Reflections from a Mother's Heart

Describe your childhood bedroom. What was the view from your window?

This is the next question in the journal I mentioned in my post of June 5, 2008 and it's a hard question to answer because I had so many childhood bedrooms. We were a family of nomads basically as my dad worked as a farm hand and we always lived in homes provided by the farm up until I was 18 years old.

We first lived in Eloy, Arizona. I remember living in about 3 or 4 houses there and I don't remember much about my bedroom, the clearest thing I remember is a huge weeping willow in the yard and ever since I've always loved weeping willows.

After we left Eloy, we traveled to Harquahala, Arizona. There we lived in a really cute house. I remember that one pretty clearly but oddly enough I don't remember my bedroom. I remember the living room and staying up late watching scary movies with my mom. I remember the kitchen and eating with my dad and I remember my mom being pregnant with my baby brother Jaime and sitting on her bed and she let us each pick a name we wanted for the baby and we put the names in my dad's hat and my sister had chosen Jaime because she had a crush on a little boy in school named Jaime aka Jimmy Lopez. And that's how Jaime got his name.

After Harquahala, we moved to Yuma, Arizona and I don't really remember my bedroom there too well, but I do remember my mom let my sister and I set up everything the way we wanted. I remember my cousin Albert lived with us because he was going to college in Yuma and I can remember both my mom and I crying because I didn't know how to do math and my mom telling me to wait for Albert to come home since he was a college student and he didn't know how to do my math either!

After Yuma, we moved to Poston, Arizona. I remember this room just a tiny bit, it was blue with twin beds and I remember each night I would do a hundred sit ups in bed because even way back then I was obsessed with my weight. I remember sitting up and that slamming myself back so hard into the mattress that it would pop me back up, which made sit ups a breeze! I never even got sore.

After Poston, we moved to Calipatria, California. Once we moved there we stayed there from my 8th grade year to graduation from high school. We lived in two houses and I remember my bedroom in the first house because I had a room all to myself and I used to stay up really late talking on the phone with Hector Gutierrez. The second house I don't remember the bedroom too much, but I remember the view, it was a field, usually of cotton but sometimes it was tomatoes or something else.

Once we left Calipatria, we moved to Shafter. I clearly remember my bedroom in Shafter because I was 18 by then. I remember sharing the room with my sister and while I don't remember the decor, I remember my sister popping every bone in her body before she went to sleep and also she made this sound like a dog scratching itself.

I guess the important thing looking back is not how big the room was, what was in it, what color paint was on the wall, whether or not I had a TV, video games, stereo, etc, etc. The important thing was the memories made in that room and in the whole house. The memory of loving parents, brothers and sister, adventures, fights, games and all the other things that went along with growing up in the wonderful family I call mine.