IT’S OKAY TO CRY

October 29, 2003 | 12:10am

I’m attending a formal dinner tonight and I look good as usual. I’m wearing a cute charcoal tie and my dark gray Dawson slacks from Banana Republic. I’m also running fashionably late because the concept of one-way streets eludes me in the approaching darkness. We are awarding Hispanic teachers who’ve made an impact on the Arizona school systems and the youth they serve.

My date jokes about the woman receiving an award with the same last name that I too have attached to my first. "Do you know her?" he jokes, pointing out once again that ALL Latinos are related. We have cousins everywhere and this is usually how a typical conversation will go when discussing travel plans outside a twenty mile radius from your home town with Latino parents.

Wanna go to Colorado for a job interview?
"Call your Aunt Rosanna, she’ll let you stay at her place and she’ll make tortiallas, too!"

Wanna go to Hawaii?
"Eeeee, call my cousin Rosario, she still owes me a picture of her granddaughter Monica Hernandez Montoya Lopez Rivera-Smith."

Wanna go to China?
"Call my Uncle Ramon, our family came over the Arctic pass before it melted and settled here thousands of years ago. He’ll let you crash at his casa, mijo."

So naturally I listen to this woman’s story like she’s my own sister. She talks about how she was in a gang in junior high school and her teacher told her she’d never amount to anything. I fork a piece of chocolate cake and force it in my mouth as my tear ducts begin to release semi-sweet drops of the all too familiar berating. But look at her now she says, she’s an award-winning teacher plus she’s taking home a fat check from some yuppie republican sponsor who also cried from her rehearsed heart-felt story of success.

But I’d be lying if she was the first Latino to make me cry. I’d wait for my father to come home every day at three in the afternoon. I’d constantly ask my mother if he was still coming home, just in case for some reason he was being detained for jury duty or something far more time consuming like filling the four-door family super truck— named Mr. T.—with leaded gasoline. I’d rush him at the door when he came home, all was safe and right with the world when he’d arrive in his parking spot in front of my window.

Then the day came when he took me to second grade. He walks me in the classroom then turns around and leaves, knowing I couldn’t be without him for a whole day. I sprint to the door mid-conversation with my teacher but couldn’t touch him because I'm too short to reach the door knob. He stares at me through the glass window and I cry. He doesn’t cry, he chokes back the tears, and he doesn’t open the fifty foot high door to hug me good bye. He walks away soon after, I slump down to the ground, for the whole day I’m a wreck. I hate my Dad from that point on and vowed never to be dependent on him or anyone else in my family.

But I did learn a valuable lesson. I learn to cry for myself. I learn not to cry for a reaction, you can fool some people but my classmates see right though me. They see my weakness of co-dependency and I try really hard to not need them or my family.

Then I meet Avi, my boyfriend in New Mexico before I head out to Arizona. Teaching is all he ever wanted to do. He starts teaching me Ju-jistu Budokan the week I meet him. He shows me his passion for teaching and it becomes mine. I see how he teaches the downtrodden and very gifted students in his classroom. None of them speak English at that ghetto school and the district is all too happy to forget about them. He teaches me not to blame my parents for their flaws; they did the best they could to raise me. Finally, he teaches me how to listen.

I cry when his teaching license is suspended. A parent of his student accuses him of rape but they don’t listen to Avi. I cry when I wasn’t there to hear him plea. And I cry when he commits suicide knowing he can never teach his students or anywhere again.

I remember Avi because I do cry. I remember him because I don’t hold back the tears like my father. My father doesn’t remember the day he left me at the window. He doesn’t remember my pleas to open the door.

And I cry every November 1st for Avi, he taught me to forgive my parents.

It’s okay to cry now, because I’m happy when I cry. Because I’ll never forget you Avi and I’m still listening.