Fell In Love With My Parents Again

SAN FRANCISCO (Herald de Paris) – The day after Christmas is always hard on us kids. Seven years ago our mom passed away after making the ultimate Puerto Rican dinner – visceral and intrinsic flavors we will never experience again this side of heaven.

My younger sister is the keeper of the family archives and she recently found a treasure trove of pictures. Pictures that document the life and times of George and Rose, the couple who enjoyed a love supreme, who dreamed dreams, and who lived a life of obscurity. They provided the rich soil from which we grew up and grew strong.

As a gift, my older brother took all of their black and white wedding photos and did a DVD presentation. Complete with a Nat King Cole standard ballad, it was orchestrated to pull the tears of remembrance from the depth of my soul. This is a place that has been battered and beaten down through post modern nihilism and the urban Darwinistic business acumen, usually resulting in A-list success.

In an aluminum framed black and white 8X10 taken in Hawaii, a 1948 Desoto is front and center with the suicide doors wide open. Like a stop-the-presses newsreel shot, the back seat reveals a nineteen year old Rosie in her wedding dress, veil pulled back, smiling the smile that gave me life. Next to her is an ecstatic twenty-something George: white tuxedo and a bow tie, his puffy raven hair was Ricky Ricardo black. In his eyes he somehow knew that someday, no matter what, things were going to be all right for him, his adored wife, and for the kids he hoped to have. In his countenance was a confidence that his will, his sense of honor, discipline, and a faith stronger than an iron pipe would somehow prevail.

Our grandparents were Hawaiian Puerto Rican farm workers and maintained the Puerto Rican traditions of the late 1800’s. Their arrival in Hawaii around 1890 was a result of 60,000 Puerto Rican farm workers being sent to Hawaii to work as indentured servants; a hurricane had erased most of the agriculture in PR. The PR’s in Hawaii did not socio-culturally progress the way that Puerto Rico did. The enclave of the island kept things frozen in time like a Dole Pineapple.

My dad played Hawaiian and PR Jibaro-rural folk music. Dad, a weekend musician, knew that in Hawaii the Japanese running the island were nepotistic and racist against low end Puerto Ricans. They would limit his new son and his yet-to-be-born children’s ability to achieve the kind of success he prayed for. Young Rosie and George left the Island with a son who has become the presiding Superior Court Judge in one of the largest judiciaries in the country.

George knew how to dream big dreams. Stoic and dignified, Dad showed arms’ length affection to the boys while my two sisters were adored just like their mama. As we grew up we didn’t think Pop was emotionally engaged, but now I’ve seen that he kept every news clippling, every sports mention in the local paper, and took a volume of snapshots with comments. I see those pictures now and see him differently – with a clarity of character I always needed. If I had seen those pictures back in the day I would be different now.

I never realized how beautiful Mom was, and how young she was when she was raising five kids. She was chronically troubled by a serious back problem that had resulted from a traffic accident in her late teens. Mom was an avid reader and very political. In a photo I had never seen she is pictured on one side with her dad, Grandpa Carlos in a Godfather hat, and Dad on the other side. Grandpa Carlos was a man who petitioned Puerto Rico to stop sending farmworkers to Hawaii because of the slave-like conditions. Is is so suprising then, that one of Rosie’s sons was a minister of information for a local Brown Berets chapter in the 70’s?

I almost lost my breath when, in each faded black and white shot, I saw how much my parents really loved each other. One of the text books I assigned to one of the university classes I teach is a book on body language used by the FBI. Through my dad’s silent example, I know now that I love my wife based on Dad’s precedent – something that can only be taught by deed and not by word alone.

Dad was physically frail, yet he was handsome and a smooth talker. At great risk he moved his wife and son from Hawaii to San Francisco, then raised the rest of us in the housing projects. He took another leap of faith and transplanted us into the suburbs and took pictures along the way. Pictures that I had never really seen until yesterday. I’m different today and forever because I have fallen in love with my parents again.

edited by Susan Aceves

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