Reflections of Family Togetherness, Victoria Sanchez

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Today is a special day and I don't want to take that up with any announcements.

I just want to go directly to my mother Victoria Sanchez on this very special day.

Thank you, Catherine.

It is Mother's Day and I want to wish the mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and godmothers

and stepmothers all over the world, have a very happy and blessed Mother day whenever you celebrate

it and I was on episode 77 when you detailed my community involvement in my professional activities.

So today I'd like to talk just about our family and I'm going to let you read something, Catherine.

Okay.

And that's yes.

And I will give the introduction.

When we were married, I got monthly gifts and monthly messages.

This was on our third month anniversary.

And mind you it's the third month not year, the third month, but it was the, it was

the foundation for our marriage, truly.

Yes.

Should I have said the date?

Of course,

To my loving wife.

I pray my dear, that God will be good to us and bless us with children who will make us

proud to reflect our memories upon them, whose happiness was the fruit of our labor and our love.

And in the end, I want us to look at each other saying together, we have lived

our lives, raised our children together.

We saved our souls together.

We made the world a better place to live.

Now as our lives come to an end, we shall together enter into the

supernatural wedlock of eternal paradise.

God so loved us that he brought us to him United for all eternity.

My dear.

How do I love you?

I love you deep from within now and forever.

Happy anniversaryRozie..

Yes.

And

you can guess that indeed, my husband, is diseasaed.

Excuse me.

And I have heaven on earth with him, but that was the beginning.

I want to tell you that we had five children.

We have five children.

Mary Carol, Robert, Catherine, and Linda.

Was four girls and one son, four daughters, and one son.

And.

As a family, we espouse faith from the very beginning.

All of our children have been, are married.

we have eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren and two step great-grandchildren.

Our children all graduated from the university with many of them with

Further degrees, masters, doctors, the, we have seven grandchildren who did the same.

The eighth is working on this, on his Master's now.

So we have truly been blessed as a family, but it started out with faith.

And I want to just tell you about some of our activities.

When we were, when the first children came along, we were in Albuquerque and my husband was a practicing

attorney and he took the bus every day to work as an attorney, he had his own practice and later as a judge

he was, he always took the bus public transportation.

That was part of saving the environment as related to their kids when they wanted to perhaps drive.

No, you take the bus.

Yes.

And I hear Catherine laughing.

It's true.

When I was so anxious for my husband to come home, that I would go and take the

children to the bus stop to meet him.

And then later they got a little older in school.

The oldest, would go to the bus stop to meet their daddy, but they would take all their friends

with them and they would have maybe 12 or more at the bus stop and they would all be yelling

'daddy, daddy'.

The bus drivers, the bus driver and the passengers they all got a big kick out of that.

So it's an important part of our life was family.

Sundays were spent, they were reserved for the family.

We did a lot of hiking, a lot of going to the zoo and having picnic lunches at the zoo.

Did a lot of things with the family.

Always close togetherness.

We went to church, of course every the days on Sundays.

So, during the week to school, we did all the things that parents do with their children, like

dancing lessons, the sporting activities, the basketball, the football, the cross country,

the piano lessons, guitar lessons, and so on.

I'd like to tell you one beautiful backpacking trip, because it's one that the kids have talked about.

They were young, the youngest was five.

And so, the oldest would have been a 13 and we went down to theGila.

Actually, we were camping.

This was not backpacking that trip.

We were camping.

We were camping on Willow Creek and we happened to go hiking.

And when we were hiking, we noticed signs of elk.

And we said, and we always taught the kids, everything that we could about the out-of-doors, appreciation for

plants, animals, conservation, the environment they knew about the trails, how to be trail savvy and so on.

We said, well, if you want to see the elk, we can come out at night and we'll hike to this to

this destination where we'd seen all the sign.

So that evening the youngest and I stayed in the campsite and the rest went hiking

to the place where they'd seen the elk.

It was not too far, a couple of miles.

And my husband put them all behind some cover.

And then the op came and they observed the elk, the mother elk the cow elk saw them

and she had a calf and she started pawing.

And so my husband said 'time to go'.

So they left.

And they, we went back to our, at that time we had a tent trailer, we had outgrown the tents.

So that was a lot of fun to see the elk in their natural environment.

Prior to that, we had been backpacking.

Let me think...

the first trip, the first backpacking trip for.

For them all was Grand Canyon.

Is that right?

Catherine?

That would have been in the spring.

That was the whole family.

That was the whole family.

Okay.

And thenGila later was yes.

Yes.

But I was trying to think of Oh, I know.

I want to talk about another backpacking trip.

I want to talk about the one to Lake, Katherine.

via Spirit Lake and Stewart Lake, that was our adventure.

So we have two, three-man tents.

So it meant four of us had to sleep in one tent and three in the other.

The, we went first to Spirit Lake and then to Stewart Lake and the Pecos wilderness,

which is a beautiful area in New Mexico.

And then we went to Lake Katherine, and Katherine is 11,000.

I think 11,700 feet high it's so ways to get it's termed a difficult hike.

And it was so we pitched our tents, beautiful Lake.

It was in a bowl.

And you, the forest service regulations state that you have to be so many feet

from the Lake, which of course we were.

My husband was an accomplished backpacker, so he taught us survival skills.

Yes.

And more than that.

Yes, he did.

So then That night, we had a marvelous as we did on all our backpacking trips of which we had many.

We sang around the campfire, my husband played the harmonica and we toasted marshmallows and so on.

And unfortunately the oldest daughter ran into one of the support poles of one of the tents.

It was aluminum, so it easily bent.

And that night we were asleep.

And the, we had a storm, the storm thunder reverberated throughout that Canyon, the thunder was loud.

The hail was even more devastating as it piled up on the tops of the tent.

So wasn't too long when the, our tent flat opened and the other three came

in because their tent had collapsed

and was a wash.

So we were seven people in a three man tent.

In the morning it was beautiful.

The storm was over.

The people who had horses, their horses were gone, even though they were tethered,

they'd taken off or probably back.

They knew the way home to their corral, but they were gone.

My husband and my son got all the

squaw wood.

For those that don't know what squaw wood is squaw wood is the lowest branches of dead trees

or even live trees, but the branches are dead.

And that wood, you can generally use to make a fire that's called squaw wood

because Indian squaw could easily reach it.

So my husband made a fire and as we were sitting around the fire enjoying our hot cocoa

and oatmeal, And so on a stranger came up.

A woman and she was very cold.

We believe she had hypothermia.

She was from San Francisco.

She had no shelter.

So we'd applied her with coffee and hot things.

And we had a black tarp that we'd used for our seven backpacks to cover them.

We gave her the tarp so that she could have a little shelter, some kind of blind of some stuff.

And then we gave her a frying pan and our son went out to the Lake and caught some fish for her.

And then we left about one, 1:00 PM in the afternoon.

So that was our adventure in the, in the Pecos..

We saw so many things on our backpacking trips.

One time we took, Oh, several times we took our dog with us and she always scared off the deer.

When the kids took off on their exploratory trips from the base camp we saw lots of things.

Went lots of places.

We backpacked in the,

We didn't just see a lot of things we also learned.

Oh yeah.

So you would gather us around if there were if you found a certain sapling or,

or a flower, especially the lady orchids.

If we found those and you would explain them and, and kind of go through and you don't

pick the wild flowers, because once you pick them, that's it, they don't come back.

And we used to tease the youngest because she was closer to the

ground and we said, that's how come she could always find the fairy slipper orchids first.

But yes, I always had a trail book with me and I always had a flower book.

And we learned about the geology, the geology.

Yes.

And my husband taught them about the stars at night, out in the mountains where there are

no lights to obscure or illuminate your view.

You can look up and see the stars and he taught them the stories of the constellations.

One of the greatest things for me, he had been a navigator in the air force and learned how to navigate

by the stars and just beautiful, beautiful adventures.

So enough of the backpacking let's get back to some, maybe some of the other family's stories.

The kids all took.

Well, the the girls took dancing lessons and they started at three, went to their recitals and so on.

And then when they started school, they did didn't last too long.

Maybe second grade.

Later on three of the daughters wanted further lessons.

So one took tap and the other two took jazz and Catherine to this day takes dancing

lessons and she's proficient in all of the.

What do you call them the different types of dance?

I guess I would say my favorites are with her are the tap and the ballet, a joy to watch.

And they took piano lessons.

All five, two of the children wanted to take guitar lessons.

So indeed they took guitar lessons.

They were in boy Scouts.

Our son was an Eagle scout.

Girls were in girl Scouts.

I was a girl scout leader, like 12 years with four daughters.

But I think one of the things just to tell you what our family was close and

supported each other in all the endeavors.

Catherine was a Cadet Girl Scout.

They wanted to go on a backpacking trip in thePecos and they couldn't get chaperones.

So she persuaded her older brother to, please, please, please be a chaperone.

And you know what he said?

Yes, he would be.

And he was a chaperone and they had a wonderful backpacking trip.

I think it was three or four days.

Wasn't it?

It was.

And the girls, there were some that were older than I was by.

Maybe a year or two or two, and having Robert there, it was like, perfect

because they listened to everything.

He said they just wanted to be right by him.

And does he have a girlfriend?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

So yeah, I forgot to say that.

You met the bus all the way into college when your dad came home.

The kids would go down to meet dad at the bus stop, even in college.

So well, we had the dog to walk, which was always nice.

She liked to go down there too, but it was nice to greet dad at the bus all the time.

He was always happy to see us.

It was fun.

The times that I liked the best was Christmas.

I will tell you the kids were angels.

I loved Christmas.

I loved the Christmas season because we had different activities.

We had Kris Kindle where they drew names and they didn't know which name they drew until Christmas Eve.

And then they would be so nice to their Kris Kindle.

And then I had the custom of putting little straws out.

And if they did a good deed, they could put it in the manger for the baby Jesus.

They had their own little cribs set in the den.

And then the other thing we had was the Advent Wreath.

There was seven of us.

So we each had a day and you could say whatever prayers you want, whatever we wanted to do for the advent

wreath and the family together made the advent wreath.

We suspended it in our front hallway.

And that meant that sometimes they forgot to duck.

Then it, it was on the floor and we had to repair it, but that didn't matter.

It was something that we did together and it was a beautiful time.

One of the things the kids did they had a little bowl, they kept it under the the older girls double

dresser, and then they would put money in there throughout the year from their allowance or whatever,

they didn't ask each other how much each one put in.

They never bothered.

When it came time to do Christmas shopping, they would go in and count it all together

to see how much, and then they would persuade mom to take them to the shopping center.

And I would do that.

Might have to sit outside and they went into the sporting goods store and they would go in

there and pick out some flies for their dad.

And they were very particular.

I don't know how they pick them out, but they did.

But the fellow who waited on them was so entranced that he, he would give him a fly box which was more

expensive than the flies, and he would count out their money and then he would gift wrap it for them.

It was beautiful.

And then they persuaded their dad to do the Christmas shopping for me in the same kind of thing.

But those were beautiful, beautiful memories because it kept the family together.

Right now it's May.

We celebrate mother's day in May and w when the kids were growing up, we always had a shrine to

Mary and the kids could design it and they would have flowers and we'd pray the rosary and so on.

So those are beautiful family customs that we had growing up.

We were honored by the children by being New Mexico parents of the year

Wow.

That was a long time ago.

In your way of thinking.

In my way, it was only yesterday.

It was only yesterday that you were born.

And my husband and I were married 61 years when he died.

Yes.

And indeed and the family also got, we were the first family to get the New Mexico philanthropy

award because always we told the kids that

our, our philosophy was you were put on this earth for one thing- to love God, to serve Him and

to be happy with Him in Heaven and, and in, so doing, you would make the world a better place.

And so there are lots of things that we did for, always, we had Christmas baskets, Thanksgiving baskets.

And so on.

My husband did most the delivery of the Christmas baskets later assisted by the grandkids and the

kids, but always to remember "there, but for the grace of God go, I", I had a lot of those things.

Yes.

Let me look at this.

Besides making the world a better place one of the things that I often said to them,

as they would say, Oh, this, this happens.

And this kid can do that.

No.

To thine own self be true.

Be the very best that you can be.

You don't follow the crowd, you do the right thing and you be the best you can be.

And I also said, and I set it often, that I will pass this way, but once, and if there is

some good that I can do, then let me do it.

And then I had embroidered in the bathroom that they could look at every day, a sampler.

And what did that say, Catherine?

Oh mom.

Which one was it?

Cause you had a couple of them.

Well, it was, it was the one that I put right above the camode one.

" Remember yesterday, ponder tomorrows, but live for today."

So I said, I said that tomorrow may never come.

You, you will never know, but tomorrow might never come.

So you live for today and you make it the very best day.

And I also said don't ever say anything that's not nice.

You can never take back words..

So that was something my husband and I lived by.

Don't ever say anything because you can't ever take back those words.

So live each day to the fullest and be happy and be, be yourself and be the very best that you can be.

So, Oh, and I also told the kids when they became teens,

I S no drinking.

Six words, no drinking, no smoking, no nothing,

no necking, you you forgot that.

Well, that went in the no nothing by the time Linda and I were of age.

Well, the

joy of having an older child and younger children is

that they learned that when you say no to the older ones, that you better not

ask because the answer is the same.

So that those were some of our activities.

Growing up we went on vacations.

We went to lots of interesting places, the Tetons, the glacier national park to Canada to Banff,

hiking, learning, fun, fun, fun, fun things.

And Washington DC, Catalina Island Disneyland.

Oh, once we camped we had a tent trailer, then we camped in San Diego on Shelter Island I think it was.

And the, the camping spot was right on the Bay.

And at 7:00 AM, we were awakened by, Oh, the girls shouting to their brother to stop.

He was trying to catch an octopus.

It was orange.

We didn't know anything about it and it shot its ink.

So yeah, it w it was fun camping too.

Oh, we went to Mexico over, over Christmas break.

The girls, the older girls were in high school and we went to San Carlos Bay and we

camped right across from the ocean there.

The Bay.

And we were the only tent trailer in the whole campground.

The rest had these very lovely looking trailers.

Ours was lovely.

We liked it.

It fit all of us.

And all of that again it was very early in the morning and who...

I got up at like three thirty in the morning.

Yeah.

And, but I had asked dad the night before if I could go down, because that was the

only place at when the sun was just coming up to see the dolphins and the sea lions.

Wildlife have to go see it.

So I got up and dad said I could the night before, but I don't think he really thought I was going to do it.

Oh yes he did.

But he didn't think it was going to be that early

well, so I got up at 3:30am and woke Linda, Linda didn't want to go.

And then I left and crossed the highway and it was dark.

I took a flashlight and I went down there.

But guess what I saw, as soon as that sun was coming up.

Sea lions and they were all over the place.

And then as that sun come up, they came up, they went into the ocean.

I would've missed it.

Well, you had, you had a great adventure.

I did.

And truly, and then dad came to get me.

Yes.

And truly our camping and our, our traveling back to visit the grandparents

were always filled with adventures wherever we went, because we made things happen.

But I want to close because that's enough of that.

But I did make all of their clothes, their prom dresses, their wedding dresses.

And since Catherine is here, when we were doing her wedding dress, she said

she didn't want just a chapel train.

She wanted a little bigger train.

So she got it.

But the most fun of that was designing her veil together.

We had a lot of fun.

I did.

I made all the, the The bridesmaid dresses as well as the maid of honor for all of the girls weddings.

And I will tell you a funny story.

It's funny.

When we look back when we had the, when the oldest daughter was married, we purchased a cake and the kids

said, mom, that cake doesn't taste as good as yours do.

So for the second daughter, I made a five tier wedding cake, as well as satellite cakes.

And we were at the reception enjoying it.

And all of a sudden, the leaning tower of) the, wait staff came over and

said, you might want to cut the cake.

It's kind of leaning.

So they cut the cake.

So that was the story of the, the leaning tower.

So what can you think of anything that you want to add?

I think what I would add is being that it's mother's day that my mother has taught us and of course

my dad has, they brought us up of course, with a lot of education that helped each and every one of us be good,

critical thinkers with what it is that we are faced with, whether it be what whatever the situation might

be, whether it be with humans or in the environment.

Or an issue.

And I think that that definitely being able to critically think has helped each

and every one of us be a better person.

And I think that that also helps us to understand the perspectives of other

people around us or the community.

And that was what dad wanted to be sure was something that we did take into account.

And that's why we got the philanthropy award because all of

the children and grandchildren, but I want to conclude with one last story.

Our oldest daughter's husband went in for a surgery for a simple bypass, double bypass.

The doctor said, Oh, everything is fine.

When he came out, well, everything wasn't fine because a couple hours later he lapsed

into unconsciousness and was that way

for two months, two and a half, two months.

And our daughter was there that was happened to be 90 miles away.

He was at the what do you call it?

The Coeur d'Alene regional center, medical center, and 90 miles away from their home.

And our daughter is the assistant provost at Washington state university.

And although she used her laptop or whatever, to communicate with their staff, two months

is a long time to be away from the office.

So her sisters, the first one was Catherine said she would go up and help.

And I said to daughter1, I called her every day.

Day at noon.

And at night, at noon, after he had seen, she had seen his team of doctors.

He had a nurse just for him.

He was unconscious and yet a nurse just for him.

So I called twice a day first to find out after the team.

And then at night when she left, then I said to her, you must not go , you have to go back to your office.

You may not go to the hospital.

Those are the conditions.

And your sisters are coming up.

So Catherine came first and she stayed a week.

And was there all day early in the morning until well at night and Glen had, he was awake by that

time, but not able to he could sort of walk.

He was, had tubes in every place that you wouldn't imagine.

So then she left on Saturday and the next sister came up and she was there a week.

And then the the last sister came up with her husband and you know, what he woke up then.

And I'm happy to say that today which is three years later, three and a half he is doing well.

He didn't wake up when they were there.

He was released.

He, yes, he was really released and went to, into rehab and so on.

But he is doing beautifully well, and he's back to doing his woodworking and yard work and enjoying life.

And what a, what a joy that was.

But he had a prayer circle back at his parish.

He had everyone praying and the power of prayer can not be underestimated.

Because truly he died twice when he was in the hospital there.

So we have been blessed with many blessings and we are very proud of our children and

grandchildren for what they have managed to, to be involved with their community, to be

real, real people, dedicated faith, loving.

And as a family, very, very close.

And we're going to celebrate mother's day tonight.

We're the family that's here in Albuquerque will be at a barbecue at Catherine's house

and the others will come and it's joy...

Family celebrations are always joyful and all the years, my husband and I had Christmas,

always at our home as well as Easter.

We had Easter egg hunts and to this day Yes.

Even at their age.

And I hate to tell you, you can tell we we would have been married let's see this

year would have been 66 years, right?

Yes.

So you know that the kids still like the Easter egg , imagine that, and with that conclusion, I, I hope

that all your families will be well happy and blessed.

Mom, thank you so much for sharing the positive imprints that you've made, each of my

siblings, whom we are- coming from you and dad.

And of course our nieces and nephews.

Well, thank you mom.

Happy mother's day.

Well, thank you, dear.

So, well from both of us here at your positive imprint, we wish all of you,

as mom said in the beginning happy mother's day, wherever you are in the world and

love and value each member of your family.

Thank you.

Your positive imprint.