My great grandmother, María González Falcón, born around the turn of the 20th century,
is a woman I never knew.
But when I look at her, I see myself in her face, and I see my own mother, her granddaughter
staring back at me.
When we unearth this picture at my abuelita's house, my mama and my tías could not stop
talking about how mean she was.
Their paternal grandmother, with 13 kids, some of them the same age as my tías, they
don't blame her, but it's clear from their stories that she was mean, scary, not like
a grandmother should be.
I don't see mean, I see tired in her eyes.
It's the 1930s in Hanover, Kansas, a hot Midwestern day.
Though this photo has survived decades and is yellowed around its edges, the markers
of gender roles shine clearly throughout.
My great grandmother is standing and taking up most of the frame, hands on hips on her
clean, white, pressed apron.
Her washboard sits on the outdoor fire pit, drying after a hard day's work.
She'll pick it up again tomorrow, even though they are poor, she still has so many clothes
to wash, over and over and over.
Her shiny white buttons on her modest cotton dress attest to this.
My great grandfather, however, sits on a bench fashioned from a wooden plank and concrete
block smoking his cigarro.
In his cowboy sombrero, Pastor Falcón, or Shorty, seems pretty far away from the domestic
realities my great grandmother faces daily.
His history is archived ready.
While this was the only picture my abuelita found of her mother-in-law, living her daily
life, his labor beyond the home is documented as one of many Mexicanos working on the railroad
in Kansas and Nebraska.
His obituary provides many facts about his life.
He lived to be 76 years of age, he was born in León, Mexico, and he was a retired section
hand for Union Pacific Railroad.
Unfortunately no such ready archive exists for my great grandmother Falcón, especially
as my connection to her, my grandfather, died when I was only 8 years old.
In the summer of 2009, sitting around in a circle on my abuelita's apartment floor in
Emporia, Kansas, we passed around picture after picture of the family I'd never known.
My abuelita's parents, her brother, sister, and half-sister, their children, second cousins,
alongside pictures of my grandfather.
I found my favorite images were always ones involving my own mother, and my tias, and
my grandmother when they were all so young.
In these images, I see visions of the strength of women, then, and now.
They stand out to me even when no one really knows how these photos came to be, or who
decided to take these snapshots of their lives in these moments.
When my own grandmother found this picture of Los Falcones, my mother and I found a place
to make a copy of it, 7 in fact to be sent to other family members, along with many other
old pictures.
My mother's favorite, which made her cry, was of her father as a baby.
She said, I never imagined him as a little boy before.
While she began to imagine new narratives about her father's life, there were so many
stories in the pictures that I may never know.
I imagine one of Maria's 13 children took this photo, but I may never know the truth.
I can, however, piece together our lives through other images, and my familia's reactions
to these photos that hold so many memories, sometimes known, but often unknown.
I can conjure my great grandmother's life through my words, and through the words of
the women who knew her.
Here lies the power of stories, and the need for women's oral histories.
It was a bright, sunny midwestern day, hot and muggy.
She had a brief respite from work, a sly smile.
Great grandpa lights his cigarro in the shade of their biggest tree in the backyard.
I see her life as a woman, and I imagine how I couldn't be here without her.
