From a young age, I always
felt ashamed of my native
tongue and heritage. It all came
from a whirl of feeling physi-
cally insecure and verbally
lost. Every morning, as the sun
peeked through my window, I
hid away the rich language my
parents had gifted me since
birth. I locked it in a mental
vault, fearing the disapproving
glances and wrinkled noses of
my classmates. At school, my
appearance was different than
most because of my darker com-
plexion, and going home wasn’t
always my savior because it was
difficult to emotionally con-
nect with my family due to my
lack of Spanish proficiency.
In my mind’s eye, I pic-
ture a small, innocent ver-
sion of myself — a 7-year-old
girl with dark brown pigtails,
round brown eyes framed by
glasses — sitting nervously in a
classroom in the heart of Mid-
dleville, Mich. My friends only
knew English. In fact, I can-
not remember a single person
who was bilingual. Snack time
became my greatest enemy
because anytime I sat down to
enjoy my Chips Ahoy cookies,
little kids would ask me, “How
do you say cat in Spanish?” or
“How do you say my name in
Spanish?” I felt like a token to
them since they never cared
to understand who I was as an
individual. I felt isolated and
wondered if I would ever fit in.
Going home every night, I
felt the same sense of isolation.
As we gathered around the din-
ner table, I felt like a stranger
in my own skin. It wasn’t my
physical appearance that set
me apart from my parents, but
my inability to express myself
fluently in the language of my
ancestors. At the dinner table,
as I ate my home-cooked rice
and beans with corn tortillas,
I lacked words. My mom would
ask me, “How was school?
What did you learn?” but I was
mute. Not because I didn’t want
to speak, but because I couldn’t
find the perfect words in Span-
ish to formulate my thoughts
concisely. I simply responded
with, “Bien Ma,” because creat-
ing a sentence in Spanish was
an obstacle I could never tackle.
Every day felt like a loss, a
constant reminder of my lack
of identity and fulfillment. My
parents had instilled in me a
deep sense of Mexican pride,
but it always seemed to fade
away the moment I stepped
into a public setting. I never felt
truly connected to my roots,
and the idea of calling myself
Mexican felt foreign, despite
growing up hearing about our
Hispanic heritage.
But
then,
something
changed.
I
was
fortunate
enough to visit my parents’
birthplace — Jalisco, Mexico.
It is where Tequila originated,
and the music is always per-
fectly intensified to match the
atmosphere. Mexico’s vibrant
streets overflow with the pul-
sating rhythm of joy, with the
sounds and scents weaving
together to create a symphony
of celebration that cannot be
found anywhere else on earth.
When I arrived in Jalisco, the
first thing my grandma did
was take me to a dance show.
The atmosphere was differ-
ent in Mexico because I wasn’t
surrounded by American cus-
toms. The air wasn’t tainted
with the smell of hot dogs and
hamburgers; instead, it smelled
like spice and warmth. I stood
on the sidewalk, devouring my
paleta. Sticky, sugary liquid
dripped down my arm as His-
panic women danced through-
out the street. Their dresses
soared through the air, radiat-
ing intensified colors of con-
tentment, joy and celebration.
The women’s dresses — long,
flowing
and
adorned
with
ruffles — billowed out around
them as they spun and twirled,
releasing a gust of air that car-
ried with it the unmistakable
aroma of spicy Mexican cuisine
and the feeling of utter free-
dom.
As I watched the women
dance, I noticed something:
their hair. It was like mine. I
was suddenly reminded of the
feeling of not fitting in through-
out
my
elementary
classes
because I spent many nights
looking in the mirror, wishing
I had the perfect blonde locks.
However, it was different here.
My eyes couldn’t believe what
they saw. Women danced in
their thick crocheted dress-
es. They carried confidence,
pride and power. They twirled
the fabric in circles, like they
wore the rainbow. And these
women were like me. We both
had brown eyes, dark hair and
tan skin. Here, I actually fit in:
not only visually, but verbally.
We shared a common first lan-
guage. A language I once feared
to liberate because of the stares
I might attract. A language that
I couldn’t fluently vocalize. It
was the power of these women
that showed me the beauty of
the Spanish language and my
Mexican heritage.
Traveling to Mexico was
a dream come true for me. I
spent the whole two weeks only
speaking Spanish, and I didn’t
care if it did not sound flu-
ent. I could never roll my “r”s
perfectly, but I realized that it
was beside the point. Mexico
opened my eyes to the beauty of
my heritage.
I shouldn’t be afraid because
my roots are like the sturdy
roots of a young sapling, break-
ing through the hard soil and
reaching
towards
the
sun,
determined to grow strong
and tall despite the obstacles
in their path. They are like the
pioneers who set out into the
unknown, with nothing but
their courage and their dreams
to guide them, forging a route
towards a new life in a foreign
land. When I came back to the
United States, I was empow-
ered to accept my difference.
For once, I felt more confident
than ever. It didn’t matter if
I stood out in the yearbook
or spoke a different language
because the differences made
me unique. My individuality is
like a brilliant splash of color
on a blank canvas, transform-
ing the mundane into some-
thing extraordinary.
So to the little kids I grew up
with during snack time, I will
proudly tell you how to say cat
in Spanish.
Michigan in Color
10 — Wednesday, March 15, 2023
A journey to reclaiming my identity: Rediscovering my Mexican roots
JACQUELINE AGUIAR
MiC Columnist
JACQUELINE AGUIAR/MiC
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
An imagined yesterday
I’ve
always
considered
myself to be a sentimental per-
son. I must have been 6 or 7
years old when I started scrap-
booking, and my construction
paper, painted purple with an
Elmer’s glue stick, became a
canvas for the materializa-
tion of my memories. I became
obsessed with assigning a tan-
gible object to every memory
because I thought it would help
me stop my happiest moments
from fading into vague recol-
lections. I have held on to every
birthday card I’ve received and
the envelopes they came in. I
like to look at the way my name
was written on each envelope.
It’s
spelled
incorrectly
on
some, and the “y”s in my name
are replaced with “i”s that are
dotted with little hearts. My
name is lettered beautifully
on others, and sometimes my
friends would write one of the
nicknames they had for me in
between small parentheses.
Every time I browse through
my piles of envelopes, and gift
cards I already spent, I can
see myself sitting in my living
room at my 8th birthday party.
My friends are all surround-
ing me, and my sister is stand-
ing over us, looking through a
green disposable camera. I’m
unwrapping a gift that appears
to be some sort of book. It turns
out to be a baby blue photo
album,
embroidered
with
orange songbirds and white
vines. I can see where everyone
is sitting around me, and as I
feel the cold February breeze
rushing through from the crack
under the door, it’s like I’m
turning 8 again. It’s 2012 and
I’m surrounded by my friends
and family, seeing the world
through my turquoise wire-
frame glasses. I never want the
moment to end.
I
find
myself
flipping
through that baby blue album
very often. It holds all the pho-
tos my sister printed from the
stack of disposable cameras she
ran through that day. Beside
each photo slot, I wrote “My
birthday party (8 years old)!!!”
With each page, my handwrit-
ing gets a little sloppier, and
the 8s start looking more like
ampersands. I love that I can
see what my handwriting was
like then, and picture myself
sitting beside my sister as she
filled the photo slots and I cap-
tioned each one with a wooden
pencil.
For the longest time, the
memories I collected sparked
joy in me. I was amused by the
things my younger self thought
were important to hold on to,
and impressed by my ability to
capture my emotions in writing
from such a young age.
But as I grew older, these
memories became deeply influ-
enced by my relationships with
other people, which couldn’t be
reduced to a simple keepsake.
I was no longer capturing the
simple joys of a birthday party.
My
once
intelligible
emo-
tions of happiness and sad-
ness became entangled
with the bitterness of
grief
and
transience
of joy. Feelings of love
and hatred were lay-
ered with my newfound
understanding of envy
and desire. I was trying
to eternalize my rela-
tionships with people,
as though a person can
be strapped down to
a place and time and
compressed in between
sheets of paper.
I would lay all of the
things I collected of
a person beside each
other
—
everything
they had given me, or
anything I had saved
that reminded me of
the time I spent with
them. I expected my
mind
to
go
rushing
back to a time when we
were together, rewind-
ing past all the time we
spent apart. I expected
to feel how I felt when I
was around them, in the
same way I was able to
revisit the thrill of my
8th birthday through
a stack of envelopes. I
wanted to feel magi-
cally
entrenched
by
the bliss of experiencing love
for the first time. But instead,
I was met with this wistful
desire, making it abundantly
clear to me that remember-
ing isn’t enough. My memories
lacked the rawness of human
connection. There was nothing
I could do to capture the bliss-
ful naivety of falling in love for
the first time, and there was no
way for me to materialize an
enchanting memory of a person
that no longer exists in such a
way.
Acoss pages of unfinished
smash journals, diaries and
albums,
I
have
mistakenly
extended
my
understanding
of the temporality of experi-
ences to that of people. I tried
to assign people to places and
those places to points in time. I
would recall a feeling and try to
chase it until I lost sight of what
it was I was longing for. I kept
trying to reinvent a person I
once knew through a collection
of memories: a receipt from an
ice cream trip, a handwritten
letter, a printed polaroid photo
signed with our initials. But
none of these things amount
to a person. There is no num-
ber of memories I could collect
or moments I could rebuild to
capture a human connection.
I can’t staticize a person, or
rebuild a relationship based
merely on what I remember of
the past.
The happiness I feel when
I look through my baby blue
photo
album
doesn’t
exist
when I revisit my more recent
memories. As I flip through
journal pages and sort through
memory boxes I’ve assembled
over the last few years, I find
the visual recollections of my
memories clouded with a sense
of longing, as my once bliss-
ful attempt to be sentimental
is now tainted by inability to
move on.
My inability to grasp the
largely intangible concept of
human connection has cost me
to lose sight of what my origi-
nal intent was in saving all of
these keepsakes. At 8 years
old I wasn’t trying to create an
avenue for myself to continue
revisiting the past. I captured
memories through words, pho-
tographs and small memen-
tos because of how much I
valued the present moment.
I tried making each moment
last forever because I found
contentment in being present,
unaffected by what has passed
and what is yet to come. Over
the years, I lost sight of what it
means to be present. I became
so heavily entrenched in a nos-
talgic, imagined yesterday that
I found myself constantly grap-
pling with the passage of time,
and I lost sight of the here and
now.
In an effort to escape this
elusive past that I have trapped
myself in, I am learning to
succumb to the fleetingness
of moments. I am grounding
myself in present connections,
memories and expectations.
I’m learning to find closure in
the passage of time and no lon-
ger trying to revive things that
are gone.
ANONYMOUS
MiC Contributor
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ideas, we need
your insights,
and most of all,
we need your
dreams.”
– President Santa J. Ono
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We shared a
common first
language. A
language I
once feared to
liberate because
of the stares I
might attract. A
language that I
couldn’t fluently
vocalize. It was
the power of
these women
that showed me
the beauty of the
Spanish language
and my Mexican
heritage.
I was trying
to eternalize my
relationships
with people, as
though a person
can be strapped
down to a place
and time and
compressed in
between sheets of
paper.