A TRIBUTE TO MY DAUGHTER

A couple weeks ago, my daughter and I were having dinner, just the two of us. I asked her, “Elena, you know I wrote this book for you, right?”

“Yeah . . . I know,” she said, her voice tender, full of understanding.

Elena has witnessed my struggle over the years, my heartache at the dozens of rejections from agents and publishers, and my labor over countless rewrites. She has heard me cry that I wanted to give up. She knows how hard I worked yet all this time, I never shared the why.

After so many years—nearly ten—of writing my novel, the thought that it will be released within as little as three months is daunting: to come to end of the road of a long journey. Am I ready to switch gears to promote it, a journey of a whole other kind, from creative to sales? 

She saw my exuberant cheering when it was accepted for publication. Watched me jump up and down with joy.

I wanted to write a beautiful book. I wanted to share a story that is so inspirational and important to me to pass on this story to others. I wanted to give a gift to my father for all his patience, time and willingness to share the intimate details of his life with me so honestly.

But mostly I wrote my father’s story to share it with my daughter, so she may discover that rich and beautiful part of her heritage.

And all this time, Elena has understood the book project was in part for her. She also knows her mother is a little bit loca.

Writing Prompt:

Describe an event when a child or any other young person in your life got you, understood you in a way that surprised you.  Or: Write about your reasons for accomplishing something for others. 

COINCIDENCE OR PREMONITION—WHAT DO YOU THINK?

In my first post, I said I would write about premonitions, for the one my father experienced is an important scene in my novel. Now I invite you to read about a premonition of mine.

Since 2007, I’ve been involved with a wonderful group of women in a critique group, Writers Unanimous. In 2009, we lost one of our own. She fell asleep driving and was killed: a single vehicle accident, no other fatalities except for her dog who was traveling with her. We lost our dear Marie.

I received the news via email from one of our members. Understandably, she was too grief stricken to phone us all and unable to find her voice, she apologized that she had to share the news via an email. Perhaps you’ve received a similar message.

Fast forward seven years. I was in Disney Land with my family and a thought popped into my head that I would come home to find a similar message about someone in that group of women. It scared the hell out of me. “Please, God, when I get home, don’t let me open my email to another one of those messages—Please!” I didn’t want any harm to come to the group of women who had become such an important part of my life. “No, it’s Chuck. Something is going to happen to him,” my inner voice said. I thought of that one husband in particular; his name came to me, right there in Disney Land, the happiest place on earth. I dismissed the thought as too disturbing.

A few days after I arrived home, I received the email I feared. My beautiful and talented friend, a member of our group, had lost her husband of 57 years, the man whose name came to me. He had a massive heart attack. I had met him on only a few occasions.  One day several years ago he helped me jump start my car, and please forgive the cliché, but he had a twinkle in his eye. I’ve heard many stories about what a wonderful friend, father, husband and man Chuck was. My heart goes out to his family.

People have premonitions. When my dad was eighteen and living in Puerto Rico, he envisioned a series of five numbers. A couple days later, Caimito, the lottery ticket salesman and most popular guy in town, sauntered into Dad’s small clothing and textile store with the same number.  Dad was so sure of his premonition that he bought entire sheet of lottery tickets, all thirty “pieces” for six dollars, what it took him a decade to earn delivering pastries to the macheteros, the workers in the sugarcane fields. Incredibly, he won the jackpot. He used his winnings to transform his life: to become a dentist and change the lives of his people. When he retired many years later, many of his patients cried. 

I’ll end with a lighter thought, a funny photo of me and my daughter on that Disney trip, about to be catapulted away on California Screamin’, the fastest roller coaster I’ve ever been on. We’re four rows back—she’s the cute one smiling. I’m screaming. Literally.

And Dad’s huge premonition? It’s hard to believe but it happened. Divine intervention? Karma? I’m not religious. But I know that in my dad’s case, it was a little bit of both.

Writing prompt:

Describe a premonition. Or share a story of a promotion that someone told you about. 

HURACÃN SAN FELIPE

“What was your earliest memory, Dad?”

I posed this question during one of my many hours interviewing my father for my novel, based on his remarkable life.

“Late summer, when I was three,” he began. “Hurricane San Felipe destroyed the island. My father carried me and Lila to the Cadiz house, the only cement house in the village . . . he and Don Cadiz ripped up the floorboards so our families could hide there, in the dirt crawl space underneath the floor. It was moist, the dirt seeped into me. It was hard to breath with all those people, almost fifteen of us huddling in fear. 

“Afterwards, the town was destroyed. Trees uprooted, entire houses gone. The sheep herder never found his flock. We slept without a roof over our heads for weeks. The small grammar school was destroyed, too. There was no money to replace lost supplies. Each student received only one pencil and one writing tablet for the rest of the year . . .”

I was amazed at the accuracy of my father’s memory from only age three. Hurricane San Felipe battered Puerto Rico on September 13, 1928 and is the only cyclone to hit the island at Category 5 intensity, at winds up to 175 MPH. Click on the NOAA Hurricane Scale for an excellent depiction of storms ranging from 1 to 5 and the damage inflicted.

San Felipe is the second deadliest hurricane to impact the U.S. mainland, behind only the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, and the most powerful to strike Puerto Rico. The eye of the hurricane took eight hours to cross the island; 500,000 people were homeless in its aftermath and 312 were killed. San Felipe inflicted 50 million dollars damage in 1928, just in time for the great depression. This is another image Dad remembered, of a ten-foot pine board driven through the trunk of an African palm, from The Hurricane Hunters by Ivan Ray Tannehill (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1960)

Dad also talked about the calm before the storm, how everything was completely silent. No rustles from the leaves of the palm trees. Even the animals didn’t make a sound, the birds stopped singing.

Writing Prompt:

What’s your earliest memory? Who was there? What was the season?

SO…YOU WANT TO WRITE A STORY?

I’m about to turn fifty and if I didn’t interview my dad for my book I never would have known about my uncle, Isidro, and his tour in during World War II in the Puerto Rican 65th infantry, the most famous in the island’s history. On November 9, 1945, my father, Ramón, and his sister, Lila, drove along the southern coast of Puerto Rico to meet Isidro and the surviving members of the 65^th infantry in Ponce. After a tour of duty that took them to Panama, North Africa, Casablanca, Germany, Italy and the Maritime Alps in France, the men were coming home.

Puerto Ricans from all over the island came to Ponce to celebrate the infantry’s return. It would be the first time the siblings, Ramón, Isidro and Lila, laid eyes on each other after Isidro's spending years on the battlefield. 

Imagine the electricity in the air as islanders waved Puerto Rican and American flags and cheered and celebrated the end of the war. Music blared from roadside bars and the sangria flowed freely. Joyous pandemonium reigned.

Their reunion is one of the most moving stories my father shared, as he told me of he and his brother embracing after four years. Dad’s voice became hoarse and wistful as he recalled the events from that day, how he held his brother at arms length, how handsome Isidro looked in uniform, yet how different, older than his 26 years.

Isidro was my dad’s only brother never to have a family. And I feel a little part of Isidro in me, as if for only a moment, I’ve brought him back to life. After all, he is an ancestor, and we share DNA. I wish I had a photo of Isidro on that day, but the one below shows Ramón (age three) and Lila (age five) as she was like a little mother to my dad, and shared in this very important memory!

 

This story is for my thirteen-year-old daughter, and my nieces and nephew. Yet I have yet to share with her the reason why I wrote these stories down, turned them into a book she can read her history. Why??

Writing Prompt:

Describe a reunion with someone in your life that stands out to you. Or ask a loved one or a parent to describe a meaningful reunion to you. Share it here. 

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

“So ... why do you want to write about me?” my 80 year old father asked me ten years ago when I began to interview him.  

Why indeed. My father’s humble response shows what kind of man he is.

His story will become a novel, Luck is Just the Beginning, due to be published by Floricanto Press  in the fall. It was inspired by the true story of his remarkable luck. My father won the lottery after a premonition. But what’s more remarkable is what happened after.

What I’d like to do is to give you the story behind the novel, tell you about the real people you’ll read about and the history of Puerto Rico and its rich culture. And help you to do the same if you want. Through writing prompts and suggestions, you can tell your own story, or interview a friend, mentor, parent or grandparent.

Ramón León was born in Puerto Rico in 1925. My grandmother lost her first eight babies shortly after birth. My father was the 15^th child. No one in his family except his sister (the only girl of the 15!) completed high school. They were poor and hardworking and owned a clothing and textile store in the village of Maunabo on the southeast corner of the island. My grandmother, Abuela Chepa, sewed for villagers on special occasions, items such as a shirt or skirt selected from a dog eared Sears-Roebuck catalog.

My father did alterations, too, but at nineteen-years-old he had a dream to become a dentist. The island had few dentists and no dental school at that time. His only chance to attend dental school in the mainland U.S. was to apply for a scholarship, but only five were awarded on the island annually, a tremendous long shot.

What followed was an even wilder long shot.

Ramón León had a vision: a series of numbers came to him. He and his friend, Guillermo, were talking of playing the lottery (Guillermo did, my dad was saving as much as he could for college), and a number came to my dad, all of a sudden. It’s not that far-fetched. Abuela Chepa, who had earned the esteemed title of Doña Chepa, was a curandera, one who healed with herbs and the laying on of hands, a bruja or witch whom villagers sought for advice, cures for their ailments, even to tell their futures.  

“Hey, Guillermo, I think I just thought of the number to play in the lottery!” Dad shouted to his friend. 

I can imagine the look of Guillermo’s face when he believed Dad would finally play. 

And then the lottery salesman had the number Dad saw in his head.  So, for the first time in his life, my father was so sure that it was fate that he bought not only a single ticket, which sold for twenty cents, but the entire sheet of thirty tickets for $6.00. It was all the money he had saved since he was a boy of seven, selling pastries for a penny a piece to the macheteros, the men who wielded their machetes in the sugar cane fields. It was an enormous amount of money at the time in 1944, when most people made a dollar a day working in the cane or coffee fields.

And he won the jackpot: $18,000.

My sisters and I grew up hearing this story, so to me, it’s part of my history (I’ll write more on premonitions later), and it’s inspirational what he accomplished with the money.

He went to Michigan, barely knowing English, and completed college and dental school. After a long career, when he finally retired, many of his patients cried.

It took me nearly ten years and a dozen rewrites to complete my novel, inspired by the story of my father’s life. Luck is Just the Beginning will be in my hands by as soon as the fall. A beautiful tale. A dream come true for me, too.