It wasn’t the same as before, living so close to the Pacific Ocean. It never got hot here. Even warm summer days were never as hot as Ciudad Juarez or the Imperial Valley. Those warm summer days led to completely comfortable cool summer evenings. I will pick another time to remember the Santa Ana winds or the bone chilling foggy nights.
During our first year so my mama tried to keep the same family routines we always had. We got up with the sun, and went to sleep with the dark. Between those two times was work. Sundays were the exception. They were a day for church, a day of rest.
Before sleep Mama would gather us on the porch, make us say our prayers for the night, and then she would tell us a story. Those were the days before everybody had electricity in their homes and using the Kerosene lamps were expensive.
Sometimes she would talk about her Madrid family who lived on the banks of el Rio Grande. Sometimes she would tell us of her Lucero family from Doña Ana County and Mesilla, New Mexico. Both families, the Madrids and the Luceros descended from the original families that settled New Mexico in 1598. I know I met some of them, my cousins, aunts and uncles, but I was too young. I wish I got to know them better.
I drifted into sleep thinking about those people of long ago. Way back then, centuries past, they were already a part of my life.
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