Pedro Cepeda

The Cepeda's in their younger days.....

The following story is an interview of our mother

and one of her siblings, Mary (one of the twins)

regarding her life with her first husband.....

We will sometimes forget the people we meet in our lives, but we will never forget the stories. Stories not only paint a picture of a person's life but it tells their legend. Of all the people we meet, the people we least ask about their stories is our parents. We, the children, assume that since we have lived most of our young lives with our parents, we know them. But do we? Have we actually taken the time to ask our parents about their stories?

I asked myself that question and realized that I did not really know everything about my mother. I found myself asking, what was it like when she was growing up? What were her fun times and her bad times? What was she like as a teenager? Well, I decided to find out so I took my pen and writing pad and started asking my mother these questions.

Before I begin I must tell you a little about my mother and who she is today. My mother is 82 years old. She lives alone with a caretaker in El Centro, CA. She needs the caretaker because she suffers from the results of a disease called Guillan-Barre Syndrome, which she contracted about 16 years ago. She is wheelchair bound and spends most of her days watching television and enjoying visits from all her children, eleven to be exact.

One Saturday afternoon I called her and just started asking her questions. This is the effect of our conversation:

Question: Mom, I've always known you were born in Texas, but I don't always recall what city.

Answer: Oh, well, I was born in Maxwell, Texas.

Question: Did you grow up there?

Answer: No, we lived in San Marcos, a small town in Texas. My father cultivated the land. The land was just small portions of land American farmers gave to their migrant workers. The major product we cultivated was cotton. My father took my mother to Maxwell, Texas when she went into labor with me.

Question: I thought you lived in Mexico when you married your first husband?

Answer: I did. My father did not like living in Texas. He always longed to go back to his country in Mexico so one day he just picked up and took us all to the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. He had family there and liked it better in Mexico.

Question: How was it that your sister wound up in Ohio then?

Answer: My oldest sister, Teofila, hated Mexico and moved to Ohio as soon as she was old enough.

Question: So you first had Modesta born in Mexico. How was it that Inosencio was born outside of Mexico?

Answer: Well my husband at the time was a "troquero" (truck driver) his job was to take farm workers to and from the campgrounds. With that job, he wounded up in the state of Montana and he took me and his children with him. That was where "Chencho" was born. Then from there we traveled to the state of Missouri. That is where my daughter "Maria" was born, the one that died. She did not last too long though. She was born on the skinny side. She got diarrhea and was vomiting. My husband and I took a ride into town to take her to a doctor and she died on the way, in my arms.

Question: What did you do?

Answer: (pause) She was one month and 20 days old. There was no medicine to help cure her and I went through a lot of "sustos" when I was pregnant of her. (in the Hispanic culture, women long ago believed that "sustos" affected the pregnant female and caused miscarriages, malformations, illnesses or death on the fetus)

Question: What kind of "Sustos"?

Answer: There were a lot of rainstorms and thunderstorms. They were really bad, so bad that the people had to run and hide underground. The ranchers had these dwellings underground and the people just hid there with their families until the storm was gone. I was very scared. "Pace muchos sustos".

Question: So is it because of this "trocero" job your husband had you wounded up in Arizona where my sisters Juana and Yolanda were born?

Answer: Yes, we migrated to Casa Grande, Arizona. Not a very big town at the time. From there we wounded up in California where the rest of you were all born.

Question: So only two of your children were born in Mexico.

Answer: Yes but they were not suppose to be born there.

Question: What?

Answer: Well, you see, I was living in the United States at the time and when I was pregnant of your oldest sister Modesta I went to visit family in Piedras Negras, Mexico. I had no idea how far along I was in my pregnancy. I had no idea when I got pregnant even. Well, Modesta was born there in Mexico.

Question: How was it then that Martina was born in Mexico too?

Answer: Martina was supposed to be born in the United States, what happened was that I was alone while my husband was away at work. I had a doctor and everything over here too. But my family did not want me staying by myself so they asked me to go stay with them. That's how Martina wounded up being born in Mexico also.

Question: Going back to when you wounded up in California. I was under the impression that your first husband was a crop duster when you lived in California?

Answer: He was, he started crop dusting when we moved to California. He would never wear his mask. He got real sick and died. I was told it was Tuberculosis that killed him and that he got sick for not wearing his mask. His lungs were infected and he died.

Question: What did you do when he died?

Answer: Well, first of all I didn't know he had died until 3 months after his death.

Question: Why was that?

Answer: Well, when he got sick he said he wanted to go "HOME" to Mexico with his family so his family could take care of him and cure him.

Question: So he left you alone?

Answer: Yes. I sent him a few dollars every month, whatever I could save so his family could buy him his medicine and pay for his medical bills.

Question: So how come you didn't know when he died?

Answer: Well, I kept sending him money and his sister kept writing to me to send more money because the medicine was expensive. One day one of my sisters called me and as we were talking she asked me, "How in the world did you tell your children about their father's death?". I told her he wasn't dead. She said he was and that she had gotten word from some other relative who lived where my father's family lived. She told me he had died 3 months ago.

Question: What did you do?

Answer: Well I was upset. His sister kept asking me for more money and he wasn't even alive anymore. Then I understood why she had written once and asked me to send the money orders in her name supposedly because he was too weak to go cash them.

Question: What did you do?

Answer: His sister wrote to me one more time after that asking me why I had not sent her any money, that my husband needed more medicine.

Question: What did you say to her?

Answer: I didn't say anything to her. But I kept that letter for a long time in case I saw her.

Question: Did you see her?

Answer: No, I never heard from her again.

Question: How many were in your family? Siblings?

Answer: We were six sisters and four or five brothers, but most of my mother's sons died and all her daughters lived.

Question: All of your brothers died?

Answer: Well, only three lived.

Question: What order were you born in?

Answer: I was the third born. My oldest sister had three pairs of twins. They were all boys too.