Stars Aligning

Dante once wrote, “L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” (the love that moves the sun and the other stars). I suppose this is the closest comparison to what I believe about fate. I’ve never been someone who believes in coincidences, believing instead that we’re guided by the energy of those beyond and before us. And, I have my mom to thank for that. 

One winter, many, many moons ago, my mom and I went on a road trip with my half-sister, her husband, and her three kids to go visit my other half-sister in Tennessee. I, only seven then, was seated in one of the middle car seats with my nephew’s baby seat and some of the luggage pressed against my left side, close enough for the baby seat to leave temporary indents on my left arm, and my right side crammed against my mom. My brother-in-law drove through the expressway, half-asleep as music from the radio and a half-drunk coffee kept him awake. My half-sister sat next to him in the passenger seat, napping in preparation for her turn to drive into the early morning. My nieces—five and twelve—were asleep in the car seat behind us. Despite the uncomfortableness of being suffocated in the car, it was one of the rare moments where I actually got to bond with my mom.

“Cuando estaba viva, mi mamá me decía que cada estrella representa el alma de alguien que murió,” my mom said to me as she stared out the window. Translated, her phrase means, “When she was alive, my mom used to tell me that each star represents the soul of someone who died.” I still remember how vibrantly the stars shone that night, taking turns twinkling in the midnight sky to see who could be the brightest. They shone in a way that I don’t recall ever seeing them do so in Chicago.

Even then, I found beauty in my mom’s statement, partially because my mom never talked about my grandmother and partially because the topic of death had always plagued my childhood. Most of my grandparents, excluding my maternal grandfather, had died in their forties, so I was raised to see my parents as “old” and as people who would likely die while I was still in my teens. Thus, I had been prepared for the thought of losing them when I was around four or five years old. My mom was forty-nine at the time of this conversation; when I was born, her and my dad were forty-one and forty-five respectively. 

Her statement gave me the tranquility and reassurance to find death beautiful, which I didn’t know I needed at such a young age. And, perhaps, this is part of why I love the night sky and the moon, too. That is, the knowledge that there are others watching over us at night, waiting for the moment when they can reappear alongside their own ancestors to wish peace, joy, and safety onto the descendants they didn’t live long enough to meet. 

They—the ancestral stars—guide us throughout space and time toward the so-called coincidences of everyday life: the fascination with vinyl records and polaroid cameras that, while resurfacing now, had gone out of style in the early aughts and the little familiar gestures you have no chance of having learned but which you somehow developed. No, they’re not coincidences but rather the stars looking over us until we too pass away and join them in the sky, aligning in spite of the so-called destiny keeping us apart.

I don’t write about my mother often. That is, not unless I’m writing about some traumatic incident that shaped me into the disorganized attachment, needs-therapy, doesn’t-trust-others-to-show-up, and always-on-the-defense person I am today.    

It’s not that my mom’s not important to me or that I don’t love her, like she believes. Rather, I don’t write about her because at best our relationship is complicated and at its worst our relationship is should-I-move-to-a-different-continent kind of bad with constant arguments about our different political views, how I should be more ladylike, and her dismissal of how her behavior contributed to said need for therapy. For as long as I can remember my mom worked night shifts, so despite her being the one who carried me for nine months—as she likes to remind me—I never got to bond with her the same way I bonded with my dad. My dad who primarily raised my older brother and me, albeit mostly me, and had the chance to be the involved parent who called our schools when we were sick, occasionally showed up to our parent-teacher conferences, and went to our school events (mostly the Christmas performances or award ceremonies).

My dad had car rides to and from school that lasted twice as long as they should have; despite the stereotype of Latinos never being on time, my dad always made sure that I was early to being early. My dad also had bonding over nightly telenovelas and bringing me along for errands and caring for me while hunting for scrap metal, which he did to make some money while being the primary stay-at-home parent. My mom, on the other hand, got glimpses of me on weekends, summer mornings, PTO and vacation days, and the twenty-minute drive picking her up from work past midnight (or three in the morning when she worked overtime) when I would typically doze off in the back seat. Yet, she shaped me, too, even if I typically reject the ways in which she has. Among the many complicated emotions and experiences I have with my mom, there’s also the twinkling few that I’ll hold onto like a memento. 

Maria is a second-year graduate student in the Literature and Publishing master’s program and will be graduating this June. As a child, Maria thought she would pursue a degree in law, but no one but her was surprised to hear she would be majoring in English. In 2020, she completed her bachelor’s degree in both Global Literature and Writing and Rhetoric as well as a minor in Latino Studies. Maria currently works at the DePaul Writing Center as the Events Student Leader. After graduation, Maria hopes to explore more opportunities in either Writing Center or editorial work. Part of Maria’s writing process includes writing a terrible first draft and revising, revising, and even more revising.