To Elaine on her fortieth birthday

Once upon a time there was a sweet faced girl who stared down her parents over some barrettes on the floor. She made her parents look at each other and say, “We are so fucked!”.

People think this is urban legend but I, as the mother in this story, am here to tell you this is true.

I will skip past her conception story, because I don’t want to gross her out, but in the early morning hours of July 21st, I found myself going to the bathroom several times. We made a trip to, what was then, St. Mary’s Hospital in Hoboken, New Jersey. They checked me out and sent me home. My husband went on to work and my mother and sister took over the baby watch.

Many, many, many hours later I returned to the hospital to await the birth of my first child. The year was 1979 and we didn’t know what we were having. Our baby shower cake said, “Pink or blue we welcome you”, something many of you are not familiar with.

I’m gonna skip over the baby arrival prep, because I still find it all gross, and move onto the labor room. I couldn’t tell you what time my husband got there from work, because there’s absolutely no clock on the wall (have they fixed that yet?). I squished his hand a few times and he figured that maybe there shouldn’t be any more kids. I was twenty years old and he’d just turned twenty one. At that time, we were old enough to drink, but were we old enough to have a child? We were about to find out.

When they realized that all the amniotic fluid was gone, people started running and I was prepped for a cesarean section. I was told not to breathe while they injected something into my spine and then I found myself in an operating room trying not to hyperventilate. They told me that I would feel some pressure and then I heard them say, “Come look, this is the textbook example of ring band.” I wouldn’t learn what that meant until years later.

My delivery left me with an eight pound baby in an incubator, to stave off infection, and me in a bed with an antibiotic iv, unable to move around. I was the last person to see the child I helped create.

Seven days later, yea I bet you’re jealous now new mommies, I tried to leave the hospital and my body decided to bleed all over the lobby. Ok, so it wasn’t all over the lobby but it was enough to send me back upstairs for another night.

Two years later we had a child staring us down over some hair barrettes on the floor. Those of you who know Elaine, know that I pick up all those barrettes.

Elaine walked into her first day of daycare like she was the boss. She later decided to punch a kid in the nose so she could be first in line. Sigh. That child was the boss of everything. She was the first grandchild, the first great grandchild. She was everything. And she knew it!

My grandmother, who was in Puerto Rico at the time of her birth, held her in one hand while stirring the food, when I took her to the Bronx for the first time. My uncle told my grandmother to keep her voice down and Dona Maria said, “Que se acostumbre”.

My great grandfather, Papa Chago, loved the way that Elaine talked back to his daughter, Elaine’s great grandmother. I think that he missed seeing all of us, his great grandchildren, as babies. Elaine had a tataro abuelo until she was seven years old and we felt blessed.

Let the wheel of life flow, so now we have a teen aged Elaine, remember the story of baby Elaine? We have flown over the pre-teen, hormonal years, and found that this little bitch is still with us. Sigh. She now has a sister, four years younger, that Elaine feels she is the boss of. I came home from work one day to find them tangled on the floor, fighting over what to watch on the television. I stepped over them and put on my favorite channel. Yes, that urban legend is also true.

Elaine graduated from Mustard Seed School, and later from St. Dominic Academy, with an academic scholarship to Rutgers University, her mother’s alma mater.

She drove her sister to her first school dance at St. Dominic’s. She crawled into my lap, upon her return, and told me how hard it was to watch her little sister walk away from her. She appreciated how hard it was for me, as her mother, to do the same for her.

Her graduation from Rutgers College of Nursing was a moment of pride, for a person who grew up wanting to be a nurse and yet became a Social Worker. After working several years, she went on to work on her Master’s degree, making me and her sister cry over how difficult the classroom work really was, because we were there to prop her up when she wanted to give up. We celebrated over martinis at NYC’s Brooklyn Diner, where she said, “Maybe I’ll go for my doctorate.” Jillian and I asked for more martinis and prayed she wouldn’t.

Many hospitals have been made better because of her work ethic. Patients who might have died have lived  to go on to productive lives. I have survived discussions of holding someone’s guts in her hands, over dinner. I have survived discussions of liver transplant patients, over dinner. And have been exposed to many more medical terms than any medical drama on television. And yet, when she is sick, she still wants her mother’s chicken soup, which I hand over gladly.

We hit Yankee Stadium four times a season. We attend Broadway shows. We watch Marvel movies together. We viewed the finales of Sons of Anarchy and Game of Thrones together. We hit happy hour at Houlihan’s more times than we’re willing to admit. We have vacationed together. We hit the wineries twice a year. We share an iTunes library of movies and books. And my nurse daughter finds a way to always be there for family events, despite her difficult schedule.

This is my child. This is my teen. This is my adult child.

There are parts of me in her, that work so much better in her.

She is my Khaleesi and I love her three thousand.

 

 

 

 

 

The heart of the family

We all acknowledge that the mother is the heart of every family. But what do you do when the heart of your family is getting smacked with everything life can throw at her? Well, you learn to persevere. You get in the cab of the bulldozer and you learn to drive that puppy over everything in your path.

Nereida’s story is not the one you can find in a book of fairy tales. While I don’t know what the early part of her life was like, I was an eyewitness to her adult life.  A young wife, who was bullied into finishing high school by her sisters-in-law, she learned to bully back and they became sisters, without the in-law part. The conversion of Nereida Diaz into Nereida Santos had begun.

She went on to have three children with Guillo and a successful career at Prospect Hospital, the personal ER for the Santos grandchildren. She cracked the whip over all of our heads. When Titi Nereida said something, you did it. As kids we knew who to go to for nurturing, although it was a close call between Mama and Titi Ana. They became our protectors against whatever storm was brewing. We all knew that Titi Nereida and Titi Luisa (my mother) were the ones to hide from.

Guillo’s sudden death hit us all hard, none harder than Nereida who now had three children to raise by herself. Oops, did I say by herself? My mistake, you see this is the Santos Family and here you don’t have to do anything by yourself. You need help, there will be a Santos to the rescue. Wrinkled cape and all.

I’m not going to say the Santos Family is resilient in the face of tragedy, only because I don’t have to say it. I remember Mama telling Debbie to stop crying in the aftermath of Guillo’s death. This woman who had just lost another child was in the kitchen cooking. Yes, cooking. I remember Tommy headbutting my boyfriend because my lap was his, and only his. Gil, known as Kookie in those days, was concerned about the collateral damage. A true sign of the man he would become.

I slept with Debbie in the days leading up to her Daddy’s funeral and let me tell you now, Nereida’s strength of character was etched into that kid from a young age. #Ballbuster

When my parents had to go out of town, I stayed at Titi Nereida’s apartment in the Santos compound. After all, we were the South Bronx’s version of the Kennedys (ok, maybe just Beck Street’s version). Just like Titi Flora, we spent part of the day hanging in the window looking out onto Beck Street to see what everyone was up to. During one of our window sessions, Titi asked me if I had my friend yet. Not getting her meaning, and thinking that she meant to ask if I had a boyfriend, I told her that I did in fact have a boyfriend (although he may not have known it). She laughed and asked me flat out if I had my period yet. Red in the face, I admitted that no, the momentous occasion had not yet happened.

Yes, Titi could be embarrassing even without witnesses.

Again, as an eyewitness, I must admit that there were two pivotal events in Nereida’s life. One was a return to the church. She was always a woman of faith, but not always a church-goer. Upon her return, she jumped in with two feet and never looked back. She wanted me to take my comadre, for whom she had much affection, to a healing service following her MS diagnosis. Her invitation brought tears to my comadre’s eyes.

The other event was becoming a grandmother. I’ve never seen a woman take to being a grandmother faster than Titi. All of a sudden the nurturing side of her was out and in full display, and those of us who lived under her whip, found ourselves just the slightest bit jealous.  Billy, as the first, was the recipient of a lot of coddling and spoiling. So much so, that we begged her to stop when he started using those eyebrows against us.

I thank God for Gil, Debbie, and Tommy. I thank God for Billy, Alexandra, Victoria, Saadia, Ariana, Elizabeth, Antonio, and Mark. I thank God for Mitzi, Joanne, Teresa, and David.

I thank God that when her illness hit hard, she was good with Him. I thank God that she was able to see and interact with all her grandchildren. I thank God that she was not cognizant of Debbie’s illness and death, because it may have broken her. I thank God for every minute of her life. The good and the bad. Her illness took her from us way before we were ready to lose her.

She is now in the arms of our heavenly Father and restored such that we will recognize her when we enter our heavenly reward, as God has promised.

Rest in Glory, Titi.

What a difference three years makes

Over the years, conversations with my daughters seemed to take funny turns.

E: Did you know that Bobby’s taking Tae Kwon Do classes?

J: Yea, I saw that. Working on his black belt.

E: Michelle’s finishing up her mid-wife studies.

J: That is so cool.

Me: How do you guys know all this? I haven’t heard any of this.

E & J: We saw it on Facebook, Mom!

Me: Facewho?

Yea, I was definitely behind the times. I resisted digital photography for a couple of years until finally allowing my kids to gift me with a camera. Now, that camera never leaves my side. I resisted Facebook until finally allowing my kids to sign me up. I am now a Facebook slut enthusiast. Thinking that Facebook was a social network for the young, my mind was changed when I saw that it would grant me an opportunity to keep in touch with my family members, the same way my kids were. I always did hate being the last one in the know.

So, my timeline tells me that I joined on April 13, 2009. Within weeks I had added my family and co-workers and shortly after that I was posting from my phone. Learning to post pictures took me a little longer because I was embarrassed to keep asking for help from my personal IT department (aka E & J). In May 2009, a new page showed up on my feed and I “liked” it immediately. Liking Being Latino was a life changer for me (as corny as that may sound) and probably one of the better decisions I’ve ever made. Because I never know how to do things halfway, I became one of those obsessive fans; liking, commenting, and sharing posts I read on the page became a daily activity for me. It wasn’t until July 2010, when I had the opportunity to meet and speak with BL staff, that I even considered writing for them.

With my kids’ blessings, I submitted my application and my first article  posted in September 2010. Since then, I’ve discussed my separation, my divorce, and defended Being Latino against critics. I’ve attended and written about events, movies, and theater productions; I’ve made life long friends along the way, and probably pissed off a few people. I was dubbed the Social Butterfly and went on to live that nickname to the fullest.

So here we are, three years later, balancing career, passion, family, and friends while trying to get enough sleep to sustain the energized pace I have demanded from my body. And I’m having the time of my life, because, you know, it was never all about me !