ELVIA'S OFFICE

 

THE PETRA SERIES 

UNO: 

To Ponquiria from Abuela Petra 

I don't know where the nickname originated.  From the time I was in diapers she called me Ponquiria. Or "Pon" for short. 

I'm digitizing for perpetuity the original cards and letters I have from Petra, my maternal grandmother.  Some of them date to the 1960s, when I was away in boarding school in Guadalajara, Mexico and she was back with her daughter Lucy, my mom and family in Southern California.  

I didn't realize the accomplishment of her writings to me until much later in life, especially after I recorded some of her personal history for a women's history class in the 1980s.  When I learned that Petra never went to school, that she was given a prayer book as a study source for learning to read and write by Sra. Ibarra, the women she worked for as a nannay beginning at age 13 Jala, Nayarit, Mexico.  That the kind woman noticed Petra practicing writing out letters with a stick in the dirt.  What she remembered from bits of teaching by a young woman who brought some learning to the children of La Cofradia, a tiny mountainous hamlet attached to a big hacienda around the late 1890s. 

So when I began to look at abuelita's letters I noticed that punctuation was not always perfect and sometimes the writing was a bit phonetic.  But it worked and I loved it.  

Below is a birthday greeting she sent along with her own words in a rhyme en espanol. 

Te estoy saludando

con mucha alegria

se estuvieras aqui

besos y mas besos te daria

Las estrellas se visten de gala

y la luna se llena de encanto

al saber que hoy es dia de tu Santo

Y que no es ni Elvia ni Raquel sino Rosenda

Rosales Arriola de la cola? OK? 

De tu loca abuela, Petra Rivas.