My grandfather Eladio crossed the border at El Paso in 1944, on a temporary work visa under the Bracero Program. He was twenty-three years old. He picked lettuce in California for two seasons, then tomatoes, then citrus. In 1948 he met my grandmother Estela at a dance in Chicago — she had been born in Illinois to parents who had emigrated from Sonora in 1919 — and he never left. They were married for fifty-six years. He died in 2009. She is ninety-six and still lives in the house they built together in 1962.
My father was the oldest of their five children. He was the first in our family to graduate high school, in 1971. He worked construction his whole life — concrete, mostly, for a small company that built shopping centers across Illinois. He still works, at sixty-eight, three days a week, because he does not know how to stop. My mother retired from nursing at sixty-five and now spends her time keeping my grandmother company.
I am the first in our family to graduate college. My sister was the second. My brother is finishing his degree now, at thirty-four, with two kids of his own. My oldest daughter is eight years old. She speaks better Spanish than I do. My grandmother taught her. I cried the first time I heard them on the phone together, my daughter trying to use the formal usted form because Estela had told her that was how you spoke to your elders.
This hex is for them. For Eladio, who picked tomatoes. For Estela, who is still teaching my children. For my father, whose back is finally giving out after fifty years of concrete. For every Mexican-American family in Illinois who built three generations of citizenship on the backs of grandparents who never quite learned the language. We see you. We are you. Gracias por todo.