Cubans are very superstitious, and my mother was one of the chief exponents of this weird practice. I was part of it since the day I was born. When my aunt Bella came to see the new baby, she presented me with an azabache, a tiny jet-black gem amulet that I was compelled to wear at all times to scare off evil spirits. The custom is this: if a person praises a baby's face, or eyes or whatever, the belief is that if the baby is not wearing an azabache, he would get mal de ojo and become sick. All babies get sick and I'm sure that I went through a few colds and stomach problems. I'm also sure that the azabache didn't avoid any of my baby maladies.
"No andes con los pies descalzos que te va a dar catarro" (Don't walk barefooted or you'll get a cold.) Don't go out while its raining or you'll get a cold. Don't take your shirt off if you're sweating or you'll get a cold. Don't let the barber shave your sideburns because the blade is cold...and you'll get a cold. And the best of them all: be sure when you come out of the movie theater to cover your nose with your handkerchief...or you'll get a cold. All these advices (my mother would swear that they were not superstitions) became obligated customs not only within my family but to most of the townspeople. It was similar in all small towns in my country. The poorer or uneducated the area, the worst the irrational beliefs.
I eventually grew out of most of them with the influence of the church and more educated relatives and friends. It may have looked very funny to an outsider to watch eighty people coming out of our theater, all with their handkerchiefs covering their noses! When I was about twenty and moved to Havana, the capital, the first time that I went to a movie house with my cousin and he noticed my hanky, he gave me a lecture that once and for all cured my stupid habit.
Women used to run to church and light many candles if they found out that there was going to be an eclipse during their pregnancy. Everybody in town knew (I even heard this one in United States, many years later) that a full moon would bring out the crazy people.
When it rained, every body would run to cover the mirrors with a towel at the sound of the first thunder...because mirrors attracted lighting! Kids were ordered to stay away from anything made of metal (knives, scissors, etc.) for the same reason. All the clocks in the house were caused to stop when the owner died, and not turned back on until he was buried.
And don't you dare to open an umbrella inside the house! That would ensure a long period of very bad luck. The same penalty for eating with your hat on, spilling milk or putting your shoes backwards. Nobody that I knew in my town would take a bath right after lunch or dinner for fear of a paralysis. Some women would not take baths during their whole menstruation periods!
My father, on the other side, didn't believe in any of these superstitions. He explained to me why he didn't when I was about five years old. He was born in the year 1910, the year of the Halley's Comet spectacular appearance over the sky.
My father's grandparents, Jose and Elena, had come from a tiny village in Asturias, Spain. Saying that Spaniards from tiny villages were superstitious is, of course, redundant. My grandmother, Blanca, had already given birth to six girls when she got pregnant again. Her mother became furious when she found out. "You have to get an abortion...everybody knows that you cannot have this baby," she scolded her daughter. "Just because you have been lucky so far," she added, "this doesn't give you the right to keep playing with Mother Nature."
My grandmother had married her first cousin Jose, and the danger of giving birth to children with birth defects had always been present. But their six daughters were all physically and mentally healthy and my grandmother was dreaming of a baby boy.
"How do you know it is going to be a boy, anyway?" my great grandmother asked with deep pessimism. "I know it in my heart," responded Blanca. "And no matter what you tell me, I'm still going to have my boy this year."
No smart woman, you see, would give birth in the same year of a comet, as this assured mental or physical defects to the child, and probably death to the mother.
But, in spite of all the bad omen and gloomy odds, baby Jesus was born a healthy and beautiful boy, weighing eight and a half pounds. In the year of Halley's Comet!
That's why my father didn't believe in any of this nonsense. But my mother had a strong influence in my life, as my father was seldom there, and some of these customs made and indelible impression on me, like tattoos on my skin, impossible to erase. To this date, I wear socks 24 hours a day. I take them off only to take a bath. Believe me, that's absolutely the only time that I take them off. I had some very romantic episodes abruptly broken by the laugh of the girl when she noticed my socks.
My other grandfather, don Pancho, who was born of Spanish parents in a ranch in the province of Pinar del Rio, the poorest and least educated of the Cuban provinces, also carried his own heirloom sack of superstitions.
Christmas eve was the big celebration in Cuba, when relatives and friends usually got together to enjoy a feast of roasted pig and other delicacies. My grandfather was always the last one to sit. He would count all the people at the table and he would sit only if he was going to be the pair number. If he was an odd number he would eat standing up. "I don't want to die this year," he would announce.
His bed couldn't be on the west wall of the room. "I can't sleep with my feet facing east," he would explain, "that's the way people are in the cemeteries." If anybody was sitting on a rocking chair, he made sure that the chair didn't keep moving after the person stood up. "Stop that rocking chair," he would shout, "you know it is very bad luck."
And so many others that I have forgotten or don't want to mention because anybody may think that I am exaggerating. But, I swear to you, that is the way things were. I lived twenty three year in the same house with the rest of my family until I moved to United States. Education and the contact with other people with different cultures, taught me how shallow these customs were and I rejected them little by little, although it wasn't always easy to distinguish between custom and superstition. My sister lived with them until they died and, to date, her naivete hasn't changed much.
Of all the superstitions that I can recall from my youth, the most ______________(after you read this paragraph, you can fill the adjective that you think most adequate -silly, ridiculous, stupid, crazy, asinine, idiotic, ignorant, illogical, immature, all of the above- or any other) is the one involving the devil. It goes like this: if you lose something (your wallet, your glasses, your keys, your spouse, whatever) and you have looked everywhere to no avail, you should take a piece of rope and make three tight knots, one of top of each other, This is called "amarrarle los huevos al Diablo", which literally means "tightening the devil's balls". It has to be three knots, not two. Go figure. And you don't loosen up this grip until the item reappears. If it doesn't, you tight the knots even harder and tell the devil that you are going to keep his balls this way until he releases the lost item. My beloved mother-in-law swears that this method has never failed her.
As you can see, black cats, walking under a ladder, the number thirteen or any other known prehistoric superstitions are simple frivolous notions compared with the ton of irrational, bizarre, eccentric routines that we practiced day in and day out in our desolate part of the world.
These are excerpts from my book MY TOWN. You can find information about it if you e-mail me ad alvarcorp@msn.com.
"No andes con los pies descalzos que te va a dar catarro" (Don't walk barefooted or you'll get a cold.) Don't go out while its raining or you'll get a cold. Don't take your shirt off if you're sweating or you'll get a cold. Don't let the barber shave your sideburns because the blade is cold...and you'll get a cold. And the best of them all: be sure when you come out of the movie theater to cover your nose with your handkerchief...or you'll get a cold. All these advices (my mother would swear that they were not superstitions) became obligated customs not only within my family but to most of the townspeople. It was similar in all small towns in my country. The poorer or uneducated the area, the worst the irrational beliefs.
I eventually grew out of most of them with the influence of the church and more educated relatives and friends. It may have looked very funny to an outsider to watch eighty people coming out of our theater, all with their handkerchiefs covering their noses! When I was about twenty and moved to Havana, the capital, the first time that I went to a movie house with my cousin and he noticed my hanky, he gave me a lecture that once and for all cured my stupid habit.
Women used to run to church and light many candles if they found out that there was going to be an eclipse during their pregnancy. Everybody in town knew (I even heard this one in United States, many years later) that a full moon would bring out the crazy people.
When it rained, every body would run to cover the mirrors with a towel at the sound of the first thunder...because mirrors attracted lighting! Kids were ordered to stay away from anything made of metal (knives, scissors, etc.) for the same reason. All the clocks in the house were caused to stop when the owner died, and not turned back on until he was buried.
And don't you dare to open an umbrella inside the house! That would ensure a long period of very bad luck. The same penalty for eating with your hat on, spilling milk or putting your shoes backwards. Nobody that I knew in my town would take a bath right after lunch or dinner for fear of a paralysis. Some women would not take baths during their whole menstruation periods!
My father, on the other side, didn't believe in any of these superstitions. He explained to me why he didn't when I was about five years old. He was born in the year 1910, the year of the Halley's Comet spectacular appearance over the sky.
My father's grandparents, Jose and Elena, had come from a tiny village in Asturias, Spain. Saying that Spaniards from tiny villages were superstitious is, of course, redundant. My grandmother, Blanca, had already given birth to six girls when she got pregnant again. Her mother became furious when she found out. "You have to get an abortion...everybody knows that you cannot have this baby," she scolded her daughter. "Just because you have been lucky so far," she added, "this doesn't give you the right to keep playing with Mother Nature."
My grandmother had married her first cousin Jose, and the danger of giving birth to children with birth defects had always been present. But their six daughters were all physically and mentally healthy and my grandmother was dreaming of a baby boy.
"How do you know it is going to be a boy, anyway?" my great grandmother asked with deep pessimism. "I know it in my heart," responded Blanca. "And no matter what you tell me, I'm still going to have my boy this year."
No smart woman, you see, would give birth in the same year of a comet, as this assured mental or physical defects to the child, and probably death to the mother.
But, in spite of all the bad omen and gloomy odds, baby Jesus was born a healthy and beautiful boy, weighing eight and a half pounds. In the year of Halley's Comet!
That's why my father didn't believe in any of this nonsense. But my mother had a strong influence in my life, as my father was seldom there, and some of these customs made and indelible impression on me, like tattoos on my skin, impossible to erase. To this date, I wear socks 24 hours a day. I take them off only to take a bath. Believe me, that's absolutely the only time that I take them off. I had some very romantic episodes abruptly broken by the laugh of the girl when she noticed my socks.
My other grandfather, don Pancho, who was born of Spanish parents in a ranch in the province of Pinar del Rio, the poorest and least educated of the Cuban provinces, also carried his own heirloom sack of superstitions.
Christmas eve was the big celebration in Cuba, when relatives and friends usually got together to enjoy a feast of roasted pig and other delicacies. My grandfather was always the last one to sit. He would count all the people at the table and he would sit only if he was going to be the pair number. If he was an odd number he would eat standing up. "I don't want to die this year," he would announce.
His bed couldn't be on the west wall of the room. "I can't sleep with my feet facing east," he would explain, "that's the way people are in the cemeteries." If anybody was sitting on a rocking chair, he made sure that the chair didn't keep moving after the person stood up. "Stop that rocking chair," he would shout, "you know it is very bad luck."
And so many others that I have forgotten or don't want to mention because anybody may think that I am exaggerating. But, I swear to you, that is the way things were. I lived twenty three year in the same house with the rest of my family until I moved to United States. Education and the contact with other people with different cultures, taught me how shallow these customs were and I rejected them little by little, although it wasn't always easy to distinguish between custom and superstition. My sister lived with them until they died and, to date, her naivete hasn't changed much.
Of all the superstitions that I can recall from my youth, the most ______________(after you read this paragraph, you can fill the adjective that you think most adequate -silly, ridiculous, stupid, crazy, asinine, idiotic, ignorant, illogical, immature, all of the above- or any other) is the one involving the devil. It goes like this: if you lose something (your wallet, your glasses, your keys, your spouse, whatever) and you have looked everywhere to no avail, you should take a piece of rope and make three tight knots, one of top of each other, This is called "amarrarle los huevos al Diablo", which literally means "tightening the devil's balls". It has to be three knots, not two. Go figure. And you don't loosen up this grip until the item reappears. If it doesn't, you tight the knots even harder and tell the devil that you are going to keep his balls this way until he releases the lost item. My beloved mother-in-law swears that this method has never failed her.
As you can see, black cats, walking under a ladder, the number thirteen or any other known prehistoric superstitions are simple frivolous notions compared with the ton of irrational, bizarre, eccentric routines that we practiced day in and day out in our desolate part of the world.
These are excerpts from my book MY TOWN. You can find information about it if you e-mail me ad alvarcorp@msn.com.
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