This is a project for our daughters, Elena and Isabella.
We are documenting your lives.
This is a record of all the good days, the bad days,
and all the days in-between.
This was SO FUN! Originally, we'd planned to take you guys to College Station to see the "big lights" at Santa's Wonderland. But, life gets in the way. Still, we didn't want you to miss out on seeing lights, so we took a much shorter trip down to La Marque to see the Magical Winter Lights. Apparently there's this whole light carnival we'd been missing all these years. We were pleasantly surprised at how much fun we had. It's always to great to see things through your eyes.
These always trip me out, because you guys look so grown from one year to the next. I wonder if you'll remember being bit by 100 mosquitoes this day. It was crazy! We went to the Houston Arboretum, again, to take these. I think we're all equally in love with this place. Y'all do know that even once you're grown, you still have to humor me with yearly Christmas pictures.
What a busy few weeks! So, this year we went with a Frida theme for Halloween. You guys looked absolutely adorable! Dhalia had a Fiesta themed party, so we all dressed up for the event in our best traditional wear. The whole family got in on the action.
For Halloween, Ellie and I dressed up like Fridas and Bells, you were Catrina Frida.
And on actual Halloween, it rained, so we recycled last year's costumes. I think it's time to retire the miniskirt wolf. Haha!
You are eternal. You are neither here nor there, but everywhere. You carry the hood in your veins and academia in your heart. You have not forgotten where you come from, but have learned and earned your way into spaces not meant for you. Spaces that are uninviting to your kind. You are poderosa like that. Your vocabulary is vast and your wit is sharp. You are unstoppable. You feel everything and feel nothing. You carry loads of pain for the displacement you’ve felt due to your need to question everything. But have had to accept living that confused and living that awake because once you’ve heard your chains rattle, you cannot unhear them. You do this for you, but you also do this for your mami and your papi and your little hermanita who does not seem to understand herself outside the boxes that our cultura has placed her in. You belong to no one but are accountable to many. La Raza depends on you. Do not let anyone else tell you differently. You complicate respectability politics and you do not give a fuck that you are doing it. Do you, woke brown girl. You have a fire that is burning inside of you, and that comes from your mothers side. You are going places that no one in your family has ever been and you are fearful of your fearlessness. Your laugh carries liberation in it. Men try to pin you down, have tried to claim you, but you have resisted because you are not meant to belong to anyone. You belong entirely to yourself. No one can hold that much glitter in their hands. Glitter is messy and overpowering and beautiful. Woke brown girl, you are remarkable. Your parents brag about your brilliance all while exhorting you to be more like their friend’s daughters, who have husbands and children. But it is because you are groundbreaking, that they do not know what to do with their woke brown girl. They have not been able to hold your fire for some time now, but it is okay because it is your turn to hold them in your heart and in your mind as you dismantle oppressive structures that have kept your parents down. But not you, woke brown girl, so you owe it to them to keep fighting. That day you stood up in class, and demanded, yes YOU made demands of your white male professor, on that day you recalled your ancestors who resisted and defied all odds by surviving and thriving and continuing. Remember them. Remember us. Woke brown girl, do not let them take away your passion. And boy will they try, without any compassion, to keep you down. But remember that without passion you will extinguish, and if for some reason you do and you might, there will be other woke brown girls to pick you and light you up again. Because, woke brown girl, we need each other. -Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez
* I cried when I read this. You guys...you guys are unstoppable. You are hurricanes. You are lightning. You are.....in every sense of the word: MAGNIFICIENT. I love you. I am so honored that you are mine. I love you. Forever.
I can't believe we're doing this again. I'm gonna be really honest with you guys: I hate this shit. It's exhausting, it's heartbreaking, it's downright soul-crushing for everyone involved.
Deployments suck. There's no way around it. And, in case you've lived through one (or three in our case)....no one will "GET" it.
I wish I had more eloquent and PC words. But, I don't. I don't because it's not fair to you guys. You guys didn't sign up for this, and unfortunately...you're the ones affected by this the most.
I'm sorry. I truly am. I wish I could take your pain away. I wish you didn't have to go through this.
But, we're gonna get through this year. I don't know HOW we're gonna do it. But, we're gonna do it. I promise.
Annnnddd....on that note. We wanted to something special for you guys before dad left. We had this whole plan to go to the Dewberry Farm and do fall pictures. We drive out to Katy to surprise y'all....and the surprise was on us: it was closed.
So, dad said he knew a place. And he did NOT disappoint. He took us to the Houston Arboretum, and guys...it was AMAZING! Y'all fell in love with the place.
We walked one of the smaller trails and it was so great for us to see y'all just enjoy yourselves. It really was bittersweet, but I'm glad we got to end the weekend on a high note.
So, this past week you had your first field trip. Dad really wanted to go to this with you, so we made sure to make it happen. You guys went to the Dewberry Farm with your class, and by the looks of it...you guys had a GREAT time!
I'm so glad that he got to share this with you, and you haven't stopped talking about it (and it's been about a week now).
Thank you for always getting weird with me!
Y'all got such a big kick out of seeing the skulls over your faces.
So, tough times are coming. I mean...really tough times. The whole deployment speech is for another post all together, because this past weekend we took you guys to San Antonio for a few days. We wanted to do something for you guys before all the craziness heads our way. Needless to say, we had a blast. We went to the Riverwalk, The Alamo, and to the marketsquare. It was so nice to just get away and take some time for ourselves. So often, we get so busy trying to provide that we forget that the only thing that guys really want from us is our attention. We promise to try to "unplug" more often. But, I hope that you guys know that everything we do is for you two. We love you. Forever.
