Patricia Morales Rojas

Dr. Warwick

Writing 1

November 1, 2023

Teresa Reyes Juan

It was the year 2014, when I stood in my living room crying in my mom’s arms with a

broken headband in two pieces. I was so infuriated with my little twin sisters, who had barely

turned two years old that autumn, when I found them each with a piece of my headband in their

small chubby hands. They had broken many of my personal items but I never thought they would

snap in half the physical representation of what I had lived that summer of 2013. I guess my high

shelf was not a sanctuary as I anticipated. You might ask yourself how did a headband wield so

much power over me? Imagine a kind of lacquer so smooth, colored mineral black, that has dated

thousands of years made from a recipe from different oil extracts, aloe, and minerals from native

individuals. That is then laid down with natural and vibrant paints with very detailed stroked

designs that make up a story. You can also go to google, or whatever search engine you use, and

type “artesanía laca de Pátzcuaro.” Now picture that beautiful handmade and painted piece of art

that has been broken in two in my 10 year old hands.

What felt like a fever dream, I was now sitting on my bed with the two pieces of my

headband in my hands in shock of the current events. I closed my eyes and held one piece above

my heart, as I remembered back to the summer of 2013 when I stood in the small town that held

my family’s home and the history of many generations before me. In the state of Michoacán,

Mexico lies a small indigenous town called Ihuatzio inhabited by Tarascan people, their tongues

filling the air with the native language, Purépecha, incredible historical landmarks, handcrafted
traditional clothing, huge parties almost every month, wrapped in a tight community like a

tamale or corunda for us. Before my trip there, I didn’t comprehend this world that was so

foreign to me. I was always proud of being Mexican but after this summer I had a new revelation

of what it meant to be proud of my background. Arriving in the small town of Ihuatzio at the

hours of dawn, after a three hour long flight from LAX, I saw the house that had been shown to

me in countless pictures before I was born. The house where all my mom, uncles and aunts grew

up in, where they had their numerous parties, where my older cousins grew up, where my mom

had her quinceañera, and most importantly the heart and home to my grandparents. I stood there

and could sense the protection of the stone walls and hard work encrusted in the walls. The bare

hands of my grandparents that cultivated the rich soil of California, the ones that picked the

nutritious fruits and vegetables to sell to U.S consumers, the ones that built railroads all over the

west coast and midwest, were the same hands that built this home for my family. This was

nothing like the lively city of Los Angeles, lively was something completely different here and I

would never be the same after this experience. I thought I knew how to appreciate the things I

had back in California but I realized that it was here that I learned that. Seeing the simplicity of

living here was such a culture shock to me as a nine year-old growing up in the U.S. My

grandma would be on her “petate” making delicious food from scratch with her rough palms yet

soft hands while she told me stories of when she was a little girl, or walking with my grandpa to

the fields to take his cattle to the watering hole while he was showered in respectable

acknowledgements, or walking the town alone with my cousins to get tortillas for lunch, or

teaching my cousins English phrases in exchange for learning Purépecha phrases, and being

asked by townspeople if I was my mother’s daughter, is something that I’ll never forget. That
first piece of my headband represented all of the eye opening events that transcurred that

summer.

The second piece of headband I held to my heart as well and remembered how it got into

my hands in the first place. That same summer, after a rainy day, the sky had cleared from its

gray blanket of clouds and the air dominated with the smell of wet grass, my grandma and I ran

errands in the main town of Patzcuaro like we usually did. Going to the main town was like an

adventure, you never knew what to expect. Vendors filled each crevice of the town selling their

humble items, whether it was food they grew or hand-picked, desserts they made in their family

bakeries, mouthwatering traditional foods from food stands with old family recipes, hours of

hand stitched traditional clothing that we wear, artisan items encrusted with the sweat and tears

of humble and honest citizens. A wave of contentment surpassed me as I appreciated this humble

town life that contrasted with my busy city life in Los Angeles. We had picked items for dinner

that evening and were walking through the main square, feeling the cobblestone beneath my

flats, to get to our bus, aka “combi,” stop to head back home. We passed by the beautiful

fountain in the center of the square where it was lined with more vendors. I took a mental picture

of all the artifacts to tell my uncle later that day until my eyes noticed a beautiful hand painted

headband and my body immediately halted to admire it with my eyes. My grandma, confused,

came to where I was and saw the glow in my eyes as I was fixated by the swoop of the brush

stroke and vibrant detailed flowers on it. During my trance she asked the vendor how much for it

and the vendor told her the price to which my grandma clearly disagreed with it. A back to back

“argument” between the two older women started. Embarrassed, I told my grandma that it was

okay and that we can just leave. She swayed me away and kept going at it with the vendor. After

a few minutes of battle, my grandma bought me the headband for her proposed price and a smile
immediately plastered on my face as I positioned it between my black locks of hair. For the rest

of the month she was pleased at how I wore my headband every single day with pride and so was

I. My blissful summer had come to an end and I finally came back to reality. I left the Morelia

airport with the headband intertwined in my hair and entered the US with the same one. That fall

I was on cloud 9 as I started 5th grade with my new perception on life.

I finally opened my eyes and was struck with sadness as I had the two pieces of my

headband in my hands. I realized that now that I couldn’t wear my grandma’s strength, her

determination, what I experienced that summer, and overall my Mexican pride on my head

anymore. My mom tried to compensate me and bought me more headbands, but none of them

had the memories I had created that summer with my family, none of them were handmade by a

honest Tarasco native. The ones she bought me were probably manufactured in a factory with

thousands of the same copy, but most importantly none of them were engraved with my

grandma’s strength and determination she carried herself with everyday. I stopped wearing

headbands from that day forward. I stored the two pieces of my lifeless headband away in a box

and moved on with my grandma's strength and Mexican pride forever engraved in my mind.

Years passed after the incident with my headband, my sisters had grown out of their

breaking my personal items era, a new set of twin siblings arrived in the family, two more

summer trips to Mexico, and here I was always finding a way to mention my grandma or show

my native Mexican pride when I could. It was October of 2019, my sophomore year of high

school and we had received a phone call with the most heart-breaking news. My grandma, the

one who fought her way in life, was going to get her left leg amputated, immediately. Panic

formed in my chest as we were all over the house to get my uncle to Michoacán as soon as

possible. He was gone in a span of 24 hours and the ring of the phone calls had made us jumpy.
In that moment in time, I remembered the headband she fought for me and prayed that that same

strength would help her in her recovery. For a while it seemed like she wouldn’t make it and the

image of the headband broken in two filtered my mind as I imagined her in the same state.

Suddenly, she took everyone by surprise and proved my family and doctors wrong as she

disagreed with the disease that was eating her from inside, just like she did with the vendor, and

regained her strength after months and months of recovery. Today she still sits in her “petate”

hand making the delicious food from scratch, like she was taught as a little girl, and doing her

other numerous daily activities with just one leg now. At the ripe age of 87 she is still arguing

with vendors for their unfair prices and any forms of sickness that enters her body. Nurses and

doctors have checked up on her and she is standing firmly on a healthy account which they’ve

never seen in their doctorate careers. My phone calls with her as she recollects the time she

worked on the fields in Ventura all the way to Santa Maria just goes to prove how her strength to

build a home and family have stretched to my life today. Being a first-generation student at UC

Santa Barbara is such a 360 moment for our family legacy. Not only did she rebuild the broken

headband with her bare hands but she also taught me that I was also a blank headband painting

the vibrant flowers on it with my life story. If there was anytime in my life that I snapped in two,

I could easily repair it with the same strength and determination that my grandma has and is

flowing in the roots of my body.