Happy Dia de los Muertos, to those who celebrate it.
I never felt compelled to celebrate it until today, but no, I don’t have a shrine or anything. That’s mostly because I didn’t even know it was today until this morning (I know, yet another thing to put in my “I’m a bad Mexican” files). My immediate family has never celebrated it, and I’m an atheist (though my family is Catholic), so it’s never been a tradition for me.
But it is something I’d like to start doing in the future as I renegotiate my Latina identity. Perhaps it’s because, as of this year, all of my grandparents are now dead. I liked hearing my paternal grandparents tell me stories about their lives growing up, and I do have 20+ pages of my grandmother’s oral history recorded. I never knew my maternal grandfather because he died before my first birthday. I could never truly communicate with my maternal grandmother because she only spoke Spanish, and my Spanish is fragmented. I could understand a lot of what she was saying, but I couldn’t speak back to her. When she descended into dementia as she got older, a lot of her history was lost.
Only now am I truly starting to regret not having learned all I could learn about them and their experiences.
(Photographer unknown (Felipe Tofani, maybe?). You can see more of these gorgeous photos at Pristina.org.)
5 years ago, I was a sexy cop for Halloween.¹ And I liked it.
The usual me wears jeans and t-shirts and flip flops pretty much every day (unless it’s cold, in which case the uniform becomes a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers). I do a pretty half-ass job on my hair about 75% of the time. I never bother with makeup. I like dressing up occasionally, but most of the time, I’m just plain ol’ me.
So our last year before graduating from undergrad, my roommates and I got gussied up and hit 6th Street in Austin, and I went as a sexy cop. Granted, I unsluttied it up a bit by wearing at tank top underneath (there is no way in hell I’d be caught showing that much skin). The basic rules of fashion are to feature one area, meaning don’t go overboard on showing the rest, ya know? So I was covered on top, and the knee-high boots I was wearing weren’t stilettos but thick black heels, but half of my little ass was hanging out. There’s no denying that one.
But you know what? I liked it. I liked doing something completely not me for one night, and I liked that I was able to get completely over my body image hangups for once and rock the hell out of the look.
I’m kind of a cynic when it comes to any type of “patriotic” holiday, and I hate bandwagon patriotism. You will never, for instance, catch me buying flag stamps at the post office (unless that’s all they’ve got, at which point i will stick them on the envelope upside down).
But I will admit a very soft spot for purdy light shows. I was originally going to brave the crowds and make my way down to NYC for the Macy’s thing, but after working all day, I just can’t bring myself to deal with the hassle of trains, subways, and lots of standing just for a 30 minute display, so I will soon be heading out to one of the many other fireworks shows in my suburban hell.
And since my idea of patriotism involves sticking it to The Man, I would also like to share with you one of the best damn patriotic songs ever.
