the chairs. I sit on the sofa to eat my dinner, sharing pieces of food with our dogs. I finished eating and our dogs looked at my wife.
“I’m not sharing my dinner” she tells them.
“No one wants your salad” I tell her smiling.
I look at her and I like what I see. I like us.
“The chairs look nice” she remarks between bites.
I imagine our ancestors looking down from heaven, or up from down below (you never know).
I imagine them, looking at us and wondering “what is going on? How do the wooden chairs left behind from a Polish Grandmother ended up cover with colorful fabrics from Guatemala? But then I imagine them looking at us a Latino guy from Guatemala and a white girl from Chicago, and realizing that we look good, that together; just like those chair and the fabric we are perfect fit.
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