he morning air is chilly as the fog rolls over Bernal Heights. Sylvia Escalante, 28, stands waiting at a bus stop, balancing her 8-month-old daughter Margarita on her left hip, and holding the hand of her 4-year-old son, Abraham. She wears a pale blue sweatshirt and jeans under her jacket, her long, black hair flowing half way down her back. Abraham started preschool this fall. Every day Sylvia accompanies him on the hour-long Muni bus ride to school, along with baby Margarita, and walks with him to make sure he gets to school safely. She spends about five hours each day on the bus taking Abraham to and from school, holding Margarita all the while. Before the three of them go home in the afternoon, they stop by the market to buy groceries for dinner. As they reach their apartment once again, Sylvia drops into a chair, exhausted. She has been carrying her daughter in her arms since she left the house earlier this morning. She takes a moment to rest before cleaning up the baby. Her husband will be home from work soon, and she needs to start cooking dinner. It is not unusual for a Mexican mother to spend so much of her time attending to everyone in the family but herself.

Sylvia and her husband Anselmo left their native Mexico four years ago and came to California in hopes of a better life for their children. "We came for our children," Sylvia says, "so the doors will be open for them to live here." But she says there is nothing here for her husband or herself. She feels her children, both of whom were born here, will have more opportunities by getting their education in the United States and learning English in addition to Spanish. Sylvia is a college graduate, herself, but her education in Mexico doesn't count for much in the United States. She wants to make sure that won't happen to Abraham or Margarita. Sylvia's life is one of daily sacrifice for her children. But the biggest sacrifice was leaving her large, close-knit family behind in Sinaloa, a city just north of Mazatlan. In Mexico, there is an important sense of belonging to one's family. Sylvia grew up with the security and warmth of having lots of family around. Every Sunday, the entire family would get together at her mother's house, the center of the family. "When everyone is together, it's like a party‹cooking, singing and dancing," Sylvia says, her eyes lighting up as she talks about the feasts they would prepare together. But what Sylvia really misses are the family holidays‹Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day. Now she spends them alone with her husband and children, just the four of them, as opposed to the many, many people she grew up associating with elaborate holiday celebrations.

Mexicans talk in the plural. The family‹the "we"‹is important, and the individual is not as important in Mexican culture, whereas Americans place emphasis on the individual. Mexicans base their success on family, so it's important to have a large one. You need many children to do the work, to help support the family and keep it running, Sylvia explains, so you have lots of children, lots of family to help on the business and the farm‹it's a given that's what you'll do.

At a time when many think America has been enlightened to not only accept, but appreciate and learn from cultural diversity, there seems to be an ironic twist with right wing emphasis on supposed family values and its targeting Mexican and Central American immigration as a detriment to the country, when in fact family is the top priority in their culture.

In addition to her parents, Sylvia has nine sisters and brothers, and 20 nieces and nephews back home. The only relatives she has here besides her husband and children are her husband's aunt and uncle. Both Sylvia and her husband want to go back to their family in Mexico. They may wait just long enough for the children to finish elementary school before they return. Then Abraham and Margarita can come back to attend a university when they grow up.

Sylvia says back home everyone in the family helps each other and takes care of the children. Grandparents and aunts and uncles all take care of the children and help when they visit. Sylvia no longer has that. She says her life is nothing like it was before in Mexico. Here there is no one to take care of Sylvia's children. She'd like to go dancing or to a movie with her husband, but they've never had anyone to watch the children so they can go have fun alone by themselves. When a family member is sick, Sylvia has no one to help her here like she did in Mexico. There were always family and neighbors who came over to help. Back home lots of neighbors are family; even friends become family and are called aunts and uncles by the children. Sylvia has some friends here, but not like she did back home. Last year, Sylvia, Anselmo and Abraham were all sick with the flu. They had sore throats and were vomiting, and they weren't able to get up. Then Anselmo came down with chicken pox. Nobody came over to see how they were, because they were afraid of catching it. Sylvia says that's why they don't want to stay here, why they want to go home where people would bring food and help out. That's part of their culture, she says.

Anselmo speaks English fluently and works as a welder. He rides his bicycle each day to the Mission District where he works. A quiet man with a serious demeanor, Anselmo tends to keep to himself, and doesn't really have any friends. Sylvia and Anselmo have known each other since they were children, and were married in 1990. When Sylvia became pregnant, they moved to San Francisco together. Anselmo helped her with the baby, because there was no one else here to help them. Sylvia says it is unusual for husbands back in Mexico to help take care of children. She and her husband are very close with each other, as well as with their children, and Sylvia says it might not have been the same back in Mexico with so much family around. She says Anselmo is very loving and likes taking care of the children, something she never would have expected.

Sylvia takes lessons in English as a second language (ESL) twice a week for two hours. Refugee Transitions, a San Francisco agency devoted to assisting refugees, organizes and trains volunteers to teach ESL classes both on an individual basis and in group classes. Former San Francisco State University student Michelle Paul was assigned to work with Sylvia in July, and she says Sylvia has made substantial progress. Sylvia wants to learn English and to help her children learn it. Abraham learns English in preschool and is picking up the language very fast, himself.

Irma and Rocio García are two sisters-in-law assigned to volunteer Martina Frank who has been working with them for two years. Irma, 30, grew up in Misantla. Her dark hair is thick and curly, her large, dark eyes are alert, and she is quick to flash a radiant smile that never leaves her face for long. Back in Mexico, Irma had been married, but says she finally divorced her husband because he was always drunk and didn't work, and he was a problem for her and her daughter. She fled to her brother's family in San Francisco with her then 7-year-old daughter when her ex-husband threatened to take her away.

Rocio's gentle face is framed by full, shoulder-length hair parted in the middle and combed back from her face. Her eyebrows seem fixed like a timid little girl's, and she often shrugs her shoulders when she speaks. Her husband had wanted to move to California to find work. After he had been living in San Francisco for a while, Rocio left Mexico City with their two daughters to join her husband. Their 2 1/2-year-old son was born here. The seven of them share a flat in the Mission District above a Folsom Street bar.

Irma and Rocio's daily routines are similar to Sylvia's. They make breakfast, walk their children to school, do chores, run errands, shop for groceries and cook dinner while watching Rocio's baby. The two of them are always together. After dinner, they work cleaning offices until 1 a.m. Rocio's husband works as a security guard and gets off work at midnight. He picks Rocio and Irma up from work on his way home. Sometimes he comes earlier and helps with the cleaning. Irma and Rocio get Fridays off, and work mornings on the weekend.

Since living here, Rocio says her husband plays a much bigger role in the family. He spends more time taking care of his children and playing with them. The family is much closer than it was back in Mexico, one of the few trade-offs‹ironic as it seems‹of being separated from their extended family.

Rocio says women's jobs in Mexico are limited to working mainly in factories, then at night they work for the family. "The woman takes care of the children, the food, the clothes, and sometimes she works in addition to everything else," Irma says, "and the man doesn't take care of the children, or do any cleaning." The husband-wife relationship is different here, she says, because in Mexico the man is No. 1 and the woman is second. "I don't like that," Rocio says. "The husband is more macho." Irma and Rocio like seeing American men share the responsibility of caring for their children in addition to their jobs. Irma misses spending time with her many relatives, but it would be perfect, she says, if the men and women were equal.

The family is bigger in Mexico, more important, and gives more emotional support, Rocio says. That support is important to her, and she misses it very much. She says friendship and community are also more important than it is here. Like Sylvia, Rocio wants to go back to living in Mexico. It was her husband who wanted to come here, and he's the one who wants to stay. Rocio doesn't know what's going to happen.

Rocio walks across the living room and picks up the phone to call and check on her mother. A 7.3 earthquake had hit Mexico earlier in the day. Her mother says she had been scared‹it was almost as bad as the 1985 earthquake‹but everything is OK.

Irma has lived here three years now. While she also wants to return to Mexico, she says this is her home for now. Her daughter wants to go back, too. "My family is in Mexico," she says, "I want to see my grandma." They might end up staying here, though, because Irma wants her daughter to learn two languages and to get the education Irma never did.

Sylvia has not been back to see her family since she left in 1991. She hopes to see everyone again in a few months and wants to take her children back with her because they've never seen their family. Abraham talks about missing the grandparents he doesn't even know. He longs to meet them and talks with them on the phone, asking questions about them because he wants to know them. He talks as if he does. He makes up little stories about his grandparents in Mexico. He says they have a cow and a dog who lives in a little doghouse. He likes to talk about the things they do together, putting himself in the picture with his grandparents.

Sylvia, Irma and Rocio and their husbands and children have the benefit of drawing from two different cultures. While Mexico is very focused on the collective family, they've seen the advantages of sharing responsibilities and working together as a closer, if smaller, family unit. They are separated from their families and friends in Mexico, and feel deprived socially and emotionally, but they have each other, and they will have a new appreciation for these things when they do return. Their children will grow up speaking English, and in the plural‹the "we"‹and if they marry and have children of their own in the United States, they will carry on the importance of belonging to one's family.

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