Motherhood in Ecuador
June 29, 2023, I had the remarkable opportunity to travel by myself to see my mother in Quito, Ecuador. As a child, my prior trips to Quito were a very familiar time because we traveled there every summer. This summer was quite different as now I am a mother, and visiting my own mother as she ages was quite different. I was able to really tap into my inner child experiences as this greatly relates to how I raise my own children and how I see my own mother today. I was also able to come to various realizations about what it’s like to have my aging mother live so far away from me, connect with her, and what I could do to help her in this process.
Childhood Summer travel
As a child, summers were filled with the priority to return to Ecuador. Purchasing our passports, packing bags, and saving enough money for 6 travelers to travel to another continent was potent as I could sense both my parents’ need to see their own parents. Both my grandparents were living there and I got to know both sides of the family. It was an opportunity to get to know my culture, speak Spanish, and bond with my family members. These were critical parts of my childhood experience because I witnessed another part of the world that was very different from my everyday mainstream American culture.
These summer experiences were like traveling to a different world, almost like time travel. My aunts welcomed my family with open arms and they accommodated our large family with space and food. I watched carefully my other maternal figures quickly make adjustments in their homes by cooking meals and creating space in their homes. Like mythical wizards, they made it look so easy. I deeply admired my aunts in how they navigated working inside and outside the home. They truly depicted a matriarchy during the 80s and 90s.
In grade school, I was forming my identity as a young girl with my aunts that I looked up to often. As a child, I often felt hidden. My inner child was afraid of making waves, mistakes, and I had reservations about being myself. However, my aunts gave me the strength that being yourself was possible. My tia Laurita was an accountant and although she didn’t drive, she took me with her on bus errands during my summers. She is a confident, generous woman with deep empathy. Her presence made me laugh with her clever words and sayings like “ya me fui” which meant, “I have left” even though she was still getting ready to go.. She raised 6 children and they had mostly moved out of the house as they were much older cousins. I felt seen by her and it was refreshing because she was very accepting of who I was becoming.
As a highly sensitive child, I hated flying. As an adult I still have to muscle through flights. The recycled circulating air mixed with that airplane fuel smell from the airplane always caused me to feel waves of nausea. The connecting flights broke up the all-day consuming flights and sometimes it made travel more bearable. The noisy cabin of the airplane was too much, but much like a child, I hid my feelings. I learned to adapt as a resilient child without needing too much. I learned to stifle my needs and quickly understood that being too needy was a strain on my family. Children pick up quickly and early the limits of family dysfunction and many other nuances to family dynamics. My family had enough to deal with in terms of being an immigrant family that had to raise 4 daughters, deal with so many losses as parents, and assimilate to the United States.
Surprises
As a mother, I began to truly appreciate how my own mother traveled with myself and my three siblings. I don’t know how my own mother did this and she often will say the same. I was surprised at what this trip opened up for me. You see, being away from your own mother can create an emptiness that seemed to always be there. When I saw my mother, that space was immediately filled, but there was still some space that left me wondering.
I was happy to spend time with her and felt compelled to help my mother. I noticed every little detail about her home. Her townhouse was kept clean and tidy just like my mother always liked her home. I offered to help her by cooking her some meals for her and I think she really enjoyed this act of kindness to a certain extent. I learned how to prepare the base of soups from my tias Marianita, Laurita and Margarita. My tia Laurita would quickly make her beautifully crafted Ecuadorian soups and “segundo platos” (second plates) for us when we stayed with her. Lunch is typically the biggest meal served with a soup and a second plate. I learned that food is an expression of love, a way to nurture and to socialize with loved ones.
Today, I prepare mostly vegan meals for myself and my family which is a very different way to prepare food than in Ecuador. I made a lentil soup, a cannellini bean soup and two other soups. My mother later told me my maternal grandmother would prepare soups similar to me but not because she enjoyed eating plant based meals. It was because it was less expensive to prepare a legume soup rather than a soup with a meat base. This tore at my heart that she associated some of her own mother’s scarcity with how I was trying to care for her. My grandparents were poor and my mother came to the United States at 17 years old. She frequently sent money for her parents as that was the reason she immigrated to the U.S.
Family values matter
I was able to see my cousin Fernando and he was gracious enough to pick me up from the airport and took me to my mother’s house. The old airport was called Mariscal Sucre International Airport and now I was landing in a completely different airport location. Time marches on and changes happen so quickly. My cousin’s lovely wife and daughter picked us up a few days later to go sightseeing.
One of the major sculptures in Quito is the Virgin en el Panecillo. This maternal figure was such an impression to me as a child as she was a prominent figure in my family’s culture and religion. You can see this massive sculpture from various points while visiting Quito. La Virgin was a constant reminder of my religion and how it was folded closely to my identity. I have later come to recognize that purity culture messages reinforce negative or suppressive values. I’ve left behind those values that no longer serve me.
I was fortunate to have my extended family there and I was able to visit various cousins as well as aunts. As I traveled alone, I became acutely aware of how my first generation experience had a component of being separated from family. My mother in a very different way had to experience this at 17 years old and she had to leave her family to immigrate to the United States. These pieces of my identity are a constant reminder that my cultural differences were paramount to me, and it was rare to find another family from Ecuador in my neighborhood. Little did I know that this was the very essence of me and this is what gives me strength to be more who I am, not less. My identity as a first generation Latina was never about making myself small or hiding parts of me.
Decisions on aging mother
As we age, our health may change and I have had to think a lot about my mother’s own well being. Being a mother and someone that cares deeply it’s important to understand your own boundaries. Living on a separate continent than your mother can have its own constraints and limitations. Respecting and being mindful of what you can and cannot do is important.
As a woman and mother, I understand what it's like to be raised in the United States with immigrant parents. There are various aspects that were stressful like getting acclimated and dealing with some covert and overt microaggressions. I would say the easy aspect of being a daughter of first generations of immigrants is realizing that you don’t have to be like everyone else. You can be proud to speak another language or that your mother has an accent. You don’t have to be ashamed of having less than what your peers may have had compared to you. That comparison was futile and that owning your own identity was part of the journey.
Your lineage and how you identify with your history does matter in many ways in the journey of motherhood. If you are a daughter of immigrants and now see yourself differently as a mother with your own children you may benefit from support in therapy with a therapist that gets this aspect of your identity. Therapy is not exclusively for mothers in crisis or having difficulty with their children. Sorting through the layers of what it means to be a caregiver to your parents now is a lot to do alone. I am currently accepting new clients living in the Carolinas and Illinois. You may email me here or call me at 803-573-0279 to schedule an introductory call.
