5 - An Empathetic Imagination
What happens when a fact meets the unknown? When our understanding and certainty of something reaches the end of a line, and we encounter the beginning of the end of our imagination? I kept encountering these two questions in my research. For the most part, the records that I have come from three very different sources: family archives, oral histories and traditions, and Ancestry.com. In the majority of the pre-twentieth century records that I have, there is little agreement among the records on basic facts. Let me give you an idea about what I mean by “little agreement among the records.” It is entirely plausible for one person to have multiple birth years, depending on the documents that are available. For example, Delfina Chávez, my great-grandmother, was born in either 1885 or October 4, 1894. There is a nine year difference. Which is the most accurate? Any answer, of course, depends on whether you give more credibility to her 1904 marriage certificate or the many border crossing cards she signed and completed while crossing the bridge from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico to El Paso, Texas in the United States. The 1904 marriage certificate says that Delfina is 19—which roughly means that she was born in 1885. The earlier border crossing cards also pin her birth date to 1885. However, after 1918, all of her border crossing cards say that her birth year is 1894. This is where the nine year gap was born. Personally, I’m more inclined to believe that she was born in 1885. The more interesting question in my mind is: Why does it exist?
In addition to all of the records that I’ve collected, there is also the stories I have been told about Delfina as well as the mistruths that she created and passed down over time. It took me over a year to answer the question of why there’s a nine year gap. Complicated is a very nice way to put it. I don’t want to get into the details here because I am currently writing a book that devotes a chapter to it. Let’s just say that it involves a reckoning with myth and asking very difficult questions: What happens when the stories and legends that you’ve been told as a child turn out to be false? What, if anything, takes their place? #BridgeBetweenPodcast
