1964

 1964 

Your mother was a straight A, rule breaking, cultural rebel. At first glance she looked like any average school girl, but beneath that exterior were seismic waves of determination that were about to surface.

We might not have known of the anti-miscegenation laws, but Sandy's Austrian/German home silently stewed in a changing time.  It would not be until Loving v. Virginia, in 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down this legal loophole for racism.

In 1967, the laws banning interracial marriage were ruled unconstitutional but Sandy's father would refuse to give the bride away or even come to our wedding in 1969 because I was born with DNA that was not Austrian/German. In his world, I didn't have the right racial background.

Our favorite movie was Westside Story because it stoked the fire of our dreams. Our favorite song was Somewhere because it mirrored our quest for our new way of living, “we're almost there, a place for us.”

Lyrics
There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.
There's a time for us,
Some day a time for us,
Time together with time spare,
Time to learn, time to care,
Some day!
Somewhere.
We'll find a new way of living,
We'll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere . . .
There's a place for us,
A time and place for us.
Hold my hand and we're halfway there.
Hold my hand and I'll take you there
Somehow,
Some day,
Somewhere!

Tobias Nicholas Manzanares.  I used to say I was Spanish and Japanese, because my closest cousins and I had already learned that there was derogation and vilification in the word ”Mexican”.  I buried that part of me when my high school counselor recommended that I enlist in the Army instead of dreaming about college.  It was a time when we already knew to stay away from auto shop, metal shop, and print shop, it was better to aspire to the college prep pathway. 

Sandy Ausenick had a kind of color blindness, she didn't see the Mexican in me. Instead, we dreamed.  It would take me another decade to fully embrace my Mexican American heritage and take pride in all the generous gifts from my ancestors. But when we graduated in 1965, we sought "a time and place for us.”  Our classmates called us Arsenic and Old Lace, they did not see us as an interracial couple, but there were adults in our little world who saw interracial as a problem word.

I admire Sandy Ausenick because she had enough strength to withstand the force of her father's interracial objections, he came from an anti miscegenetic world view that continues.  Trevor Noah wrote Born a Crime, published in 2016 because in South Africa, where he was evidence of a crime, his parents were members of different races.  Prince Harry Meghan Markel are dealing with the Royal Family and others in England who look down upon mixed race children.