Dichos: Mexican proverbs and sayings #5 – It can pay to wait
by Elizabeth "Bjay" Woolley on Nov. 18, 2009, under dichos, Life, mexican culture
Did you grow up hearing Mexican dichos or sayings/proverbs?
Here is the 5th installment of dichos or mexican proverbs and sayings.
Dicho in Spanish:
No cuando sale el sol calienta, si no cuando va subiendo.
Dicho in English:
The sun does not heat at sunrise, but later as it rises.
This was said to someone who is impatient and wants quick results.
Does this still apply today to the majority of the public? Oh how times have changed. Today we want everything fast. Fast food, fast communication, fast cars, fast results… So many things have changed from when I was growing up, and I admit I’ve become pretty spoiled.
I can get food almost instantly from the microwave and pay taxes and car registrations online. I haven’t had to go to the library often or call and wait for answers from the Historical Society to find answers to questions because so much can be found online at our fingertips. This is really convenient, but is it good for us?
When I was growing up I would watch my grandma do her laundry. She would prewash with a scrubbing board. Then she’d put the clothes into a wringer washer and wait. When it was done, she would put every item through the wringer. Then she’d carry her heavy basket of wet clothes out to the clothesline where she would then hang it all up with clothespins and wait for the sun to dry them. Now we have washers and dryers where you just have to toss the clothes in with some product. I don’t even like to do that. Do you? Many of us have developed the different piles of “worn but can’t tell,” “kinda dirty,” and “radioactive pick up with tongs” laundry to cut down on the trips to the laundry room. Grandma washed everything. I claim I do it to save water (to make up for long showers).
Often she would start making dinner the night before. She would sort, clean, soak beans and wait. The next day she would put them to boil and wait. When she made menudo, it took hours. Even her version was “fast” as she could find pre-made nixtamal (white corn). Her ancestors shucked and dried the corn and then soaked and boiled it with ashes or lye. Now we can find menudo in cans. I admit there was one time I passed off canned menudo as homemade at a Christmas gathering because I was too busy and impatient to make it the right way. “You made this?” “Ummm, ya.” Well, technically I did.
Tamales. Another all-day affair. Along with my sister and dad, we shuck and grind corn to make them. We turn out rare little delicacies and make wonderful memories. We don’t do it often – it’s faster and easier to buy them already made or go to a restaurant. Do I specifically remember any of the latter? No. (Well, alright, in all honesty, I do remember every single tasty morsel from both the Poca Cosa restaurants)
I remember waiting for my grandpa’s tomatoes to get ripe. We would check the plants for ripe ones, and they were oh so good. Tomatoes and cucumbers were the treasures of summer and they usually couldn’t be found any other time of year. It forced us to eat with the seasons – and wait. People had been so happy to have food come into season, festivals were dedicated to harvests.
When things take a long time, it requires you to develop other skills – like planning, routine, and organization. Right now the only major things I have to pre-plan are the holidays and my son’s birthday party. Sometimes even those are half gluteus maximus. Everyone home late? Damn, I should have put something into the crock pot. Lets grab a $5 grab-and-go pizza – just this time. Yea, right.
Yes, we still have to wait just as long for some things. Babies still take nine months to bake. Hair grows out just the same from a bad haircut. Some things take even longer. I sometimes wait three months for a doctor appointment and hours to see the doctor from my scheduled time.
Another thing that remains the same is the mail-in prizes from cereal boxes. My son clips the coupons and waits for the next box to be bought. Then we have to fill out the form, stick it in an envelope, mail it snail mail and wait for it come back by the same snail (the snail is faster now). The prizes are no better than what he gets from kid meals, but they don’t end up kicked aside or destroyed as fast. He enjoys the fruits of his patience and labor more. He’ll also remember it with pride rather than the blur of the other junk.
“Where’s the Scooby Doo I bought you?”
“What Scooby Doo?”
“The three-foot Scooby? The one you begged for in Toys R Us. The one that kept getting in the way of everything? The one I tripped over and almost had to go to the ER for a concussion?”
“What are you talking about?”
Hmmm, maybe if I had made him wait….
What are some other things we no longer have to wait for?
See a list of all my dicho posts here.
Do you have dichos to share? If so, email them to comments@bjaysplace.com.
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