El Rey

Claudia Gonzalez was celebrating her 85^th birthday.  The widow lived alone in a retirement trailer park in Palmetto, FL but she was a former undocumented immigrant from a small town near Puebla, Mexico.  The second daughter and middle child of a poor but hard working father, she knew poverty.  She remembered what it was like to go to bed hungry.  In spite of the toil her father did in the fields each day, she believed there was more. 

She was married 8 days after her quinceañera, 15^th birthday celebration, to a man 8 years older than her, Ernesto.  At the time, Claudia believed Ernesto would provide her the life she wanted.  She had no lofty dreams.  She simply wanted a safe, secure home, four children (two boys and two girls) and to never go to sleep with hunger pains again.  

As the mariachis moved from table to table at her birthday celebration, they played many traditional songs.  On this night, her heart swelled.  Many friends and loved ones filled the hall.  Each of them held a special place in her heart.  She felt like the Virgin Mary after the shepherds visited her blessed baby.  She treasured these things and people in her heart.

Hernan and Vilma, her son and daughter, began planning this night more than a year before the date.  After many trips to Mexico to visit family, they understood the lives they could have had.  No one asks to be born into poverty with no opportunities.  As teenagers,  Hernan and Vilma first visited the small farm where their grandparents lived.  By this time, Ernesto and Claudia had taken advantage of the deal President Ronald Regan made for illegal aliens living in the United States of America.  Gaining citizenship, the family was free to travel Mexico and back. 

When the mariachi band reached a table where Claudia was visiting with old friends, she requested they play the favorite song of her husband, El Rey (The King).  As the music began, memories flooded her soul.  She saw the day they decided to leave, the anger of her father, the heartbreak of parting with that wedge between them, hardships of travel and making a life in a country with a strange and difficult language and three miscarriages.  She remember at each celebration, Ernesto would request the mariachi band play El Rey. 

Perhaps it was this refrain that made him want to listen to it, his moment to stand defiantly against the odds:

With money
And without money
I always do
What I want
And my word
Is the law

I do not have
Throne or queen
no one
I understand that
But I'm still the king

Claudia never knew and never asked him why he loved this song.  She only knew she loved it because he did.  They suffered many hardships in life but in the moment of this party, she knew she was blessed.  All of Ernesto’s and Claudia’s siblings eventually moved to the US.  All of their children were hard working and respected members of society.  She had four grandchildren, two boys and two girls.  Though she still mourned her husband, she long ago learned to live in the present.  God had given her the dreams of her heart and so much more.