I'm still here

It has been a rough week. We all have them. I just wanted to go in a cave and hunker down until things got better. It started with a mix-up at work which can only be called "No good deed goes unpunished".

Then my dear friend Anna was very ill and needed surgery. I just kept thinking about her and could not focus on anything. She has 3 kids, well, not like toddlers. Carol is 20, a college graduate with a degree in Business Administration. Roxana, Roxy, is 18 and she will graduate from college in June with a degree in Computer Science. Jose-Luis is 17 and all boy, interested in sports but not school, no college plans for this kid. And Anna, their mother is all they have.

Anna's husband ran off with another woman when the kids were very young, Jose-Luis was just a baby. He has never been in their lives. Anna's mother passed away about 10 years ago, she was in her 50's. So Anna has raised these kids on her own. I would say that she has done a good job. She was recommended to me as a housekeeper 11 or 12 years ago. She has worked for me all that time. Though I have never met her children, we exchange stories and she has watched my two boys grow up and start families of their own. And she has helped me with my Spanish, too.


I am sure that I will get an email from Roxy tonight that her mother is doing fine after the surgery. A telephone is still something of a luxury item. Anna is on our family plan with Verizon and we turned on international calling last Sunday when I heard that she was in bad shape. But Anna is stubborn and will only use the phone in case of emergency. She reminds me that it is 25 cents a minute. I just chuckle, I think that somehow she thinks that she will have to pay that Verizon bill. Mexico and America are next door neighbors but our cultures are very different. I grew up in El Paso, so I absorbed a lot of the Mexican culture, they call it Tex-Mex, while growing up. I grew up speaking Spanish taught by Mexican housekeepers who worked for my parents. I spoke grammatically correct Spanish better than English when I was 6 years old. You wouldn't know that now, if you heard me try to conjugate the verb "to give".

It seems odd that I have only a few photos of her. I will find the one of her standing beside a quilt. My mother got the first quilt I made, Anna go the second.

All prayers for my friend are welcome. Her name is Anna Barraza.

Update: Surgery went well. The surgeon removed her uterus and one ovary. She is resting comfortably and is scheduled to go home on Thursday.