the magic valley

las nubes, courtesy of chicanoblogs
Originally uploaded by lamusa.

i moved to the rio grande valley nearly four years ago, during the middle of a very hot texas summer. though i was moving to my mom's hometown of la feria, i did not have the cushion of family to help my stay. my mother's family had migrated from mexico to texas, and then from texas to california. our relatives on her side of the family live either in mexico or in california.

though my mother had introduced me to her padrinos, a very sweet couple in their 80s, who live in "el rancho" (in english, they call it "the country"), i was basically on my own to make friends and to find community.

i spent a little over a year in la feria doing field work for my dissertation. and while my time there was for research, it became personal. the people i met in la feria helped me to grow not only as an anthropologist, but also as a human being. (grad school sometimes has the nasty habit of making you kind of more "intellectual," less "emotional/sensitive").

the day i left la feria, i cried in the car long after we had left the city limits.

one would think that i would welcome any opportunity to go back. but i have to admit that it's difficult for me. it's hard to be a visitor in a town where i used to live so fully. does that make sense?

i hate how everything changes without me. that people don't recognize me as readily. that i have no place of my own to return to at the end of the day.

and so i rarely indulge in trips to la feria. in fact, i hadn't been in a little over a year until this past week. i begin to forget why i loved it so much there.

but after a few days in the valley, i fall in love again. catching up with old friends, marveling at how everything continues to move forward, to change and stay the same. being in the valley with joseph probably made the trip even more vivid, because he was seeing it all for the first time. it was nice to see how he was falling in love with it, too.

at the end of the weekend, we began the long drive back to austin, me with a lump in my throat, and vowing to return. even if just as a visitor.

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