It Took Me Three Generations, but I Learned to Love Spanish
Our native language was disappearing from my family, but circumstance—and luck—brought it back
When my father turned six, Mercedes, Texas was a small town. Now, 60 years later, it’s still a small town — Mexico border to its south, outlet mall to its north. And during an ordinary car ride, my father tells me an extraordinary story.
As I steer us toward his post-cataract surgery appointment at a VA clinic, he explains how he started first grade not knowing any English at all. He holds up a hand and mimes a flashcard. “Apple,” he says. Then he rotates his hand around. “Manzana,” he says, offering the Spanish translation. I try to imagine my father in a classroom around 1960, a skinny little kid with jet-black hair sitting at a wooden desk, absorbing a new language that he will speak the rest of his life.
“That’s how you learned English?” I ask incredulously. I can’t imagine the time it must have taken to build the necessary vocabulary, one piece of cardstock at a time, in a class full of students.
“And TV,” he adds. “I learned a lot of English from watching TV.”
Spanish has always been an uneasy conversation in my family, loaded with…
