Bienvenidos. Welcome to my recuerdos, my memories.

My name is Guillermina Trujillo de Espinosa, but since I was a little girl everybody has called me Willie, except my mother, who called me Guillermina when I was in trouble, which was often. I was born in February of 1913, in a little village in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, the year after New Mexico became a state. My father used to say that New Mexico and I grew up together, and that neither one of us would ever sit still.

I grew up in that village, I went away to finish school, and in 1931 I went up into the mountains to teach in a one-room school, which I did until I married my Alfonso in 1937. We raised our children in the north until 1955, when Alfonso found work in Albuquerque, and I have lived here ever since, in the same little house, with the same apricot tree that I planted, which is now much taller than I am and much less trouble.

I am eighty-six years old. My grandchildren ask me questions about the old days, and I find that I remember the old days better than I remember where I left my glasses. So my granddaughter Christina, who is a nurse and a very patient girl, brought me a tape recorder, and on Sunday afternoons I sit at my kitchen table and tell it what I remember, and she types it up. She has put three of my stories here so the whole family can read them, wherever they are, and anybody else who wants to.

I have not changed the Spanish words. That is how we talked, and how I still talk. If you do not know one, look below. Como dice el dicho, el que no sabe es como el que no ve: the one who doesn't know is like the one who doesn't see. So now you will see.

Some dichos my mother used to say, and I still say, and my children roll their eyes:

• Poco a poco se anda lejos. Little by little, you go a long way.
• El que madruga, Dios lo ayuda. God helps the one who gets up early.
• Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres. Tell me who you walk with, and I will tell you who you are.
• Más vale tarde que nunca. Better late than never. (She said this to my father a great deal.)

A note from Christina: Grandma tells these into a little tape recorder on Sunday afternoons with a cup of coffee and a plate of biscochitos, and I type them up during the week, after my shifts. I've tried to keep them exactly the way she says them. If you are family and you remember something different, Grandma says you are welcome to make your own web page. If you aren't family and these stories meant something to you, we would love to hear from you, and I will read your letter to her out loud.