There will be a lot of celebrating around the Tschauner-Vasquez households this weekend marking Mother’s Day and birthdays this weekend.
Adela Vasquez and her daughter Monica Tschauner said they have a lot to be grateful for this year. Vasquez, a longtime ECISD counselor and administrator, and her husband, Gilbert, have two children, Monica and Patrick, and four grandchildren.
Tschauner and her husband, Chris, have three children. Patrick Vasquez has one child.
This year, the family will celebrate Mother’s Day with a cookout and some of Vasquez’s famous guacamole dip. They also will celebrate Vasquez’s birthday, which falls on Monday.
Mother’s Day for Vasquez’s mother will be Saturday.
“ It’s a special day,” Vasquez said. “My husband and I love our kids very, very much. We kind of focus on them a whole lot. We always have, so Mother’s Day is just a wonderful day for gatherings and phone calls to my son and gratitude. I’m very, very grateful to have my kids and my grandkids. They have brought a lot of joy to me.”
Every year on Mother’s Day, Tschauner thinks of how grateful she is that her mother is still with her, “because like she mentioned, there are many that don’t have their mom so I always thank God for that.”
“ Then I turn around and I look at why I’m a mom and I look at my three kids and they’re the reason I get to celebrate this day, and really, they are my heart; they’re my purpose, so that is my passion. That’s the one thing that when I leave the Earth I want them to feel that they were blessed with a good mom,” Tschauner said.
Tschauner’s counsel to mothers is to love your children and be forgiving of yourself and of them.
“… Love is the greatest gift that you can give your kids and yourself and your family. That would be my advice,” she said.
Vasquez says mothers should be loving and nurturing.
“ But also give them hope because life isn’t perfect for anyone and always look up, even when you have a bad day. Mamas have bad days, too. You have to wake up the next day and say, ‘Hey, I get another chance at this.’ Keep going. That’s what I’ve tried to teach her. We’ve both endured an illness. We’ve endured other things and that’s the big message I would give to my family and give to kids — always have hope no matter what,” Vasquez said.
“ I’ve lived 71 years. Monday will be 71 years. I’ve gone through a lot of assassinations, a lot of wars, shootings, whatnot, but never a pandemic. Never a pandemic. It’s Earth-shattering at times. It can be. You know, we’re still eating. We still have our homes, our families so there’s a lot to appreciate,” she added.
Asked if they had any Mother’s Day traditions, Vasquez and Tschauner said they don’t really, except for Vasquez’s guacamole dip, which is incorporated into gatherings of family, friends, occasions and holidays.
Vasquez said they also use chili Colorado dressing.
Vasquez, a Texas Tech University graduate, is a student assistance services counselor for the district and works on the help line set up by ECISD. She and Tschauner agree there are a lot of lessons for youngsters during this time.
“ I hadn’t realized this is the group that were 9/11 kids, and then the senior group, then they started out the year with the shooting tragedy and now … COVID, so … if anything they’re really being immersed into life can change at any given moment,” Tschauner said.
“ I think that is definitely a life lesson because life will always throw curveballs. It’s (not) always going to be smooth sailing,” she added.
Vasquez worked for ECISD for 37 years and then returned for seven more.
“ Personally speaking, I started off working directly with kids and over that long period of time I have kind of got into the administrative end of it, so to come back and work directly with kids again has been extremely rewarding,” Vasquez said.
Her father died in 2017, and that same year, she said there were eight deaths at Permian High School.
“… That impacted our campus a lot, so I focused on them and it kind of helped me through my own personal grieving and transition. This year, like Monica said, the shooting to start off our year that way it only bought chaos,” she said.
“ And fear,” Tschauner added.
Vasquez said the students were settled down and ready to go again then there was spring break and the pandemic.
Tschauner, also a Texas Tech graduate, is the director of Discover Odessa at the Odessa Chamber of Commerce. She has been at the chamber a little more than two years.
“ I substituted for a little while when my kids were younger. I wanted to still be a stay-at-home mom, but they were all in school so I would sub at Reagan. I substituted for two or three years, then stayed at home. I was going to get back into teaching, but I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so I went through that. That stopped me there. Then I ended up at Hope House for three years. I was the director of West Texas Gifts of Hope, which serves cancer patients so I felt like I was kind of a mission for me after that. I did that for three years and then I started at the chamber,” she said.10
