Roberto and Arcelia Munoz are back again in their cozy mobile home in San Diego's mountains. Along with tens of thousands of other Mexican-Americans, they have returned from annual Christmas visits with their families, deep in the villages of their native land, to their new homes in California.
The long Christmas visits into Mexico are a ritual in the family lives of most Mexican-Americans. Border officials know when to expect their goings and comings, and ready themselves for the rush. The young Munoz daughter Cecilia is back at school in Julian, mastering English so she can continue to coach her parents at home. Roberto has learned that his wages rise with his fluency. Sofia, still too young for school, has her own English picture books as she hangs out at home with her mother, and tails along on her mother's housekeeping jobs.
My wife Judith and I stay close to this Munoz family, for many reasons. We have watched this immigrant family become American. And for years, they helped us build our weekend lives around a mountain cabin in those hills.
Our cabin was one of those 2400 homes lost to fire in the fall of 2003. The loss was almost as hard on the Munoz family as on us. We first found Roberto at our cabin door many years ago, holding a shiny new 60-inch chainsaw. He had seen our two acres blighted by the brown pox of the bark beetle. He produced reasonably certain evidence that the United States approved of his presence, and then offered his services as a private contractor. He took down almost 200 pines.
He wielded multiple steel bars to leverage huge rocks from our hillside, filled the holes with woodbark and planted young cedars. He became a trustworthy overseer of that lovely place. A neighbor complained when he heard I had raised Roberto's pay to $10 an hour. But not even Roberto's careful oversight could halt those October flames. Most of Roberto's new cedars burned too. Only the chimney still stands proud among the black ruins.
But a glorious thing happened on the first Christmas after the fire. Roberto and Arcelia phoned and invited us to come up to their house to see the tree and hug the girls. We sat snuggled together beneath a tree in that trailer home, the blinking lights of Christmas crowning a scene that so often inspires hope and love in every language.
Along the way, Roberto has become an United States citizen, giving the three handsome women of his household full status as Americans. Up there in the mountains, and here in the cities, it is difficult to imagine how we ever got along without the Munozes.
