Well, the question has been a quest. I was raised up in a house with a mother who is of Scottish decent and a father who is Cuban by birth [as in he was actually born in Cuba, and my brother and I are first generation Cuban Americans.] My mother's upbringing held a silent tidal wave of communication -- anything that needed to be said was avoided at every turn, and the family was pretty much a collection of passive people.
My father, on the other hand, was raised by a family that was the polar opposite -- anything and everything was yelled, screamed, or otherwise doled out extremely clearly in tones that those of us who are Anglo would clearly classify as angry, or at least way too loud, way too emotional.
It is not my right to delve into what my father experienced as a youth, except to say that he lost his country. completely and without choice. unfairly and uncontrollably. If you don't know what happened to Cuba in the late 1950s, rent the movie "The Lost City." My father was shipped to the U.S. He was paired with a loving adoptive family, yet he spent much of his life in silence due to his inability at the time to speak English [he now speaks English better than anyone I know, and that's a HUGE mouthful.]
So many years of learning in silence, the death of his father in his arms, the reconnection with his baby brother who had ended up in another foster house, and working like a slave to afford university embittered him. He was angry. He had plenty to be angry for.
In my years being raised by my father, we had plenty of scuffles. Mainly because we were so similar. It was like looking into a mirror he wanted to crack -- and the feeling was mutual.
On Christmas, 1984, my father bought me a music box that played Edelweiss -- the anthem of Austria and a song from the Sound of Music, perhaps my favorite movie of all time. I had the music box until 2006 when it was destroyed when my garage flooded in Claremont, CA.
My anger is very personal, except that everyone who knows me deeply thinks that I am an angry person. I myself -- until recently -- have agreed with this assumption. But I am not angry. Yes, I have a short fuse, but much like the early years of my life listening to my father, all the things I have a short fuse about are just things that I yell about, that I talk shit about, that I unburden myself with by becoming vocal. After all, I have seen first-hand what NOT being vocal can do when you feel upset, over-stimulated, or stressed -- it's not exactly worth the payoff to make a vocally angry person convert.
I have realized that all the things that have made me extremely angry through the years have been diminished significantly. And though I have made a pact with myself to get completely naked on this blog, some things are sacred and not to be shared. Let's just say I had good reasons to be angry, and my time spent in anger felt right and served me well. It got me through high school and university, it got me through a lot worse. My anger was the cloak I threw around who I really was so that people could generally pigeon-hole me as "the angry funny girl." But I have come to realize that a lot of what I was angry about are not things I am angry about anymore, yet I cling to the short fuse and yelling because it's simply how I was raised. There's not really a lot of anger behind it, it's just a habit.
But I will always root for the violent upholder of the truth -- even though I love Gandhi, MLK, and others who believed in and practiced non-violence. I am the person people cannot believe is still alive because I simply have no fear of other humans [I am so afraid of scorpions I pee my pants when I see one but that's beside the point... sort of.] For example, when I lived on Crenshaw, more than once I came across characters I should have walked away from, called the cops on, not yelled at, or run away from at lightning speed. But I can say in all honesty that I never did, and I don't say this as a point of pride per se, but to make a point of who I am and who I shall always be. Thugs don't scare me. People who have just been released from prison don't scare me. The streets of LA don't scare me [I lived in the HOOD, the real HOOD, not the "omg you guys, that was kinda scary, Heather! Hood.]
This is a blessing and a curse. But no one ever fucked with me. EVER. Even when a guy twice my size with teardrop tattoos on his face stole my parking spot I told that fucker what was up. He could have killed me, but something tells me he sensed my sense of self, and that at that time, I'd have sooner died [literally] than give in just because he was big and scary... to most people. When I looked at him all I saw was the motherfucker who stole my spot, and nothing else.
So yeah, my anger has served me because it lets off an aura of serious dominance, and even when a guy outside a liquor store tried to follow me as I walked home at 1:45AM, I turned around and asked him what the fuck he wanted, and he receded into the background. I assure you, if I had gassed it up the road he'd have raped me. NO fucking doubt in my mind.
But those days are over. I have a child that I will protect like a mama bear, and that means choosing my battles and not tangling with fuckers, unless they are harming her.
Perhaps the reason my Dad bought me that music box was because it was the gentlest song about loving your homeland he could find. He was/is so angry and sad about that loss, and he should be. Until you have held your father in your arms and tried to tell him that this place is good because he never would have met your mother, you can't tell me you know this pain, and you can't judge it even when it becomes absurd, even when you've heard the story thousands of times.
My anger is mine, my father is my Edelweiss, and I am his homeland. God bless the anger that preserved us, and God bless the will to let it go.
