Abe Observes

By Abe Villarreal

Last week at the migrant center, a kid about nine years old wanted to help me hand out cake for one of the birthdays we were celebrating. We celebrate many birthdays at the center for young and old. This kid has been there with his seven brothers and sisters, and mom, for about three weeks.

He has some kind of leg, hand, and arm disability. His mom helps him walk. His brother helps him in the restroom. His hands are stiff and held out in an immobile position. He can hold things just differently from the rest of us. He did help me with the cake distribution. All kids want to help in some way.

By Abe Villarreal

All my life people have told me to speak up – to enunciate. "You mumble" are two words I hear in meetings and during phone calls. Being loud has never been easy for me. There are already too many loud people in the world.

Still, society expects us all to have certain norms. Stand up straight. Shake a hand firmly. Look people in the eyes. Speak up and loudly. We are all soldiers in somebody's army. Life would be too boring if it was filled with those who speak up all the time.

We all know those people who whisper a little too loudly. They try to not interrupt those around them, but their whispers make noise and blow a lot of air. Those kinds of people always make me giggle.

By Abe Villarreal

I helped a friend write an obituary this week. It was one of those acts of kindness that come after you tell your friend that you are there for them and will do anything, not knowing what anything really means. It's just a feeling when you say it.

Grief is a complex enemy and friend. It comes and goes. It sucker-punches you just when you are feeling better. It's there when you don't know it is. Sometimes you run away from it. Sometimes you can't escape it. You feel it all around, even when you can't feel anything. When you are numb to everyone and everything.

By Abe Villarreal

We all have people in our lives that we remember for that one statement they made. The saying or the declaration they shared stuck somewhere inside your head. It's the only thing you can clearly remember them saying, and it shapes everything you remember about them.

One of those people in my life was Captain Fred. I never knew his full name. He's one of those guys that everyone called Captain Fred. Captain became his first name and Fred his last. He was a rabble-rouser kind of guy and had one of those beards that was mostly white but yellow in those familiar places where beards are yellow.

By Abe Villarreal

There is a lot to like about all the things we don't like anymore. The things that we are too rushed to appreciate, too busy to know they are still there. Too focused on too many things.

Like bumpy roads. I like them. Bumpy roads in the middle of nowhere and bumpy roads on side streets when you are trying to take shortcuts. Bumpy roads that make everyone in the car bump up and down. Or the bumpy roads that make you slow down to almost stopping. We all need some bumpy roads to break up the flatness of our lives.

People don't like drip coffee anymore. The kind of coffee that you prepare first thing as you enter the office. The kind that comes out of the old familiar Mr. Coffee pot. It's got a few tan-colored rings around the corner, but it's been faithful to you. The drip, drip, drip, and the little rumbling sound that you wait to hear to know it's time to get up for your first cup of the day. I like drip coffee.

By Abe Villarreal

Every now and then you notice that times have changed. That you are living in a different generation than that of your parents, or teachers, or people that came before you. A different generation than the one you entered at birth. I noticed it when I realized that no one keeps pigeons anymore.

Pigeons in backyards, in homemade coops. People used to have pigeons. Not just farmers but everyday people. My grandparents had pigeons. I wonder why they did. The birds are messy. They need to be taken care of, and every now and then they get out. Sometimes, the dog gets to them which never ends with a happy ending.

It used to be ordinary for ordinary people to have pigeons. Even after the end of the agrarian society, after the industrial revolution, after World War II, after cellular phones, people still had a few pigeons, in coops, in the back yard. Not anymore.