Pati Ruiz describes how she raised her children in the Sierra Gorda:
Oh, for my kids it was just perfect – for the first time to cook for them, and to take care of them full-time, and not to send them to a school and pretending that someone is going to form their inner values. They were changed from one happy world to another more happy, no? To have battles in the woods with swords, and big fights, and oh, it was a bigger pleasure!
And every day at night with no light I have my two little boys seated in front of me at the table of the kitchen and asking me, "Mommy, what are we going to do today?" Yeah, instead of to turn on the TV, they were expecting, "What's going to be the fun today?" And I found inside me that I had a complete sack of surprises for every night – to take the accordion and sing revolutionary Mexican songs from the North – yeah, that one of my boys just loved. Or to take the harmonica and to play with them, or to have a flute rehearsal or to start the opera season during winter.
Every day I had a beautiful hike with my children, and we had a magnifier lens that we used so much, trying to find those microcosms in every, I don't know how to say [molecule].
And I discovered a great richness, no?– a great wealth – inside of all of us, no? And every day I taught my kids – because I did school teaching with them – and it was such a big pleasure to study Rome. And for six months that baby didn't want to study anything else more than Rome – and he was dressed like a Roman. And dressed like a Roman, he went to the stable to take care of the horses and of the cow, and to prepare the cheese, but it was a Roman cheese, yeah! And everything at home became Roman or Egyptian, yeah! And I really pushed them into that fantasy, no, and to – yeah, even me, I became Roman, or I was an Indian dancer, or whatever they wanted me to play with.
And that gave us such a good relationship that really I think that the modern world, the present, have lost those real enjoyments, no? – that cannot be replaced with things.
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