Spanish Pride

Me encanto mi abuelita. Ella es una inspiracion a mi vida. Ojala que puede ser digno para ser su nieto.......

My grandmother is the inspiracion of my life. She has taught me so much, but one thing she never taught me was her native language, spanish, and so any mistakes in my grammar to begin with I blame on my six month crash course of learning during my mission.

Helena Eudocia Rivera Molina Strodtman, is the epitome of dichotomy. She was born in Nicaragua, and raised in the coastal city of Bluefields. Hence the name of my blog, son of bluefields, is in reference to my abuelita. Her father was an extremely learned man of a semi-aristocratic background. Luis Rivera was born to the wealthy Rivera family of Matagalpa and Jinotega. Their plantations were evidence of their wealth, as were the political appointments of the family in the Samoza dictatorship. They were old money from the Castile region of Spain, that were renowned for being snooty and for the intermarrying of cousins to keep the plantations and wealth in the family. Luis, when he was a boy, had gone shooting with the son of one of the workers on the plantation. The boy ran in front of my great grandfather's gun and Luis killed him. The plantation worker vowed to kill my great grandfather, and so the Rivera's sent him with a German diplomat for 10 years. During that time, Luis lived in Philadelphia, Berlin, Munich, Paris, and Barcelona. When he came back to Nicaragua he was fluent in his native Spanish, English, German, and French. He later learned the native tongue of the Miskito Indians of the coast. He was extremely gifted and so when he chose his wife, it was with disappointment the family watched the wedding to Francisca Molina. Though Luis was extremely wealthy and intelligent, he never learned to control his passion for spending money or for drinking, it eventually led to his death. My great grandmother, Francisca, was a mestizo. She had native background of the Miskito Indians, although this was less than half of her ancestry. She came from a poor family, and her own mother had born children to 4 different ment during the course of her marriage to one man. Thus, Francesca was far from a suitable match for any Rivera. However, my great grandmother had what Luis didn't, discipline. She ran a successful mercantile business with the American miners in Bluefields, and was renowned for her generosity and shrewdness. Thus my grandmother was born into a dichotomy, and she inherited the best of both her parents, and at times the worst. She has the potential to be extremely intelligent, and her wit is second to none. However, she also has a hard time to control her own passions and her prejudices. She came from poverty and thus she lives a humble life despite her wealth, but she still struggles to feel accepted in a society she always felt she was beneath, much like her mother. My grandmother is my hero, and this blog is a small dedication to a woman I love.

My grandmother's stories are some of my favorite memories of childhood. I would spend as much time at her house as my own house, it was right next door, and she would cook as I played around her feet with marbles. I faked wars with my marbles, and then would go to my grandfather's room and star at the large map of the world where all the families trips had been mapped out. There I would stare at Latin America and know my grandmother was from there. Later, she would sit me down and would talk to me about where she was from. She would teach me about the conquistadors of long ago, and make me look up spanish words in the dictionary. I grew enchanted with stories of her childhood, stories of sleeping in tortoise shells, or sailing in a canoe up the river with her mother pregnant. I loved those stories, and I learned to love her. She is a hard woman, and she does not show affection readily. The first time I remember with regularity that she would tell me she loved me was after she defeated cancer four years ago. She was has never been one to show emotion other than anger and disapproval, yet behind your back she is the first to laud praise.

I applied to Harvard, Amherst, and Williams when I was graduating from high school. All of them required an essay about a figure in my life who had inspired me. I was later accepted to all three of these schools, and I attribute my essay to much of the success. First, it was about my grandmother, who is my hero. This served a two fold purpose, first to highlight my hispanic background and confirm my minority status, and second it was a truthful representation of triumph over adversity. My grandmother was forced to leave her country when she was thirteen. Her mother had saved money for years, $900, was needed to be allowed entry to the United States, and Francisca dreamed of going with her youngest daughter. My grandmother's older sister was already in Utah, and so they were finding sponsors to come when my great grandmother dropped a crate on her foot. With her diabetes, and lack of medical attention, gangrene set in. My grandmother watched as her mother died and within two days she was forced to leave for the United States by herself. Her father had long ago abandoned the family, but came at the funeral to ask for money. With these as her last memories, abuela came to the United States where she would be forced to learn English and learn a culture not her own.

In Utah my grandmother lived with an LDS family, and as she was mistreated here she would carry a grudge that she would hold against this faith to this very day. She went to high school, and learned English to a minimal degree. She felt the prejudice of an all white society where she was looked upon as a second class citizen. She eventually got married to a carpenter, Walter Sidney Ward Zobell. She had a child, my father, only to find that her husband was far from faithful. Helena was tricked with her minimal english into signing away her sign, and only upon her crying while cleaning a movie theater, did a co-worker take her to an attorney, the co-workers father. The man helped my grandmother win back partial custody, and with that she left the state for Montana. Here she struggled as a waitress, living with her sister and her husband. She learned english better and only cared about raising her son and finding a life that would be successful in this new land where she had been taken advantage of by others. She stumbled upon a rancher named Willis Dale Strodtman, who pursued her relentlessly. He didn't care that she was spanish, although he was a deeply racist man, and he loved her son. He was an outsider like her in the Big Hole Valley. A dirt poor farmer from Kansas, he had bought a small ranch in the valley and was considered and outsider. He pursued her until she finally gave in and told him that she did not love him, and he replied, "You will learn to love me." So her new life began as a ranch wife and she did learn to love "Dale." Dale raised her son as his own, and she had another child, named Frances in honor of her mother. She watched as her children became international trap shooting sensations. She watched her as her ambitious husband amassed wealth through his frugality and shrewd business dealings. Her life was changed, and along the way she had changed as well. She traded in her green card for citizenship, and learned to be patriotic. She came to love this country more than the one she had left. Later when she returned to Nicaragua and saw the devastation left from the Sandanistas, she would remark that it was no longer her home.

I have deep spanish pride, although it embarasses my grandmother. She considers herself American, and though she still has a slight accent after living in our country for more than 65 years, she loves this nation as her own. She has three grandchildren whom she has pushed for success in all their pursuits. She is my hero, and her life has been an inspiration to me. The dichotomy of her personality has been passed on to me, in my cold demeanor mixed with strong emotions underneath. Her life was not easy so that my could be easier. It has always been her dream to have a grandson be an attorney, and so I with pride am going to accomplish this for her, as much as for myself. The greatest gift I can repay her for her sacrifice is knowing that her posterity are fully American, and that they integrated despite the prejudices of the people and the odds against her. Me encanto mi abuelita.