Letters from Panama

For some unknown reason, my great uncle Jose Maldonado could really make my mother laugh, I mean uproariously laugh, from thousands of miles away no less in letters written in Spanish that only she could read and comprehend...it was one of many unknowns my mother employed to go into her own secret world, and it drove my father to distraction, these letters...Uncle Jose, brother to my grandmother, did not follow her to America from Madrid, instead curving south and ending up in Panama...so the story goes, and from what little information my mother imparted, Jose had a dual career in Panama as owner of a chain of barber shops and as a professor of Romance Languages at the university...my mother spoke fluent Spanish, although not too often...my father, the baritoned attorney, spoke English and a smattering of some Indian tongue which usually was employed to rouse me from a deep sleep...I know my mother's father had served in the Spanish-American War, although other than a medical field surgery kit and a commendation from the US Surgeon General, little was known other than malaria was years later said to have done him in...my parents were just not too forthcoming about their parents, I guess it was just that way then and rarely was Spanish ever spoken in the house unless Mom was reciting something from Uncle Jose's letters...probably the most dramatic use of her Spanish occurred in Mexico on a family vacation while we were traveling on a bus south of the border...I think I was about 11 or 12 and standing in the rear of the crowded bus when said bus lurched and a rather large Mexican woman slammed into me knocking me to the floor of the bus...the large Mexican woman and her friend seemed to think this was hilarious until Mom sprang into action and unleashed a torrent of Spanish that I did not realize she was so capable of...she got everyone's attention, most obviously my assailant, who suddenly looked as if she was about to cry and bowed her head for the rest of the journey...my mother had obliterated a stranger before my eyes and in Spanish...she told my father later this incident would not have happened if we had simply driven the car over the border...this really got my father, who spoke no Spanish and whose family had not emigrated from Madrid...he knew better than to drive over the border, he said, since Mexican drivers were waiting to crash into you and collect damages on the spot, or else...we never visited Uncle Jose, never had the pleasure of his visit, and therefore he has drifted into obscurity and for all I know I could have passed him on the street somewhere in the world...we just weren't destined to meet and talk about those letters to my mother...