La Cucaracha

Cockroach
Originally uploaded by Rundstedt B. Rovillos

Earlier today, I spent 2 hours at a family’s home doing an assessment on their teenage son who has autism. This was, in fact, the exact location of the first group home I worked in when I arrived to this city. There is one thing about this home that has never changed in the 2 plus decades …

Cockroaches.

Yup. Lots of creepy crawlers all over the cupboards and counters in the kitchen. It hadn’t hit me that I too had encountered them way back when simply because I was so sickened leaving there tonight that I nearly blocked that memory out ! Not to mention that when I worked in this home I was still drinking alcoholically. A 7-11 Big Gulp with 1/3 Sprite and 2/3 vodka. And chain-smoking Marlboros. Every single day. Which is why my head was a bit foggy about the roaches. Interestingly enough … I have a favorite t-shirt that has cockroaches silk screened on the front. When asked curiously about why I have such a shirt, I have replied that it was to remind me about my humble beginnings working in a group home that was infested with the critters. And here I am today in this very place !!!! God sometimes has a really twisted sense of humor. Keeps things interesting in the Heavens I suppose.

I just spent 45 minutes in the shower nearly scrubbing the skin off of my bones. When I left this house tonight, I literally felt like I wanted to puke all over the sidewalk. I felt itchy and skeeved out for hours afterward.

As I drove back home, I thought about the nature of cockroaches. They are touted as being able to survive nearly any natural or manmade disaster, including nuclear radiation. There is something very holographic about understanding this in relation to the young man I assessed and those who occupied that space previously, myself included, and perhaps generations of other “survivors”. This autistic 17 year old is doing the very best he can given that he has no spoken language and is trying to communicate his distress through physical behaviors because there are many over-stimulating sensory triggers in this environment. The women who were mentally retarded who lived there prior were survivors of an institution that was shut down due to horrific living conditions and abuses of all kinds. When I worked in this home, I was at the height of my alcoholism. I barely had my head above water on any given day, shaking with DT’s, and salivating over the beer chilling in the cooler in my car. And yet I could hold down this job and help people figure out goals for themselves. I was just like one of those pesky cockroaches, scrounging for nourishment and getting through another day.

La cucaracha. A famous Spanish song dedicated to the cockroach. It’s also about the dancers’ stamping feet and how some lyrics may be associated with stomping on these vile insects. This is what makes a survivor, survive. The threat of being wiped out and somehow finding a way to persist and endure. Now moving past my earlier repulsion, I soften toward this symbolic representation of survival. I found a way to stop sipping the poison … in the bottles of booze and in the messages of my parents. The cockroaches have also gone a similar route -- to not drink the toxic stuff spread in the cracks and crevices by the exterminator.

We have all found our way.
We have all survived.

The click-click of their miniscule feet dancing on the tabletops is the celebration of being in life that exists in us all.