Juan

Juan, Bella’s maternal grandfather, is still in Portland and is making great progress in stroke rehabilitation. His wife was able to raise enough money to keep him here till next week. He can now lift his left leg high in the air like a dancer if he is sitting down, and he can stand on it (carefully, with support). He walked about 50 yards today behind a walker. He can move his left arm. His smile is more balanced, as you can see here. I see him in Bella's beautiful face. I see so much of him in her.

Mirror therapy is helping him enormously: he moves his right arm in front of a mirror, and his brain “reads” the mirror-image of his right hand as movement in his left, and the left hand, hidden behind the mirror, begins to move. 

He told me: 

“When I was a little boy about Bella’s age, my father was in a traffic accident near Mexicali, Mexico, and his left arm was cut off at the elbow. That would have stopped some men, but my father never stopped working, never stopped loving us, never stopped supporting us. He worked with one arm. He could tie a knot, light a cigarette, roll a tortilla, build a house: all with one arm. I grew up watching him do things with one arm that other men couldn’t do with two. I am hoping I will get the use of this left arm back again, but I think of my father. It didn’t stop him, having one arm, and it won’t stop me.”

“I have a very good friend, Carlos, we have been friends since our first babies were born. We watched each other grow into manhood and get old. Carlos has diabetes, and last year his right leg had to be cut off above the knee. So now he gets around in a wheelchair. Maria told me to go visit him all this year, but I didn’t want to see him in a wheelchair. I wanted to remember him the way he was. Now I’m in a wheelchair. I hope I’m going to be in a walker soon, but now I see how it is when your friends don’t come to see you. Carlos is still Carlos. I’m still here. We can have good times, even without a leg and an arm or whatever. First thing I’m going to do when I get back to Arizona, I’m going to go visit Carlos and look him in the eyes. He will see that I get it. I also understand why my seven brothers have not phoned me while I’ve been in Portland. I forgive them. But I know that if you are in a crisis of your body, it helps your heart to hear from people who love you. It helps your heart for them to see that you are not your legs or your arms. You are still the same person you always were, and they are missing something if they don’t come see you.” 

“The morning after the election I turned on the TV to see who won, and I could not believe it. I started to cry. I thought of our grandchildren in a country with a President who hates Mexican people. I thought of what he said about us, I thought of him shouting, ‘Build a wall!’ to keep us out, like he doesn't even know there is a wall already. He is so ignorant. I know people who don't speak English, but they are not ignorant like he is. My wife and I are legal citizens of this country, we have paid taxes all our lives, even when the new President did not pay taxes, and yet I think about all the children whose families are going to be wrecked when their mothers and fathers are deported. How could I not cry for the children? And who will do the work these Anglo men don't want to do, when they throw the Mexicans out?”