I have a problem with Taco Tuesday and it is this: What about the rest of the week? I have no idea when the Taco Tuesday phenomenon began or why the poor taco got relegated to a particular day of the week. Shouldn’t every day hold the possibility of tacos on the dinner table? I say yes, and for this reason a Guerra child is equally likely to find a taco on his dinner plate on Wednesday, Monday, or Thursday; sometimes all three.
I’m Mexican. Mexicans are passionate about many things: tamales at Christmas, family, traditions…tacos.
My wife enjoys a good taco, but her comfort food is more in line with dishes that resemble creamy mashed potatoes and a lush gravy. She’s Irish. She loves green things that grow. For her, bliss is sitting by a window, listening to rain fall while tucked into a warm sweater, and drinking tea, with a book to keep her company. Her skin turns from caucasian to sunburn after thirty minutes. She’s passionate about land, freedom, and loving on her elders.
There are many things that Mexicans and the Irish have in common: chiefly, hard work.
I like to say that in a bar fight, I might put my money on the Irish, but if you need something (anything) done quickly, well, and with zero griping…that’s my people. She usually scoffs, and I concede her point. If you’ve ever driven through Ireland, you’ve noticed vast landscapes dotted with simple homes or cottages surrounded by rock walls acting as field markers. The labor that went into clearing those fields of rocks must have been backbreaking. When I saw them, I thought, “These, too, are my people.” We were made for each other.
I grew up seeing hard work from differing perspectives. As kids we had to pull our weight: dishes, laundry and such…along with scraping algae, dead bugs, and leaves from the bottom of the pool. I also mowed lawns and did landscaping. I hated landscaping.
But I didn’t have to do landscaping at Dad’s house – somebody else did. I often woke up to leaf blowers and lawn mowers. Crews consisting primarily of Mexican landscapers cared for whole streets at a time. I occasionally peered out the window and tried not to stare. Not that it would have bothered them, because never, not once, did they ever look back. They were always focused on their work, utterly indifferent to the onlookers. I never noticed them speaking either, just working. They were done and gone before you knew it, and the beautiful Los Angeles neighborhoods were left manicured and sparkling. I admired the men who made it happen.
It was around this time that I became attached to a favorite pair of work gloves. Not all work gloves are sufficient, but when you find the right pair, they become an extension of your effort. Putting them on becomes a mental trigger – it means it’s time to get some real work done, the kind of work that you’ll skip a meal or two to complete because you don’t want to lose momentum. My gloves were ordinary, probably bought by our crew chief in a five-pack for less than ten bucks at a hardware store somewhere. I picked a pair and wrote my name on them.
I kept them as I moved around from job to job, lifestyle to lifestyle, state to state. I still have them and was using them the other day as I did some tire rotations, and some landscaping at our new house. It struck me that though the gloves were worn and beaten, with holes in several of the finger and so faded that only two letters of my name are still visible, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. A day will come when they are no longer useful, and will be discarded. Someday the same will be true about me.
For now though, I’m going to keep using them. I’m going to build things with them, and get my list crossed off. Then I’ll write another list. I’m going to work and try not to complain, and rest when the job is done. And maybe one day there will be a time when we can wake up, look out the window, and see someone else mowing our lawn…but maybe not.
Perhaps hard work is in our blood, and self-sufficiency is part of our programming. Maybe it’s part of being Mexican, or Irish, or maybe it’s not about that at all. Maybe it’s about being grateful for the ability we have and what we can do with it. Maybe we were designed to create, and there is a Father out there willing to give us things to do.