Looking to the Past to Look Forward
Some thoughts on legacy, history, and change.
Two weeks ago, a friend asked me something that helped me become aware of what it is I want to do, perhaps professionally but most certainly recreationally: “Would you prefer to write fiction or non-fiction?”
Throughout most of 2020 and part of 2021, I ruminated about legacy. A lot. The pandemic made me realize that I had been operating on cruise control for quite some time. Where was I going?, I thought. Global isolation measures also allowed me to, for the first time in my adult life, spend meaningful time with my parents. At first I unintentionally learned them, but I consciously studied them as the days went by out of a mix of fear and a sense of duty.
As their oldest child, I have the clearest recollection of my parents’ lives as 20-something-year-old immigrants from Mexico figuring things out in New York City. My siblings have been exposed to tidbits from this period of our parents’ lives over the years, but so much has been lost due to gaps in language and the passage of time. Admittedly, my interest in my parents’ tales waned from adolescence onwards, but the pandemic reminded me that knowing the past is important, even if only as a means to make others feel heard. I feel immense satisfaction remembering the hours-long chats I’d have with my parents at the dinner table in our [redacted] Street apartment. We’d often share a couple of cups of Nescafé from evening to night. My brothers would sometimes poke their heads out from their room (literally and figuratively), either out of their own curiosity or because I’d intentionally evoke them in an effort to convey you should be paying attention to this.
So, even if I never get around to writing and publishing a collection of short, creative non-fiction stories, I move forward knowing my parents’ legacy lives in me, and that my children will know it even in the case that they can’t experience it firsthand. (I hadn’t thought about this collection of stories in a while, but knew I had jotted down some ideas for it in my Notes app. Here is a list of titles I had considered, from March 19, 2021:
About Time
It Took Long Enough
Together, for a Prolonged Moment
Juntos
Manos de americano
Proof that I was Here
In the Rearview
Cosas de ayer
Everything In-Between
My goal was to write English and Spanish versions, the latter so that my parents could read the stories they helped inspire.)
As I gathered my thoughts to answer my friend’s question, I thought about El derrumbe de los ídolos: Crónicas de la ciudad, a retelling of various important moments, technological advancements, and people in Mexico City’s history by Héctor de Mauleón. I also thought about everything I’d learned about Mexico’s capital over the last several months by way of YouTube videos, digital news articles, and a powerful-enough curiosity to look into a business, neighborhood, or landmark through which I’d passed on a walk or run. I thought about how much I loved learning history, and more so if I was still able to engage and interact with said history. My time with Mexico City began to tick way too late for me to ever be able to consider myself un historiador chilango, but I’m certainly a student. And as much as learning history is a self-gratifying activity, it’s also a civic responsibility: we must seek out the past and record the present to actively value both things while laying the foundation for those in the future to have an easier time conversing with their past.
After leaving my friend in Morningside Heights, I got on the 1 train with a destination of 207th Street. I unknowingly boarded one of the train’s first few carts which gave me an unobstructed view of W 207th St. once I walked onto the station’s platform. I was met with the sight of those new, uninteresting developments on both sides of the street. Before making my way to the stairs, I thought about the Pathmark that used to be on the right-hand side; I couldn’t remember if construction had replaced something on the left, but I knew that neither edifice made up my memory of that section of Inwood. But what is my experience with this street if not a series of fragments of a slice of northern Manhattan? A version existed before me, another will exist after me, and I care about both.
I want to be a historian. I already am, and will continue to be.