In reflection.
We attended a cousin's quinceañera on Saturday. For those not familiar, a quinceañera is a very elaborate girl's fifteenth birthday party. It is a public coming-out-as-a-woman affair, filled with symbolic ceremonies of being done with childhood and moving on as an adult. To my knowledge, it is a strictly Hispanic practice.
It started well enough: Lisa arrived in a limousine with her entourage of fifteeen other girls. She was presented and her parents made their speech in both English and Spanish about accepting her as a responsible adult. The Mariachi band played traditional and modern music, the flamenco dancers were breath-taking. Then the ceremonies: the last dance with her father as a child, the doll ceremony, the pillow ceremony, her first dance with a male as a woman, and the shoe-changing ceremony with her mother (in which the mother removes her daughter's childish shoes and places more adult shoes on her feet).
The part that bothered us was the slide-show. Photos of Lisa as a happy child, smiling, joyous in her close relationships. So selfish I am...I am overjoyed for Lisa, that she is so well-adjusted, that she is content in life, that she has strong familial bonds, but at the same time, I was angry that we missed out on that. Our heritage is muddled. Virtually nothing prior to age fourteen is worthy of rememberance. It was all abrasive. We have no true hertiage now, only a montage of what we knew. A few happy photos, a rare joyful memory. Granted, they are there...but few and far between up until that point.
And then we wonder with nausea and dread: is Lisa really well-adjusted? Is she really happy? She claims no prior abuse or mistreatment, but neither did we at age fifteen.
Why is something as beautiful as her quinceañera so triggering to us? Why is it we must look into every possible negative aspect?
It started well enough: Lisa arrived in a limousine with her entourage of fifteeen other girls. She was presented and her parents made their speech in both English and Spanish about accepting her as a responsible adult. The Mariachi band played traditional and modern music, the flamenco dancers were breath-taking. Then the ceremonies: the last dance with her father as a child, the doll ceremony, the pillow ceremony, her first dance with a male as a woman, and the shoe-changing ceremony with her mother (in which the mother removes her daughter's childish shoes and places more adult shoes on her feet).
The part that bothered us was the slide-show. Photos of Lisa as a happy child, smiling, joyous in her close relationships. So selfish I am...I am overjoyed for Lisa, that she is so well-adjusted, that she is content in life, that she has strong familial bonds, but at the same time, I was angry that we missed out on that. Our heritage is muddled. Virtually nothing prior to age fourteen is worthy of rememberance. It was all abrasive. We have no true hertiage now, only a montage of what we knew. A few happy photos, a rare joyful memory. Granted, they are there...but few and far between up until that point.
And then we wonder with nausea and dread: is Lisa really well-adjusted? Is she really happy? She claims no prior abuse or mistreatment, but neither did we at age fifteen.
Why is something as beautiful as her quinceañera so triggering to us? Why is it we must look into every possible negative aspect?
posted by Logan Nambiet at
11:47 PM
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