Month: May 2022

 

José Abila has been my handyman, fix-it-guy, and friend for my past five houses. What he has never been is… on time.

José is a kind, patient  man whose glass is always at least half-full. He firmly believes that every day has more than twenty-four hours. He likes to talk and I like hearing his stories.

Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in the middle of eleven children, José left school early and came to the U.S. at the age of fourteen. There were too many mouths for his mother to feed and plenty of boys to help his father run their small ranch. He decided to strike out on his own.

Jose’s story is a universal story of the Mexican worker. He came to the United States to learn English and to work hard. He wanted to help support his family. Now he has one foot firmly planted on each side of the border.

As a boy, José was eager to learn what was on El Otro Lado ~ The Other Side. He crossed the border in Juarez and came straight north to Denver, where he went to work as a day laborer. He arrived at the pick-up site early and hustled for jobs doing construction and landscaping. He studied English and found a place to live. He learned job skills by watching and asking questions. There really isn’t any job that José can’t do, and do it well.

Last week I told José that he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever met. “I’m like my Dad,” he told me. “I’ve always been able to figure things out.” He also has a lot of common sense (which isn’t so common any more) and a quick sense of humor. 

José stayed in the U.S. for three years and returned home at the age of seventeen. Back in Chihuahua, he tamed horses and rode bulls in local rodeos until a particularly nasty bull slammed him against a fence and broke his shoulder. He might have gotten married, but I’m not sure about that. José still has a lot of stories that I don’t know.

When José was twenty years old, he decided it was time to come back to the U.S. He returned to Denver, to work on large construction projects and he tamed horses in Wyoming in his spare time.

Although he is a small man, José is incredibly strong. He can carry multiple sheets of dry wall upstairs and never lose his breath. He can fix cars and anything else that is broken. He has an eagle’s eye for straight lines and angles, which makes him one of Denver’s best pool players. He goes to Las Vegas often to compete in invitation-only pool tournaments. I don’t think he ever loses. One time he came home with a very fancy car when another player foolishly added the car’s title to the bet.

José loves to laugh. I think he’s been married three times. One time he told me, “I don’t care if my wife divorces me, or if I divorce her. I like being married. I’ll just get me another wife.” 

Like most Mexican men, José’s one true love was his mother. Until she died last year, José loaded his truck every few months with construction material, and drove to Chihuahua to remodel her home. He was devastated when she died last year, an old woman in her 90’s.

José has an important “real job.” He is second in charge of three huge construction projects. He supervises three separate crews and makes sure the work is done on time and passes inspections. He continues to work side jobs, and came as soon as I told him I was moving. 

Although I know that working with José always comes with a lot of frustration, there is no one else I trust more to give me a beautiful new kitchen. The job was originally going to take “two or three weeks.” I should have known better. It is now two months since I moved and we aren’t even close. 

My birthday is tomorrow. On Thursday, I told José, “You know what I want for my birthday, Jose? I want a kitchen.” He just laughed.

“We’ll finish this kitchen soon,” he told me. “But not today.”

I’m afraid I’m losing some of my faculties from being cooped up for so long. I’m on the third floor of an all-concrete building. It’s quiet and cold.  The silence is creepy and I never see another soul. Not in the hallway and not in the elevator. Sometimes I think everyone in my building moved away and no one told me to get on the bus.

I got my hair cut this week. It was my first haircut since I broke my leg. I chattered like a crazed squirrel with the Uber driver and my hairdresser. Before he dropped me off, I wanted to ask the Uber guy if I could just ride around with him all day ~ looking for other passengers to talk to.

On the other hand conversations with my neighbors, when I can find them, often sound like an episode from Golden Girls. Two weeks ago I was hanging out in the lobby when I spotted our building representative. 

“How are you?” I asked.

“Not good,” she answered.

“Oh, I’m sorry. What happened?”

“There were fishies in the washing machine this morning.”

“How did that happen,” I wanted to know.

“Diapers,” she said.

“Really? Adult or baby?”

“Adult. We don’t have any babies here.”

That’s true, I thought to myself. Then I realized we weren’t talking about the same thing. 

I was talking about goldfish. She was talking about feces. Sometimes four-letter words are less confusing.

The same afternoon I met a very nice young man. Well, not really young but certainly not as old as the rest of us.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Not good,” Ron answered. Here we go again, I thought.

“What happened?”

“I lost my dog.”

“How did that happen?” 

You see the pattern here. I was ready to offer compassionate advice about how he might find his lost dog, when his eyes started to water.

“I mean, my dog died.”

We had a good conversation about how much his dog meant to him. Ron recently moved into the building. He walked his dog often and it was his way of meeting people.

“Do you think you can ever get another dog?” I asked, still trying to be helpful. Actually I wasn’t being helpful. I was being stupid but didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s much too soon.”

Then… last week, when I was doing my laundry during my Saturday morning 8:00 a.m. appointment time, another very nice young man opened his storage unit and took out a small puppy carrier. I noticed that he shared the storage unit, and presumably his life, with Ron.

“Do you have a new dog?” I asked.

“Yes. We got a puppy yesterday from the animal shelter. It’s a Peek-A-Poo.”

I was elated. Ron was getting a new puppy, after all. 

Yesterday it was obvious that someone’s dog peed in the elevator. Maybe it was a cat? Maybe an incontinent old lady? Maybe it was Ron’s new puppy? I wasn’t upset. I was excited to know that at least one other person still lives here.