Sarina E. Guerra Every December for a few years now, my mother and her siblings get together for something they like to call their “Sister Weekend”. I’m not exactly sure how it all started, but it’s known throughout the family to be quite the production. Planning usually begins a few months in advance and is carried out by the retired elementary school teacher in the family. The first phase begins with a discussion about dates and menu items for what has become an annual reunion-meets-early-Christmas celebration. Or at least, this is the intel I’ve been able to gather from years of eavesdropping phone conversations and seeing photos on social media after the fact.
Now mind you, this has always been a highly exclusive invite-only kind of event. Typically, no one under 55 or male is allowed at the dinner table, let alone through the doors. And yes, they are serious. “They” being the seven hilarious and incredibly loving grey-haired women I’m blessed to call my tías. And this year—in a clear break from tradition—I was permitted to attend. I say “permitted”, because I still did have to ask them explicitly. But I thought to myself, how many more times might all these beautiful people be in the same room together? So I wagered it best to risk rejection in the hopes of gaining access to this year’s Frida Kahlo themed…
…party held earlier this month.
Family gatherings of this size almost always warrant a dinner out at the ladies’ favorite Chinese food restaurant, Lucky Chinese Food located on 4th Street in El Centro. This tradition goes way back to my childhood actually, when the younger generation was automatically included in the invite and my grandmother was still alive. For a short while, their favorite Chinese food restaurant was China Inn located on West Main Street in Brawley, so we used to get together there more often than not. Since then, times have changed.
I think all families go through a natural evolution over the years, especially as key figures pass away and new members are born or introduced, and in that way mine is no different from yours. Some traditions are added, modified, or fall away all together. I like to think of this “Sister Weekend” as a remix of sorts, complete with the Santa Claus X Frida Kahlo collab no one expected. This year, my tías even went so far as to implement a strict dress code: colorful Mexican attire and large floral headbands required (huaraches optional). This was an aesthetic nod to the famous artista herself, highlighting stylistic features second only to Kahlo’s iconic, unapologetic unibrow.
So, the Chinese food pre-game dinner went off without a hitch that Friday night. It was a joy to walk in and be greeted by so many familiar faces sitting together at one long table, sipping from blue plastic Pepsi-Cola cups and chit chatting amongst the backdrop of the San Francisco themed wallpaper. I hugged everyone I could reach, and blew a kiss to my older cousin who was flanked by two hungry postmenopausal women. She and another cousin of mine are sometimes included in these kinds of things more than I am; probably because their being Gen X makes their life experiences a bit more relatable to the core group of attendees than my own.
The deep chasm of differences between generations these days is wider than at any other time in history, and I think a lot of this has to do with the dizzying turnover rate in pop culture trends and the highly individualized worldviews that have emerged as a result of personalized technologies. I swear to you, sometimes it feels like our perceptions exist eons apart. But aside from the cultural revolution (devolution?) that has occurred in the last 2.5 decades since the turn of the century, I feel like when I’m in a room with my tías there remains something true and unchanging in the way we interact. Whilst my oldest tía was born during the 1940s and faced challenges like family members going off to fight in WWII and caretaking for a growing number of siblings, my mother—the youngest of 8 by a long shot—had a simpler childhood in the 1970s and was far more concerned with dressing up her Barbie dolls, watching Sesame Street, and playing outside as much as possible. Still, the plight of being a woman in a man’s world is a throughline in our experiences, connecting the eldest sister born in the Silent Generation to someone like myself, a late Millennial.
So there we sat, bonding over Hong Kong noodles and orange chicken while I nodded knowingly to harrowing tales of hot flashes, talk of newly installed pacemakers, and plans to embrace retirement. After much conversation about how good the food was and how the next day would go, the ladies began readying themselves for the customary group photo that follows every gathering. A blur of coats and canes assembled themselves in birth order, oldest to youngest, under the direction of my mother, the professional photographer in the family. Three restaurant employees were kind enough to snap about a hundred photos of us from all angles like we were on the red carpet, and that was that.
We thanked the staff for their hospitality, and the seven sisters left in a caravan to visit their one and only brother who was recently admitted to El Centro Regional Medical Center. I am told he was so surprised to see all of them at once that he both laughed and cried, each sibling well aware that this might be the last time the family is complete in this way. Like my mother always said, moments like this are what define the flavor of life—bittersweet…
And I knew exactly what she meant.
***
The next day, I feverishly lint rolled a black maxi dress and assembled a makeshift flower crown using a couple of rose clips my mother tossed me on her way out and a bright red scarf I had on hand in place of something Etsy would’ve probably overcharged me for. Knowing I had waited until the last minute to sort this out and now facing two obvious dress code infractions, I attempted to remedy my lack of preparedness for the event by carefully penciling in the space between my eyebrows. This wasn’t a gimmick, I assure you. If anything, it was a return to my kid self who actually did have a unibrow. It’s too bad thin was in back then, or else the social pressure in my teenage years might not have gotten to me. Since then, I’ve dressed up as Frida Kahlo exactly once for Halloween and I got so many comments that year about how much I resembled the Mexican painter and activist.
I even have a small chihuahua that follows me everywhere I go, just like her. Although I didn’t dare bring her with me this time; the host has a thing against dogs. That would be a third infraction.
I readied myself for the inevitable sensory overload on the drive to my tía’s chic, newly renovated El Centro home. It was a warm, sunny day and I could hear laughter through the screen door as I walked up the driveway in my unauthorized gold heels. I entered and passed a row of handmade gift bags bearing the likeness of a certain someone—a foreshadowing of the all-out Kahlo X Claus extravaganza about to ensue.
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