Sylvia's Journal

Sylvia’s Journal (a short story by John Van Winkle)

‘May 26, 1998– June 3, 2012… things I’ve been told, things I recall, and a few other things:

My birth mother- a single teenager of whom I know nothing else. She gave me up shortly after I was born.

My birth father- no information (and no interest, really).

My first foster home- Mrs. and Mr. Rios. I don’t remember much from that period, but I understand that they were good people who practiced and taught me solid values and a conversational mix of English and Spanish, raising me for nearly 3 years until giving me up, when family and financial considerations required it. I stopped by this morning, and told Mrs. Rios about my graduation honors, and thanked her. Mr. Rios wasn’t home, but I asked her to share with him my appreciation of their help.

My next foster family, Mrs. and Mr. Flores, taught me both English and Spanish proactively, stressing that bilingual fluency would be key to my financial wellbeing. I visited with and thanked them this morning, too.

By the time I got to the Alvarez family after kindergarten, I was ahead of my classmates in both languages. And I was so lucky that Mrs. Alvarez had an upright piano, where she taught me to play and read music for hours and hours almost every single day through 3^rd grade. I have visited her often since I was moved to Mrs. and Mr. Ibarra, showing off to her my developing piano skills, and thanking her every visit for her help and the gift of music.

Mrs. Ibarra, who fostered me until I went to Mrs. and Mr. Ruiz after 5^th grade, let me stay after school most days to practice piano, before coming home for supper. Miss Arturo, who teaches music at my school, recognized my talent when I was in 4th grade and has ever since allowed me to play the piano for an hour each day after classes end, while she grades papers and prepares the next day’s lesson plan. But she often sneaks over to the piano to give me free instruction, for which I thank her daily. She shrugs it off, saying that she’d have to be there anyway, but that doesn’t explain why she continues to meet me at the school most days during summer break for intense lessons that sometimes run up to an hour and a half to even two hours, lessons that have helped me excel far beyond my age, and all at no cost. With her help, my musical development has continued uninterrupted and even accelerated each year.

Meanwhile, how lucky I have been that Mrs. and Mr. Ruiz have raised me from 6^th grade through my graduation today from grammar school. They had two birth sons before fostering me, but no daughters, and from day one, they have embraced me as their own; boys being boys, maybe even more so. Mrs. Ruiz has also been very attentive to my language skills, making it a point for all five of us to communicate every day in both languages. Today, as I graduate from grammar school, I am thankful that the Ruiz family want to keep me for four more years, through the end of high school, when I will have just turned 18 and be ready for independent adulthood. As much as I thank them and care for them, I must admit that I do yearn for total independence.

And now there is also, so importantly, Maria Moreno. Two and a half years ago, Mrs. and Mr. Ruiz treated the boys and me to a rare Saturday evening dinner outing at Maria’s taco restaurant not far from our house. Funny, how it seems that the smallest things can set the direction of a person’s life, and I believe that this simple family evening out has done that for me.

We were all quite excited, and when we arrived at the restaurant at 5 pm, Mrs. Moreno was working the tables, while her granddaughter covered the drive-through and her daughter prepared the food for both the restaurant and the drive-through, from the single kitchen.

The restaurant was nearly full and the drive-through backed-up, as usual, and Maria stopped by several minutes after seating us and giving us menus, apologizing for the delay but explaining that she was working double duty, because her dishwasher and only employee besides her daughter and granddaughter, had resigned when she came in late at 4 pm that afternoon, to fly to New York to take a line-cook job at a restaurant where her sister worked.

Mrs. Moreno explained that normally, the dishwasher would come in at 3 pm to hand-wash the overflow of lunch dishes that wouldn’t fit into the automatic dishwasher, so that they would be ready for the dinner rush that began to build by 4 pm. Maria told us that she would be able to take our orders in just a couple of minutes, as she scrambled without total success to keep up with cleaning dishes on the fly between greeting, serving, and cashiering the busy Saturday dinner volume. On sudden impulse, I raised my hand and asked if I could be her dishwasher that night, noting that I washed all of the dinner dishes at home and was thorough and careful. Mrs. Ruiz saw my enthusiasm and backed me up, saying that it would get her three hungry men fed quicker, while solving Maria’s dilemma. Maria said it would be terrific with her, and that she would escort me home by 7:30 pm.

I went to the kitchen at 5:15 pm, my family was fed and on their way home by 6 pm, and with the drive-through closing at 6 pm and the restaurant at 7 pm, I had finished rinsing the dinner dishes, filling the automatic dishwasher to capacity, washing and drying the overflow dishes and putting them away, while Maria and her daughter and granddaughter cleaned the tables, swept and cleaned the floor, and cleaned up the kitchen and the drive-through all by 7:15, when Maria paid me $5 per hour plus my share of tips which together totaled $25, the first money I had ever earned outside of home. But the game changer for me was finding Maria Moreno, who I feel is becoming my most important life mentor.

I soon found out that with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge between Maria and Mrs. Ruiz, I’ve officially been for the past two and one-half years Maria's great granddaughter hanging out and studying after school at the taco shop, unofficially the cash-paid, under-age, behind the scenes dishwasher and Jaclyn of all trades, and I’ll continue in that role until my 16th birthday, when I will officially become a paid employee. Meanwhile, Maria is teaching me a lot about life in addition to the things I’m learning at school, at Miss Arturo’s piano lessons, and at home, and I’m loving all four of my learning venues and thankful for each, every minute of every day.

And while much that I learn is good and thrilling and wonderful, I’m finding from all my teachers and mentors, and from the daily news, that there is also much that is not good: misfortune, poverty, inequity, sickness, crime, disinformation, and civilian and governmental breaches of trust and fiduciary responsibility.

As I finish grammar school today, so fortunate and thankful for the enormous help that I have received so far, I look forward to high school and then independent adulthood, knowing that if I am to fulfill my potential, I must continue to learn both the good and the not good, in order to live and fully embrace the good, while rejecting and overcoming the other.