River of Love. Aimée Medina Carr
school, opened in the fall of 1926. It was home to 90 monks and 250 students. The flowing fields of alfalfa for the horses and Gymkhana program replaced now with a winery. I dip and swirl past the gargoyles on the west side of the monastery, admiring their ageless beauty.
I’ve one more stop. I must peek in on qué linda—my beautiful daughter Alma. After my death, pobrecita was the Loving heart that held la familia together. Her youngest daughter Rose is the mirror image of my gorgeous Eugenia and Loves as fiercely.
Sitting at Alma’s side, I close my eyes and listen to her long, deep conversation on the telephone, almost unknown today. Her voice sounds like it’s smiling with a lilting laugh. The moment slows down, and I drink it in.
It’s wrong to assume we’re permanently gone when we die. We flit from Heaven instantly when our Loved ones are in need. To hold them and wipe their tears, and give pésame—sympathy during desperate, lonely hours. It doesn’t have to be sad or scary; we can be here anytime. Almost everyone in Heaven has someone on earth they watch. Love transcends space and time, even death.
Alma tells Rae, her oldest daughter of the Prince Albert tobacco she smells while praying to the large, blue-robed Mother Mary statue in her bedroom. A naughty vice Eugenia and I, deliciously shared; she rolled them better than I did.
Spirits are Heaven’s serendipity calling cards. We’re the hawk or deer companion on the morning walk. We appear as surprises, or as a new development, voices heard in the shower, a soft tap on the shoulder. That barely audible whisper right before falling asleep. We’re in the origins of your Love. The Alpha and Omega, in the air around you, swirling through your thoughts. The unexplained breeze weaving Love from Heaven to the in-between and Earth.
I blast straight up two-hundred feet and shoot westward over Main Street where it’s no longer allowed to “drag the gut.” A four-block strip of downtown, where bored teenagers in souped-up cars with loud mufflers, cruised up and down searching for excitement. A sacrosanct place of connection.
I pass over Chautauqua Park, where fun times echo with Fourth of July picnics and the many Chávez family reunions. I spot my oldest son, Julian’s house, one block from the park. His strong-minded daughter, Chavela and Alma’s audacious daughter, Rose raised like sisters wore down a one-mile path between houses, distinguishable from other rocky and tangled trails. One mile west forged through the side of a mountain is Tunnel Drive, another teenage party spot, a four-mile, man-made road with two tunnels.
I get a tug—it’s almost time to return. Three miles north is Star Watcher Mountain where a star-crazed, Indian princess lost her life. The mountain silhouette is a perfect profile of a woman lying down. We’d tell our children this tragic, Indian legend and end with; “Happy counting, Star Watcher.”
Directly across as the crow flies is Skyview Drive a scenic, touristy spot. A one-way highway built on a razorback ridge by Colorado State prisoners in 1903. It’s 500 feet high with a spectacular view and a road that whips like a roller coaster. Red Cañon’s referred to as “prison alley,” because of its nine, state and four, federal prisons and penitentiaries.
My blue yonder exit portal—I don’t know when or if I’ll return. I leave overwhelmed with gratitude, savoring every second in Red Cañon. In the flicker of an instant, I vanish.
2
Red Cañon River People
The only time you should ever look back
is to see how far you’ve come.
–Anonymous
My name is Rose Ramirez—this story is my glory. Summer of 1965, our family moved from Colorado City to the rural town of Red Cañon. My father, Blaze cut hair in Colorado City. We relocated so he could open a barbershop in Red Cañon. The really real reason: Dad got busted having an affair—and she’d given birth to a baby boy. He didn’t know if the baby was his, and wasn’t sticking around to find out.
When my mother found his girlfriend’s prescription bottle in the car, he had to end it. Mom was to never know about the prostitute he met at a beer joint next door to where he worked. When confronted by my mother, Dad fiercely denied it.
We saw the result of the Lover’s argument; she used a church key to slice open the right side of his face, from the sideburn to the bottom of his chin. It left a nasty scar and a permanent mark of the indiscretion. I was too young to understand, but as an adult, my older sister explained during a discussion of our parent’s hot mess of a marriage.
My mother was eager to take her children out of Colorado City which included me, Rae my sister, and brother Essé. My siblings ran with the neighborhood riffraff. A next-door neighbor and best friend Eddie busied me with playdates and escorted me to school every day.
Eddie’s mother bellowed over the fence for him to come home in the evenings for dinner: “Eddiiieee!” He yelled back: “WHATTEEE?” Heartbroken to move away from my first, best friend and ethnically diverse school which was not the case in Red Cañon with its few minorities. My mother’s sister Lucy, brother Julian, and my father’s parents, Grandma Grace, and Grandpa Frank lived in Red Cañon. It took two, overflowing pickup loads to move our belongings. She was relieved to see Colorado City in the rearview mirror of Dad’s silver, 1957, Chevy. Looking forward through the big windshield to what’s ahead, was vastly more important than what’s left behind.
Shortly, after we moved to Red Cañon, my mother got pregnant. It could’ve been an honest slip, being Catholic, but it appeared to be an attempt to hold onto the marriage. I was mommy’s little helper with baby Mangas, (Coloradas after the Apache leader) who we called Gus. She went to work as a teacher’s aide at Head Start when Gus turned three years old. She took him to work, returned home exhausted and delegated the night duties to me. I can’t imagine life without my first cousin, Chavela a.k.a. Cha Cha—Uncle Julian’s daughter. I was introduced to my cousins during the summer, the only saving grace of that painful first year at an unaccepting, all-white elementary school in Red Cañon.
Mom adored her oldest brother Julian; he was a carbon copy of her father, Juan. I delighted in Uncle Julian’s modest white house; it even had a flagpole! I ran up and wrapped my body around it like a tetherball and chanted a lively rendition of Ring Around the Rosie. Cha Cha (named after the legendary Mexican singer Chavela Vargas) was a standoffish tomboy that lived in cutoffs, and T-shirts with a wild Indian mane of jet black hair. Adept at running and playing sports with her five siblings, I kept close to Mom, coloring, reading, and playacting alone indoors. Years later, Chavela teased me—all the cousins thought I was mentally challenged.
Uncle Julian was a gifted gardener and good provider with quiet gravitas. Unlike my father, he worked a regular job and came home every night. My Aunt Lily’s tamales were the highlight of the holidays, the vittles top-notch. I never left her house without eating.
I fought back fears of the unknown living in this new place. The house wasn’t cockroach infested like other rentals we’d lived in. Dad had an exciting new business and was on his best behavior and Cha Cha was becoming my best friend.
3
Blessed Day
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. –Cicero
Blaze’s barbershop went belly-up within the year. He drank up the profits while the borracho–boozehound friends scared off the paying customers. A call from the county jail seized my mother with panic or a cruel disappearing act sent her into a tailspin of worry.
Thankfully, she got a job at Head Start. Aunt Lucy came by with the life-changing news.
“Alma, sit down.” She readies the younger sister for opportunity knocking.
“What is it, Sis? Hope it’s good news, I sure need some.”
“I