Mother passes on importance of hard work, strength to children
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BY ERIN ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
(Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of stories profiling the 12 families chosen for the Lincoln Arts Council’s community art project Stories of Home. Artwork will be completed in May and exhibited to the public June through February 2007.) Micaela Sanchez’s smile transcends the language barrier. Her 90-year-old hands tell her story. Strong, yet gentle. Wrinkled with wisdom. Weathered with spirit. Beautiful. Like her smile.
“I say my mother has the strength of 1,000 angels,” says 49-year-old Carmela Sanchez de Jimenez, the youngest of Micaela’s 12 children.
“I’ve always thought my mother is an extraordinary example of brains, strength and determination,” adds daughter Maria Herlinda Sanchez, the 10th of Micaela’s children.
Micaela speaks English, but her native Spanish comes much more easily, so Carmela and Maria Herlinda translate her story.
Descendant of Cortez
Born in Texas in 1915, Micaela is a descendant of Hernando Cortez, the Spaniard who conquered Mexico in 1519.
She was 2 when her mother died during the 1918 flu pandemic. She was raised by her grandparents in south Texas, where her grandfather managed the crop of a large cotton plantation.
Her grandparents were very strict and protective.
But Micaela was — and still is — a formidable force.
“She is such an independent woman,” Carmela says. Just a few weeks ago, she left a message on Carmela’s answering machine: I’m calling to let you know I am in Texas and I will be back in one week.
She lived by herself in her own home until three years ago, when her four Nebraska daughters decided their mother should divide her time living with them.
“She was ornery, stubborn and uncooperative. … In the end we compromised — and she won,” Carmela says referring to the senior citizen apartment complex.
Micaela grins: “I am free to go to bed when I want to, to get up when I want to. If I want to talk to myself, I will talk to myself.”
She admits being just as stubborn as a child. Though her grandparents believed school was no place for girls, Micaela convinced them to let her go for one month. Then one day her dog ran off, and her grandfather overheard Micaela calling the dog a “scoundrel.”
“See what you learn at school!”
“I never got to school again,” Micaela says. “But I have never forgot what I learned.”
Micaela always stressed the importance of education with her children: You can acquire many things in life, but just as easily as you acquire them they can be taken away.
“One thing they can never take away is your education,” Carmela says.
Says Mary Herlinda, “She would have been a fine doctor or a teacher.”
But women were married off.
“I had many suitors,” Micaela says with a twinkle in her eye. “But I was not able to respond because of my grandparents.”
That is, until a migrant worker named Jesus Maria Sanchez asked for her hand in marriage.
Jesus traveled the circuit — Texas to Oklahoma to Nebraska to Ohio and Michigan every spring through fall.
In the early years, Micaela stayed in Texas raising the couple’s children and running the family business — a combination butcher shop, billiard room and cantina.
In 1955, Micaela and the children joined Jesus on the migrant worker route, working side by side in the fields.
In Nebraska they worked a 300- acre asparagus farm just outside Lincoln. In 1959, the owner sold 20 acres of his farm to the Sanchez family. They moved to Lincoln permanently, living entirely off their crops and animals.
For a time they supplied asparagus to every grocery store in Omaha and Lincoln, says Carmela. But her father always saved the best produce for his family — which they sold from their truck stand.
“We brought many Mexican families to Lincoln,” Carmela says. “There was a time when our farm was the hub of the Mexican community. “
“Every weekend we would have barn dances and potlucks … There were tubs filled with ice and soda pop. Father played the guitar, violin and accordion. It was a very happy time. A family affair with parents, babies and lots of food,” adds Mary Herlinda.
But there was also a lot of work.
“Every spring we would get 200 chicks, and mom would be all excited,” Carmela remembers. “We’d be, like, it’s not a gift, it’s work.”
“One year it rained very much and the Salt Creek flooded,” recalls Micaela. “The water in the backyard came up to our knees. … And we were cutting asparagus in the rain.”
“Mother was such a hard worker. Very gracious. Very strong,” says Mary Herlinda.
She taught herself to sew and made all the family’s clothes.
“She would be in the garden before we even were up — picking a bushel of green beans before we even had breakfast,” says Carmela.
Every afternoon when the children returned from country school, Micaela sat them down at the dinner table to do their homework.
“I would ask each one of you to read to me in English, and I recognized those words, and knew when you knew the word,” Micaela says.
Despite a lack of formal education, Micaela taught her children how to speak, read and write in Spanish.
She taught herself English.
“I would carry a piece of paper and a pencil, and I would ask about that ABC,” Micaela says.
She never missed an opportunity to learn, say her daughters.
And Micaela never seemed to run out of energy, whether it was making tortillas, tamales and enchiladas to sell from their home, assisting in childbirths or healing the sad and sick with her herbal ointments, incense and teas.
It’s been a full life, agrees Micaela.
“I am content for what God has given me,” she says with a smile. “I am happy. I am at peace.”
Carmela looks at her mother.
“I used to say I didn’t want to grow up to be like my mother. She worked so hard.
“… Then I grew up and realized she has so much strength, so much wisdom. If I only can be half the person she is, it would be quite a challenge for me.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
Meet the family
The family:
Mother: Micaela Sanchez, 90.
Father: Jesus Maria Sanchez, died 1974
Children: (oldest to youngest)
Eufemia Martinez, Texas
Napoleon Sanchez, Texas
Gregoria Guzman, Texas
Jane Cruz, Lincoln
Jesse Sanchez, Lincoln
Esperanza Gonzalez, Lincoln
Ken Sanchez, New York
Olga Sanchez, Lincoln
Criztoval Sanchez, Lincoln
Maria Herlinda Sanchez, South Sioux City
Jose Mario Sanchez, Oklahoma
Carmela Sanchez de Jimenez, Lincoln
Grandchildren: 49 grandchildren, plus many more great-grandchildren, great- great-grandchildren and great-great-great- grandchildren.
The artist: Larry Gawel
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