When I was four years old, my sisters organized a little birthday party for me. Struggling in extreme
poverty as an immigrant single mother, my mother rarely celebrated any of her children’s birthdays. So it was significant that they pulled together wanting to give me something that, perhaps, they had longed for.
My sister who is very artistic made a square piñata by hand, tissue paper on pencil end style, point by point, carefully writing out a big green number 4 on one side.
I remember being so excited, and especially proud to have a special powder blue, spaghetti strap sundress to wear. I loved a pretty dress.
There were three cakes, one was coconut, another chocolate and I’m not sure what the last was. But I have a major sweet tooth and this was amazing to me. Forever after this day, anytime and anywhere I was in my foster care journey, when I saw a coconut cake it represented the love of my family.
It still does take me right back to that moment in time, and I have been known to buy a slice occasionally, savoring the salty sweetness of the coconut remembering what was one of my brightest childhood memories.
I had alot of little friends there and we all had party hats and party blowers. Special details my sisters pulled together.
I have alot of pictures of this day, which helps me remember it. They are some of the few pictures we have of our childhood because all the others were discarded by strangers when everything fell apart.
In the pictures, I am having a blast. I can remember feeling very special, celebrated and loved with that sweet joy and exuberant delight of a small child.
At the time, I didn’t know this had been orchestrated by my sisters. I didn’t know how special it was that they created this party for me. That it was a gift from their heart’s longing and that I was the very fortunate recipient of their ability to bring love forward from lack.
At the end of the party, I opened a gift,
a beautiful baby doll.
I was delighted!
I was so happy to have a new baby doll to hold and love.
But after I looked her over a little more, I realized that she was my old doll just dressed up in new clothes that another sister had sewed.
There are pictures of me crying in disappointment.
I saw this as a poverty story for a long time.
But as I learned about all that went into creating this humble but very intentional party,
I see how rich I was in that moment.
How blessed I was to be the youngest of five sisters who knew about hardship, the bitterness of poverty and a stressed out wounded parent, and tried to make life a little sweeter for their hermanita.
As the years went on, though I largely fell through the cracks, it continued to be my sisters who picked me up at times, harbored me, and loved me over the years. It was mostly in bits and pieces, as we were scattered to the wind, but those moments mattered and landed in my corazon.
They became the fragments of connection that I built my mothering on.
After the retreat last weekend, where we once again experienced the sweetness of sisterhood, this story came to mind.
It makes me think that perhaps, I have always worked in circles, and encouraged mamas to connect with each other because I wanted to normalize the mothering experience, but also…
because I know that sisters are invaluable to have with us along the journey.
We are all busy with our own familias, and it is also mostly in bits and pieces that we connect,
but there is nothing like knowing there are warm hearts who have shared vulnerably, know our deepest intentions and hold us in love.
My sisters and I are very different from each other, as are the mamas that come together in circle, but there is a thread of connection that brings us back to interdependence.
In a world full of challenges, it is a sweet and essential solace.
I’m so grateful for my resilient and caring hermanas and all of the sisters/hermanas/comadres I’ve been privileged to walk with over the years.
xoxoxo
Sylvia