taking pride in one’s work & an ode to the Hispanics I’ve met
The raindrops patter my windows. A steady fresh stream of cold air seeps through a broken side, where tonight I choose to place my head by. I usually don’t hear the rain as my ears are that of a 60 year old’s. So when I do, I am intently listening, noticing the relaxing effect it has on my body. I am more aware, wide awake in the middle of the night.
“So this is what I wanted,” I think to myself. My body is disfigured underneath the uneven sheet and blankets. I assess the strange comfort of partly hot and partly cold sensations of my skin and weight. There’s an ache and longing for some weight pressed on my chest, so I lie belly down.
“I wanted to afford nights like these so I could hear myself and write.”
My fingers reach for my green Royal typewriter at my bedside. I had never done that before. But feeling the sturdiness and coldness of the metal gives me a certainty. My hands clench onto it naturally, and I hold on for a few more moments.
Earlier today I surprised myself by articulating a certain feeling to a coworker in my cafe, “I find pride in completing tasks before I am asked to do them.” I joked about not being able to do something ahead of time and made an excuse that I had been multitasking other things: dialing coffee, making chai concentrates, measuring TDS or total dissolved solids and doing mathematics to figure out brew extraction rates, brewing more coffee, and so on. If I were the other person, I would be so astonished and grateful for all my work, however I felt uneasy about not being able to do more. I often think that I am being too harsh on myself. I think I am. I was taught to think five steps ahead. So I hollered aloud,
“I find pride in completing tasks before I am asked to do them.”
I find pride… I find pride…
I also find pride in beginning a sentence like that, stating an affirmation and my belief of getting things done and defining how I operate. (Coming from a silent household where actions spoke louder than words, I often felt I lacked the practice and ability to articulate my thoughts. Maybe that’s why I turned to writing.)
I think of people who hold pride like that.
The proudest people I know were the most loyal coworkers I worked with in the past. They mostly went underrecognized. They worked in the back of house, the kitchen, and if they didn’t, their presence with their hairnet, gloves, and generally darker skin in the front of the cafe betrayed them. They were the El Salvadorans, delivery men, late night bakers, cleaning women, immigrants, and high school dropouts who worked 50 to 70 hours a week to send money home or set aside for school. They were parents, people who planned to go back for a proper education, learning English, practicing it, laughing, and completing ticket orders in astonishing speed. They had pride.
I learned from them. I had always loved their hard work.
About ten years ago, when I was 16, I returned home to see pieces of the roof on my bed. I had no time to cover my bed and belongings. There was dust and insulation strewn everywhere. My dad didn’t warn me that the house renovation took off. I often recall how rapidly he went with the project and have always concluded that it was, as if he knew, he was dying. He passed away in 2018, two years after the completion of the two-year remodeling, ninety percent done with his handicapped restroom as he lost a leg with his failing kidney health in the last year. I took down my whiteboard calendar from my wall. I stared at it for a long time, feeling as if it were one of the last times I would use it, as I wouldn’t have a wall there anymore. I didn’t even know where I was going to sleep. It read:
NOVIEMBRE 2014. LUNES, MARDES, MIERCOLES, JUEVES, VIERNES, SABADO, DOMINGO.
The dates were in Spanish. It was the beginning of my love for expressing myself in a different language. I loved how language jogged my mind. Unlike Vietnamese, which I felt stoic and reprimanded in, I adored Spanish classes for the romance language - how close cognates felt familiar with my poetic English mind. I loved learning all the vocabulary and diverse cultural lessons that came with it. During that time of my life, I paid close attention to the demographics of my community. I read on Wikipedia how my hometown of Palacios had an unusual percentage of not only Vietnamese folks, but Hispanic / Mexican, and a lower percentage of Caucasians than other surrounding towns.
It was true. I felt the diversity every year at our annual Shrimporee festival. Before the celebration, the town would have a Catholic mass service in which my choir, the Cecelia choir would accompany. In this very special service, we would rehearse at least two weeks in advance, unlike other masses in which we would only practice two or the day before. The reason for the early preparation was that we chose songs and hymns in Spanish to cater to the Hispanic population. I particularly loved singing the closing song that had the words Santa Maria Ven. The rhythm was cheerful, and I felt joy singing the words I knew like “nosotros” us, “caminar” to walk, and “escuchar” to listen to.
How funny it was. A group of young Vietnamese kids singing in three different languages. Four if you counted Latin hymns along with Viet and English.
My fondness decorated my imagination. One time, during our house renovation, as our roof was being reconstructed, I returned home to a Mexican boy my age leaning at a slant above where my old room once was. He was handsome. The bus dropped me off directly at my house, and I blushed for weeks seeing him without a shirt on some days. He would wave “hi,” to which his friends would start chuckling and slapping him with their shirts. I would go inside, look for cold beverages and fruit in the fridge to offer later to which they would gladly accept. We never uttered more than a “hi,” “how are you?”, and “thank you.” There was a language barrier, though I believe there was much to gather based on my vulnerably exposed room, belongings, and obligations. After school, I would cook rice, water the plants, do homework, and head to church. He left after the season-long roof project. Nothing more became of that brief acquaintance other than add to my innate curiosity, but I thought of him and the butterflies I received back then.
At my family’s shrimping supply shop, we’d often have only Spanish speakers that would come in and gesture what they wanted. It was always a funny interaction everytime my only-Vietnamese speaking mother would ring up an only-Spanish speaking customer with a basic English vocabulary. I adored our interactions. We’d giggled and make jokes at our attempt to carry out a transaction. At the end of my high school years with a couple years of Spanish classes under my belt, I flexed my Spanish muscles and started using phrases and vocabulary to impress and delight customers. “Botas?” Boots? Size nueve y media? Nine and a half? …
My learning would then expand into medical Spanish terminology studying for a semester prior to a five-day medical mission trip in Dominican Republic and working in cafes with only Spanish-speaking staff. It also accelerated my French language skills in college, as both languages share some common conjugation and grammar rules.
In the last year, I led a team of hispanic kitchen staff and even tutored one on a few English grammar lessons outside of work. But what came more out of that given help was a pride in listening to them and attempting to help them also grow to be closer to their own children, go forward with their career, and feel more confident everyday.
I was in a position of power and change. They came to me for help and advice. And though I stressed about keeping operations going smoothly, running errands and delegating tasks to help a downtown cafe up and running with the help of my manager, it fell on me at times to mediate conversations and meetings with a language barrier. To gain their trust, I made an effort to acknowledge their presence every time by greeting and saying their names often. I spent time in the back-of-house, doing inventory, orders, and bank transactions. Other times, I asked if they needed help portioning waffles or making syrup. They didn’t have the freedom to walk around the cafe as much as I or the typical young privileged college students in the cafe working the register had.
They didn’t have the tongue. But they did have the heart.
And at times, I’d feel them slow me down at work. Instead of always feeling frustrated, I listened to their needs. They deserved to be listened to, as the majority of the time, they did the work of two people working laboriously and staying longer to make sure things were clean. Importantly, it was reciprocal. They were at my disposal everytime I needed them. They listened intently by observing and completing things ahead of time.
So I have them to thank for instilling that value and pride in the work that I do.
It’s not just work, really, or the mundane activities of stirring a pot, scrubbing dishes for hours, or making beverages. They say that most people spend more time with people who we work with more than our partners, family, and friends. It’s really about time that I give.
Quality time is my ultimate love language. It is the continuous action of doing, as it is also the choice of choosing to live. To hold pride. To look up. To walk. To listen. To be somebody to someone else. To reach for my typewriter.
(My Spanish and French skills are unfortunately rusty for the time being, however feel confident that if given time, I would be able to pick it up again. As for now, it is not my priority. But I still do have a love for language learning.)
So, here I am on my rooftop, in the rain, having this Shawshank Redemption moment of.. just surrendering and looking up.