JUST FIVE YEARS

I have always had this overwhelming feeling that I was born either too soon, or not late enough, but not at the right time.  Somehow, throughout my life, I have been just a bit out of step with my generation, discovering causes, issues, music well beyond the time in which they were in fashion.  I was constantly pulled in different directions, torn between the need to conform and the need to explore, yearning to reach out to touch the unknown, but tethered to the safety of the familiar.  I felt alienated from the world that I inhabited, a stranger even to myself.  When I did venture out to explore the unfamiliar and to reach people, I did so slowly and tentatively.  Then I quickly retreated into the small life and small world with which I felt comfortable.      

While my cousins protested wars in far-off   places, half a world away, while they burned their bras, sat for interminable hours without food or drink enacting the political and social views they held close to their hearts, I sat and wondered, “Where is my passion? “Where do I find the burning desire to do something, anything with any semblance of danger, excitement?”    Moving to places like San Francisco, New York City, Washington, DC – places  where life was fast paced and challenging; wearing unconventional clothing, putting flowers in their hair, these were the marks that set them even further  apart from me, at a distance I could never hope to bridge.   I yearned to be like them.  I often thought I wanted to join them, but I couldn’t.   The reality is that you can’t just pretend to be what you’re not, and  try as I might, I was too terrified of the world to venture too far from the familiar.    I was paralyzed by fear of the disappointment I might cause should I veer too far off course and lose myself in the process.  Instead, I plodded along, never questioning, never challenging. And the reality was that my time had passed.

 The Sixties, a pivotal period during which I said goodbye to the warm protective world of childhood and embarked on a journey that would lead me to adulthood, whirled around me, moving much too fast, leaving me disoriented and unbalanced.    I escaped from the whirlwind by keeping busy, very busy.  I buried what little I had discovered about myself under the veil of conformity that avoided confrontation, avoided discord, and avoided disappointment to my family.   I hurried to grow up, aimed for the lofty ideals shared by my parents and grandparents but not by my generation, believing that by reaching that “pinnacle,” I would find acceptance and a sense of belonging.   I was a walking motto.   I was responsible, reliable, forthright and frugal.   Get a job; go to school; save money.  These were the choices I laid out for myself, .   I got a job; I went to school and I saved money.    I was molding myself into someone I thought others wanted, never thinking about whom I wanted to be, never becoming comfortable with one or the other.                      

Ever watch a marching band, with the guy with the tuba hopelessly out of step with the rest of  the band, struggling under the weight of his enormous instrument, desperately trying to pick up the beat?  That was me.  Yet, I sensed overwhelmingly that had I been born at little later, 4, 5 years, everything would have been OK.  I would have been right in step.

 Do I ascribe greater significance to the heavens that existed in one year than to the heavens that existed in another?  Do I ascribe some magical transformative power to one birth date versus another?   Possibly. Within my family’s framework, I was the bridge to the next generation, too young to be part of the lives of my younger aunts and uncles, but too old to hangout with my hip, more tuned-in cousins.  I was sandwiched between them, but just out of reach of either.    My aunts and uncles who had at one time been my earliest companions, moved away, grew up, married and had children.  Yet my cousins, truly my generation, were too young to fill the void, or so it seemed, as the closest one in age was only three years younger.    Three years doesn’t seem such a big difference, but for an adolescent, for a young adult, the difference was huge, an unbridgeable chasm.    As years passed, the chasm lost its enormity, but the imprint it had on relationships never did.

I was always disturbed and puzzled as to why I felt so strongly that I was born at the wrong time.   It wasn’t actually a feeling, though -- not intellectual, but visceral.  I don’t quite remember when it started.   I recognized that the answer lay somewhere, someplace in a time that I couldn’t remember.  Then one day, shortly after my mother’s death, as I was going through some of her few and humble possessions, I happened upon an old, fading black and white photograph, fragile with age, cracking and torn at the edges.  I held the picture tenderly, afraid that it would disintegrate and the time that it captured, so illusory, so delicate, would vanish.   It held an image of a young boy and a little girl.  The boy must have been four, possibly five years of age; the girl, no more than two.  It must have been summer, judging by the clothes they wore.    The little girl, with a pretty cherubic face,  had a bandana covering her head, more for affect than function.  The little boy was sitting on a tricycle, leaning forward as if preparing to take off, his feet on the pedals, his hands gripping the handlebar.    She was leaning against his back, holding his shoulders for support, one foot on the back step of the tricycle.  His face was in profile; hers was turned toward the camera, her cheek tenderly resting against the back of his head.   She was centered in the photograph, the obvious subject.   He was just a prop, a backdrop.  Behind the children, there was the image of three females.  They were sitting on concrete steps leading to what was the porch of a house, two on the first step, one on the second, ageless in the blur of the photograph, but in life young, as the sameness of their clothing suggested school uniforms.  With a jolt of memory, the photograph transported me backwards.

In 1945,  my mother and father were new arrivals in the United States.  They were not part of a prevailing culture.   With the Second World War raging, immigration, especially in the Southeastern United States, was not commonplace.   Their move to this country was not entirely voluntary - at least not from my father’s point of view. 

He was 29 years old, reasonably successful with good financial prospects, well able to provide his new bride, my mother, with many of the same comforts into which she was born.  They had a house, belonged to clubs, enjoyed the companionship of two large extended families and the familial comforts afforded by the closely knit community in which everyone knew everyone else, and in many cases were related by birth or by marriage.  My father was happily ensconced in the white-suited, male oriented culture of Cuba in the first half of the 20^th Century.    He could not imagine why anyone would want to leave.   I remember his reminiscence.  “Life was good,” he’d say.  “You worked hard, but you lived well.  You took life in measure.  Work a little, rest a little, and play a little.  Not too much, not too little, just enough,” he would tell me.  He had been a minor celebrity, or so I heard from others who knew him.   He had a beautiful, melodious voice; he was often invited to sing at local clubs and was a frequent performer for a local radio station.   He had a reputation of being a hopeless romantic.  He was a ladies man, endearing himself to their gentle sensibilities with midnight serenades, putting his emotions and sentiments to music.    

“ Cuba was the pearl of the Caribbean,” my mother told me.  She described her homeland in detail and would do so often, as if willing me to remember things I had never experienced.  Her images were so vivid, that I could see, I could smell, I could feel the hot Caribbean sun beating my flesh, and then miraculously sense the cool gentle breezes that came with nightfall.   Despite not having lived them,, the images became part of my faint, distant memories.  Cuba, with its green lush mountains, rustling palm trees and sweetly fragrant guava trees, bathed by the soft salty breezes from the Caribbean Sea, was a tropical paradise, populated by warm, happy, fun-loving people.   A sad silence engulfed my mother whenever she spoke about her homeland, her life there, her old friends, her home, and sometimes, thinking I would not notice, she would let a soft wistful sigh escape.  I don’t know if she realized that memories often sanitize and sanctify, often making us long for things, places and people whose essence exists only in imagined memories.   Regardless, what really mattered was that the memories were sweet, nostalgic and perhaps therapeutic.   

She was born in Guantanamo, a city nestled in the laid-back, countrified southeastern tip of the island.  Except for brief sojourns into nearby towns or into the country to visit relatives, the first time she traveled any distance away from the place of her birth was a visit to Havana on her honeymoon.  It’s so hard to imagine now, with jet travel and technology shrinking the world into a spans of hours and minutes, that she had never left the island.   In her time and culture, travel was something only the very wealth did for pleasure, and others out of necessity.  Even if she had been wealthy, it is doubtful her father, a stalwart of old-world culture, would have allowed her to go too far outside the reach of her own community of family and friends.   My mother was intelligent, loved learning, and was an excellent student.   When she outgrew the educational opportunities available in her town, rather than send her off to far away places beyond his influence and protection, into a world he perceived to be full of temptations and peril, her father sought out and hired tutors to keep her intellectual fires burning.  This he felt would keep her happy and content until she married.   She was the oldest of 14 children, and he, my grandfather, was a strong-willed, old-world patriarch who valued family and loyalty as much as he valued honor and honesty.   My mother was his favorite, her sisters, my aunts, have often told me, not without a hint of jealousy.  But, he did love them all, they would quickly add.  

My paternal grandfather’s family  had emigrated from Corsica to the New World in the 1860’s, specifically to Puerto  Rico, where he and his siblings (3 brothers and one sister) were born.   Early in his adolescence, he became his family’s patriarch, and seeking better opportunities, move to Cuba.    So the decision to move the family to the United States was not totally foreign to him. His decision was made in the hopes of stemming the decline of his financial resources and making a fresh start.  My grandfather moved to the US in 1943, with the rest of the family to move shortly thereafter.    My parents married in early 1944.  My mother  had left the safe haven of her childhood home, had just embarked on a new unfamiliar role as wife and homemaker, and was  ill-equipped to emotionally to handle the of separation.  The thought of her family’s impending departure totally undermined her sense of comfort, security and well-being.  Being left behind, not being in close proximity to her family was more than she could bear.  She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, and she implored my father to follow.     Reluctantly, concerned about leaving his own family, giving up his own circle of comfort and familiarity, he acquiesced, knowing that ultimately his happiness was dependent on hers.   My parents soon found themselves on the shores of a land, not so distant in miles, but so distant in language, culture, and even climate.

  The culture they left was barely on the periphery of a world war; the culture into which they entered was totally dominated by it.   There were food shortages, ration books, blackouts.  The war had taken its toll on the economy and good jobs, especially for someone with poor language skills. This was not what they had expected, I have been told.  It was worse, much worse, and, they were about to become parents.  Overnight, it seems, life became hard, very hard.  There are times when I think about my father, and I truly believe he never fully adjusted nor fully recovered from the hardship and the stress of those first years.

     I was born at home, in a huge old Victorian house in Ybor City, just outside of Tampa, Florida.   My grandfather had bought this house to accommodate his large family.  My mother had never been in a hospital, and when it was time for me to be born, she refused to leave the house.  So, that’s where I was born in the wee hours of the morning with the able assistance of a midwife.  It was a house brimming with people, including my parents, my grandparents, of course, twelve aunts and uncles (the youngest not even two years older) and an aunt by marriage.  The group also included one of my grandfather’s younger brothers and his wife and five children.  They occupied a smaller house next door. 

  There they were, all of them waiting in the parlor for the sounds announcing my arrival.  The future monarch of a vast and powerful kingdom would probably not have had as many people awaiting her birth, and you would have thought that with all of the births my family had witnessed, mine would have been a passing ripple in their daily routine.  Instead, I became a novelty, the object of incessant attention and concern, the center of their universe. 

During those early years, I lived in a protective cocoon.  It is short of miraculous that I learned to walk or to talk. I didn’t need to.  There was always a pair of arms wanting to hold me, a set of legs taking me for walks, someone anticipating my every need.  When one became bored or tired of me, there was always someone else to take his or her place.  Two faces, which are frozen in time for me, frozen in their youthful radiance, readily come to mind.  My beloved playmate, George, an uncle just barely two years older, so perfect in my eyes, with smooth, glistening olive skin, dark moody eyes, jet-black hair, my constant companion, my most favorite person in the whole world, the center of my little universe.  And another uncle, Gregory, so handsome, so strong, so gentle.  How I loved it when he lifted me up above his head and turned round and round and round until, through my giggles I begged to be put down.  I was the first one he asked to see when he came home from work, his green eyes lively and loving, and he never failed to kiss me goodnight.  My playful uncle, Emilio, Millo for short, was also a favorite,  Once he promised me a teddy bear from the county fair, and he didn’t disappoint, as he walked in with a Panda bear three times my size.  I loved them so.   

  I was 4 years old when, like a rapidly eddying pool, all of the loving hands and arms and faces that gave me so much love and comfort disappeared from my life.  I was too young to understand that what happening  was not instantaneous, that the event had been a long time coming, had been planned and rehearsed, but I didn’t know.   All I remember is a sense of panic and abandonment.  Even today, there are moments, particularly saying goodbye, even for a short period of time, when a cold flash of panic washes over me and I beg for one last kiss, one last hug.  Maybe that’s why for years I eschewed intimacy, protected my privacy, and had difficulty forging close relationships.  The prospect of loss was so threatening..

 Once again, my grandfather, that strong willed patriarch, revered and obeyed by his children without thought of consequence, had decided to move, and that meant the whole family.  The country was in recovery from World War II and the economy was growing, but the economic climate in Tampa had not been kind, and his business ventures had failed to flourish.  With the clouds of unrest forming on the horizon once more, this time in the Far East, if he was to make another move, it had to be now.   This time, though, much to my mother’s dismay and sorrow, my father said, “No, this time we cannot go.”    I don’t remember much.  My memories are wrapped up in emotion, feelings rather than thoughts and facts.  But I do remember my mother crying.  Sad, empty, hollow, are the emotion-laden words that I conjure up when I try to recall that time in my life.  Perhaps I’ve buried other memories.  I don’t know.  I went to sleep in a house full of vitality, laughter and chaos and I woke to find a house in turmoil, people talking in loud staccato voices, suitcases and boxes everywhere.  Some crying, some murmuring, some arguing—nothing that I could truly understand.  A truck in the driveway.  Men loading.  Crying, murmuring, arguing—those are the flashbacks.    A little later, amidst hugs and tears, the house drifted into solemn silence.  The people that made up most of my world were gone.  My mother was inconsolable.  I knew something terrible had happened, but didn’t know what, or the affect this might eventually have on me. 

My universe had shrunken to a world of three, and this world was now permeated with a strained and strange silence that would often go on for days on end between my mother and father.   No one took note of me, heightening my feeling of abandonment.  My mother was too overtaken by emotions to take notice of me, and my father was too busy trying to buoy her spirits while working two jobs to notice my discomfort.   My mother’s grieving did not end.  She became engulfed by a melancholia from which she never escaped.  My father threw himself into his work to escape her unhappiness.   As for me, the people dearest to me, beside my parents, were gone.  I was alone.  We were alone, my mother and me.     I, ever fearful that she might leave me too, did not venture too far from her sight.  My mother, becoming increasingly dependent on my companionship, did nothing to comfort me nor to encourage my independence.   I became her shadow, her best friend.    I guess that’s also when I began to “take care of her”, keeping her from being so lonely, trying to make her happy, not knowing that in the process I was giving up myself.

Express Yourself

Express yourself, speak your mind, and free your soul!


During my teens, when my neuroses were just beginning to emerge, when my hormones created a constant manic-depressive state of mind, I turned to writing as an outlet. Rather than act out, color my hair red, sneak vodka from the liquor cabinet, I stole into my room, slipped onto the corner of my bed, my back against the way, knees raised in front of me to support my writing tablet, and I wrote. What I wrote, in retrospect, was probably more dribble than substance, not worthy for anyone else to read. But for me the words I put on the page, hurriedly and sloppily, so as not to lose the thought, were for me, prize-worthy. Those words were my companion, my reality and, my therapy. Any angst I suffered dissipated once the words began to flow. With those words, I created the world as I saw it, as I wanted it to be, and with my words I became whomever I thought I could be. At worse, with my words I extracted from my teenage soul all the bad energy that courses through a teenager’s cells. And, often I emerged from those pilgrimages into solitude with a clearer mind and a fresher outlook. In my generation, girls wrote diaries; then the diaries became journals. Every young girl received a “journal” as a gift at some point in her life. I eschewed the diary and the journal. I needed more space to capture my thoughts; the pages of the diary and the journal were too small. My writing wanted to SHOUT and jump off the page.





Then life happened, college, marriage, children, homework to oversee. Writing lapsed into a once a year event and only out of guilt... a few chosen words of endearment, a brief apology for not keeping in touch with promises to do better, only to relapse again, year, after year, after year. Every once in a while I wrote a masterful yearly summary of life's events. The words flowed, the emotions were touching and the warmth palpable, at least to me.



I did manage to make a living by writing, but it was not creative, it was not cathartic and it was devoid of inspiration. I became a technical writer, no byline, no credits. Mine was a “if this, then that” type of writing, used to express what users wanted from a computer program or what users need to do in order to use that program.



Now that I’m in the third third of life, the kids are grown and the long hours editing term papers and correcting grammar are long gone. Grandchildren are here, but some one else is doing the editing. I have once again discovered the therapy of writing. It affords me a way of expressing myself in a manner that spoken words cannot. I am more eloquent, more honest and more at ease when I’m writing. Despite my age, my maturity and life experiences, the same fears that gripped me at 14 still exist deep inside me, and my writing allows me to express and deal with these fears in a safe, non-judgmental manner. I can deal with long forgotten injuries, unfulfilled dreams, diminished aspirations, as well as the vicissitudes of life that keep tripping me up on my way to a nirvana that I know is just one good merciful act away.



My computer is my ally. What could I have done with spell-check, with grammar check all those years ago? I have embraced the internet as my new best friend, but at the same time, I do deplore it for the damage its expedience has wrought upon our language. While it has opened the world of information and opportunities, and like no other tool before, tremendously facilitated dialogue, it has also engendered a disregard for the beauty and subtlety of language. I bemoan how the internet—so egalitarian and utilitarian, so accessible, so valuable—has muted our ability to converse and express ourselves with well-striking appropriate language. We’re in a hurry, we “gotta send,” “gotta respond.” LOL, OMB, BTW, it’s a wonder anyone can still pass a spelling test.



We no longer write letters; we use the email, which is great, so quick so efficient and so cheap. But the price we pay for expedience has been at the expense of our eloquence. We now talk in LOL’s, OMG’s, BTW’s...We’ve lost our voice.



In my own way, I want to preserve the eloquence; I want to find a voice that will outlast me.



I remember the notes my mother treasured, notes from my father when he was courting her. I remember as a child sitting with her in moments of nostalgia that dominated her attention. I remember the delicate paper, the creases that obliterated parts of words, the musty smell, but most of all I remember her voice as she read the words to me... every once in a while skipping a line or two. During those moments, she stepped back into history, her history, and relived the feelings and the sentiments those written words had once conveyed. I no longer have these missives to enjoy. They were too fragile and due to lack of proper care did not survive the test of time, and whatever was in them died just as my mother did, leaving only faint recollections. But, while they existed, she treasured them.



How many of today’s generation, 50 years from now, will ever experience that retreat into their own history, will ever be transported by the touch, the smell of an old letter, of a loved one’s words jumping from the page, evoking timeless emotions, memories, and the sense of having someone watching over your shoulder? How many will discover the crushed petals of a flower within the faded pages of a love note?



My late husband was a warm and loving person, but a man of few words. He did have a knack for finding just the right card with just the right sentiments to give for special occasions. But when he died, those old and yellowed cards were of little comfort. I needed his words, not Hallmark’s. I desperately needed something more substantial to sustain me, to allow me to hold on a little longer to the past too rapidly slipping away. I went through all our shared mementos, but never felt the connection that I needed to help me in my grief. I longed for one last conversation. I desperately needed to "hear" his voice, listen to his words. Yet, there was nothing. Then one day, my sister-in-law, in an effort to comfort me in my grief, sent me a letter he had written to her many years before his death. In it he wrote of his life, his family, his trials and tribulation in a way that he could only share with a person whose history was so intertwined with his. It was never intended for my eyes, but now reading his thoughts justified my grief and reassured me that the memories I harbored were indeed genuine and real. I read the letter, and then read it again and again, each time deriving more comfort from the sight of his handwriting, and the “sound” of his thought floating off the page, and savoring an unbroken connection.





Thus, I want to leave a little part of me, that part of me that isn’t visible, but palpable only by an intensely perceptive soul. I want to leave something of myself, my true self—evidence of who I am, who I wanted to be, who I might have been.



So, for my children, my friends, I begin to write.





M.