My mother and I circa 1962
Everyone believes that their mother was a saint. My mother was named for two: the Virgin Mary, Maria, the mother of the messiah; and, Our Lady of Mercy, Mercedes. Her sister was named for Our Lady of Sorrows, Dolores, a name my mother would give to my sister, and how prescient she was, as my sister has had more heartache than any one should ever need. I was her "Hijo Querido del Alma," her cherished son of love, or love child, as we would say in America. An accident of my parents’ reunion in El Norte, she poured all the love in me she could not share with my father. At some point she became tired of pronouncing and spelling her first name, getting confused with others in the mail, and she changed her legal name to Maria M., and for the rest of her life received mail and signed her name that way. My sister was known in the house as Lolita, the diminutive for Dolores, but eventually went by the moniker of Dee. When my parents died she said the hardest thing would be that no one would ever call her Lolita again. I make it a point to try, when I can remember. Sometimes my mother would say to me, "When I look at you I know how long I have been in exile." She died when I was 53.