May 8 2022

Mom’s Story – feminism vignette adventures (of an adventurer) by Dorothy Chambless

It was the year 1919 – 19 years later, 1938, we would meet. Numbers – we play with them as we play with life, adventures to be had.

We play at Paste –

Till qualified, for Pearl –
Then, drop the Paste –
And deem Ourself a fool –
The Shapes, tho’, were similar,
And our new Hands.
Learned Gem Tactics.
Practicing Sands

– Emily Dickenson

Play is not only for children. People, we adults, play all our lives. We play with magic, numerology, alchemy, science, math, computers and… Play is a land unto its own.

Adventures were Mom’s way of playing. Playing in different lands, Texas, California, Chicago, Virginia, and… playing in different realms , education, nutrition, music, spiritually, finances, religion, especially playing in her own and others lives. Always the traveler in no matter what world or realm. The Adventure, and the challenge. She took us with her. Not just her children and her “blood” but her husbands – Fred – “Mr Mejia” as she so lovingly called him and Fred – Nobby Balambao who’s last name she kept even after divorce till her death. She loved her Asian men. And why? Asians were certainly not part of her childhood, her culture, nor the time period of the United States of America. Perhaps it was the mystery of other cultures, perhaps it was the promise of gentleness, perhaps having a gentle father made that the reality she longed for. Perhaps because they were her first loves.

98 years gives you time to have many adventures if you so wish, with or without others. Or you can have it both ways as Mom did. Wanting to be free with her gypsy boots or her bluebird of happiness, or wanting to share times with those she cherished – her “blood”. Always wanting to be part of their lives. She was a true voyeur and she had a bit of a tease in her as well so it turned into what John likened to the Beatles movie where the dirty old man (not saying Mom was a dirty old woman) that use to start a confrontation and then sit back and watch what would take place, usually fights or misunderstandings. She was somewhat like that in that she would say something and it would spark a series of misunderstandings and hurt feelings

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2018, just a month shy of her 99 birthday, she decided it was time or perhaps time decided this stubborn tenacious soul had struggled enough, had called on the energies of the universe too many times and it was time for this ball of energy to give it back so that it could be reborn again in a different form. Her fight with the world was over- she had spent most of her life doing just that – struggling.

As I sit here today, May 15, 2022 I think back on all the adventures she had.

Beach trips were one of the loves of her life. She always wanted to live in Monterey, Ca. because when she was young she saw a movie of Zorro! So that was her dream. Only later did I realize that there was a Monterrey, Mexico which is very close to San Antonio, Texas. I wonder… When I lived blocks away from the Pacific Ocean I often thought of her every time I visited the beach, which was often. I think of her wanting to put her feet in the water even with her socks on, to feel the water on her feet, and to walk in the coolness of the water. Sitting in the sun on the beach. She would visit the Ocean when she lived in Monterey, driving as well as walking. She loved walking and continued to do so with a walker in later years. The walker was another story. First to get one, first to get a backpack and use it as a purse. It freed her hands so she could do whatever she needed to, that and her walking stick, actually a cane, John had a walking stick. There is a difference you know. One is for stabilizing walking the other is for many other uses – even hitting little rude children who dared to cut in front of her when she was ready to place an order at a McDonald’s to banging on a mac truck that got in the way of the walk way of the sidewalk so that she could not maneuver her walker easily.

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Our land, our home. “If anyone asks you what you are (what you are – meaning race or nationality at the time) you tell them you’re an American” I never really understood that when I was a child. Years later I began to understood the legacy of America and why we are fighting today, fighting for what Mom knew was important and fighting for the right to a decent life in this land. San Antonio, Texas her land, the land of indigenous people, land that had been stolen. Whether she knew that intuitively or from stories, her “right of the people” actually little things, was always there. She was always for the underdog – whether she found them in the San Francisco downtown alley where she would tuck a coin or a dollar into some drunk or homeless person’s pocket or stop us children from stepping on a column of ants because they might be carrying something home for their children something to eat