Her name is Yaimara and she lives in south Florida. She is my hairdresser and greets me with a hug, a big smile and a "Felicitaciones!".
"I studied to be a nurse in Havana, Cuba. One day during nursing school, I was not feeling well and they had to take me to the hospital. I had appendicitis. Once I was ready in the operation table, the surgeon called for the anesthesiologist. I hear her coming in complimenting my hair. Once she reaches the bed, we both realize she is my aunt. She stayed until the next day with me. After I graduated I decided to come to the United States to work in 1999. I started as a medical assistant for a surgeon. The office was shared with a psychiatrist so you would see all kinds of people in the waiting room. I did not speak English. And to do my job I needed to work with patients, so you really have to understand what they tell you. I would focus so hard over the phone with the pharmacists. If someone threw up I was the one to clean it. I was working so hard and making so little. My hobby was to style hair. So I took some hairdresser classes and began making so much more that I left the doctor's office. Plus I enjoyed it. I now even give classes to other hairdressers."
"The love of my life was my grandmother. She practically raised me. She was such a good person. Her husband cheated on her with a 16 year old girl and got her pregnant. My grandmother took care of the girl and the baby. She developed Alzheimer and lived with my mother during her last years. The only people she never forgot was me and my brother. Even my voice over the phone she would recognize. And the only thing she never forgot was her husband cheated. We would drink wine and dance every Wednesday. My mother would get so mad and yell at me to take her with me. I would get my grandmother in the car, drive around and bring her back to my mother's. On one of those car rides, she thanked me for taking her to the 'malecon' (roadway that stretches along the sea in Havana). It was really the ramp to the I-95 expressway. But it was easier to just follow along. That is how much of a happy person she was."
"Now I have been taking care of my other grandmother for the past 4 months. She was in a hospice but when I went to visit her, she was dirty and very thin so I decided to bring her to my home. She is completely different though. She gets in this moods. The latest is she scolds you for not making her coffee. She also has Alzeimer so this happens a few times a day. She forgets what she ate. The other day there was a trail of cookie crumbles all over the house. And she saw me and asked for cookies. The jar was in front of her, almost empty."
"I have two daughters, one 19 and the other 23. We got our dog 'champagne' in Pet Land for my daughter's birthday. It was 5k$(!). I remember the day we got her, I was transfered from where I worked to a Walmart location. My boss did this out of spite knowing it was something I did not want. And my daughter took me to 'la boca de lobo' (wolf's mouth) aka Pet Land. I could not tell her no on that day."
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