You Have 2 Dads?

Luisa and I have been catching up on our DVR recordings of "This Is Us" recently.  It was a show we used to watch religiously with an amazing script, great acting and themes that manage to pull the strings of all of our emotions.  

Our viewing of that show came to a screeching halt in 2018 when we began to experience the severe emotional pain of our own loses in our family and we could not bear to add salt to those very painful wounds.  We had something like 24 episodes that continued to record and last night, on March 11th, we caught up with the episode where they were trying to deal with the recent diagnosis of their mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis. 

In the episode, Randall, is dealing with the pain of the loss of his 2 fathers (biological and adopted), not knowing his biological mother, and now having to deal with losing his adopted mother to this horrible disease.

He makes the statement of his two fathers, and immediately I mention to Luisa that it reminded me of an incident that occurred with our youngest son Nick when he was about 5 years old. 

Nick has always been the very positive going person that always sees the glass half full in everything.  "Nick, how did you do in your test today?" we would ask.  To which we would get a thumbs up and a response of "Great!".  Only later for us to come to the realization that he had actually bombed it... but hey, always the eternal optimist.

He had a kid in class that told him that he had 2 dads.  His biological dad and his step dad because his mother had recently re-married.  Nick thought that was so amazing that he told his friend, "You have 2 Dads?", "That is AWESOME!".  

It left quite an impression on the kid that he told his mother and his mother let us know that same day  how wonderful and receptive Nick was to this fact and that it meant a lot to them how cool Nick's reaction was.

I then thought of my own two dads.  My father, Rafa, who would have turned 84 on February 23rd of this year and who I lost in April 2018, and my father in law, Miguel, who passed away on March 11, 2019 and has a birthday coming up shortly.  Having woken up on the 11th full of emotions and Facebook reminders of his passing, only to be reminded further of this loss when watching this episode.

Both of them impacted me in so many ways that I would not be the father I am today without them in my life.

To learn from Nick's eternal optimism of having a glass half full, I try not to be depressed about losing both of my dads during this time and thought about how great they were.  About how much I appreciated the fact that I had two amazing father figures that I will be eternally grateful to have and for the constant reminders of who they were, how much they were loved and how much they both loved me.

I miss them both dearly along with all of the laughter's we shared. 

Next month, on April 2nd, will be the painful reminder of coming home from FL and not seeing my dad alive one last time or holding his hand as he departed this earth.  The following month will be the reminder of my mom joining him after her more than 12 year battle with Alzheimer's.

Finally, in the episode, Randall is struggling with his mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis and how he needs to do everything possible to not lose her like he lost everyone else.  It was a painful reminder of my attempt to want to take mom to an Alzheimer's specialist 3 hours away to get her into a clinical trial.  I could not bare the thought of not doing everything I could for my mother to prevent the desease that would ultimately take her life.  I remember clearly the day that I left her house, after having driven back from Charleston and concluding, on my way to my own house, that it was not something we could put mom through.  

The torture of putting her through 3.5 hour trips each way, to a clinic where she would undergo the additional stress of having to answer questions such as who is the president, what day is it, what is your birthday... 2 x per week, and then to be exposed to untested medicine that could give her serious side-effects, or maybe worse yet, the hope given by what could in the end be just a placebo that would not have cured her, was just unimaginable for me.  I could not do that to her.  

Randall has not come to this conclusion yet, but that was the day I concluded I was losing my mom and I was powerless to do anything about it.  One of the most painful days I have ever experienced and to some extent, even more so than when she actually passed away.

In this one episode, Luisa and I saw and replayed in our minds, everything that we had recently experienced in our lives.  It was a definitely case of Life imitating Art and Art imitating Life.

The Morning Sun

Having camped overnight many times over the years with my Eagle Scout sons, there is something heartwarming about waking up and seeing the sun come up, to warm the earth and your soul after a very cold, dark night.  Waking up to the prospect of a new beginning, no matter what the night before has bestowed on you, the chills of the cold air, the strange sounds of the howling winds and exposed outdoors, the dark shadows that make you paranoid and seeing things.

In the past when our country was in crisis, such as the 9/11 attacks, the Oklahoma and Atlanta Olympic bombings, the Emanuel AME church shooting and most recently when we saw our own citizens assault the Capitol building with the sole intent of silencing the voice of the many for the idealistic rights of the few, we have always expected and relied on our leaders to rise up to the occasion and lead us out of the darkness.  Even if it is a darkness that we, Americans, have ourselves created or made worse by the absolutely disastrous way we have behaved during this pandemic.

As I write this post, to lose more than 400,000 of our grandparents, parents, siblings, children, family members, all of them citizens and/or members of this incredible nation and not have leaders show empathy and unity that has inspired us to come together in the past and do what is right for one another is a national disgrace.  To not be able to rely upon our elected leaders to amass the full power of our Federal Government, and guide us out of this never-ending darkness has been painful to experience and a crying shame.

Tonight, as I watched and cried during the memorial tribute lead by the upcoming administration, I was not thinking about how many of the white lights representing the 400,000 lives were republican or democrat but how we were all one and the same.  The same members of this invincible nation that had suffered during past trauma and how for the first time in over 4 years, we will have the unified empathy of a nation, to come together and have hope that tomorrow, with the Morning Sun, we will be able to see the light that will take us out of this darkness we have been living through.

That the battle for the soul of our country has been won, by those that remember the dark days past and how we have been inspired to overcome the darkness of prior times.  That we can rise up to the occasion, turn the corner, and be the beacon of light that America has been in the past not just to ourselves, but to the world.

For as it is so appropriately stated in our Constitution: 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

God Bless America.

In Good Times and In Bad, Till Death Do Us Part

On December 15th, 1962 my parents took their vows in Holy matrimony at la Parroquia Nuestra Señora de la Monserrate in Jayuya, Puerto Rico.  Not sure of what their life was going to be like or where it would take them, they went on a journey that can only be described as a very rough start, an incredible ride, and a rough ending with the terminal disease that would eventually take my mom.  

The beginning of their life together was hard during that time.  Clearly a sign of the times in the small mountain town of PR but also due to the hard life they were living.  From very poor beginnings, where my mom literally lived down the mountainside from Dad, being 6 years older than her, he would see her grow up with her dad on dirt floors in a single room wooden house, at times he would tell us that he knew she went days without food because of how poor they were.  

Mom lost her own mother when she was 6 and was forced to live away from her dad until she was 11.  Only to come back to help take care of the house, her father and her brothers until she met Dad who was her first real love and the man that would mean the world to her all the way until she would eventually forget even who he was.  

Early in our years I recall that while dad was clearly "the man of the house", dad depended on mom for being the rock that he leaned on during their struggles.  However in the end, he was the rock she hung unto and could not let go. 

The phrase, "lo que tu padre diga", i.e, "whatever your dad says", was very common at home.  She would not make a decision without him, but if the decision was not what we were looking for, mom would go up to bat for us, speaking with dad separately until she convinced him and he caved to what we wanted.

My parents were very humble, honorable, serious, funny, dependable, strict but extremely loving.  While Dad was the provider of the house, Mom was the care giver.   Mom was also the Jiminy Cricket of the family, always saying either "Rafa" or "Rafy - to me" if he and I were to say something that was inappropriate or she did not agree with.  We should be better than that.  

Dad was the comedian whose jokes sometimes went too far.  When he developed cancer in 2011, he lost his hair and he had a picture with he and mom in it.  As mom was losing her memory, he would put her on the spot and ask her, who was the bald guy in the picture with her?  Mom of course had no idea it was he but that didn't stop him from asking and then laughing when we yelled at him for doing that to her.

Their faith unwavering, Dad always prayed for a miracle cure for mom's illness.  After all, if his prayers helped him beat cancer twice, why would they not help her.  One time I asked Mom, as I was putting her to bed and she was already beginning to forget who I was, if she believed in God.  Her answer was an immediate, and resounding "Why, Of course".

My life, our life, with Mom and Dad had lots of moments of incredible happiness and dark moments of despair, pain and agony especially as we helped them through their final stages of life on this earth.  However, the one thing we never doubted was how much they truly loved each other.

Today, we would have been celebrating their 58th wedding anniversary if they were here.  Instead we look at pictures and are grateful for their very true endless love until the very end.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad.  Missing you in ways I cannot describe. 

What happened to our Moral Compass?

One day, we will all look back and wonder, what happened.  How did we get here?  How did we get so wrapped up in our own "individuality" and caring only about "What's in it for me" that we forgot the shared values of being an American with others desiring the same goals?  Others that have the same dreams to be given the same opportunity to go as far as we can through Liberty and Justice FOR ALL.  How did we actually lose the content of our character and the direction of our moral compass?    

As Americans, compared to other countries founded on a specific "cultural identity" I remember when we adored the melting pot of a whole America, where we learned to appreciate, respect, value and actually benefit from others that are different from us but were united in a common goal and mission.  When we were the beacon of the world that made others aspire to be part of our great political experiment.

How did we end up worrying solely about the unborn but not really caring for them once they joined us in this world?  545 kids in cages still unaccounted for.  For those that don't trust the "local" news, here is the story from the BBC, so you can still see it from the eyes of the world as they gaze upon us.   

It is not about who built the cages but how and why they are being used.

That is clearly not what Matthew 19:14 says.  Again since we are only interested in viewing this through our own respective  lenses: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew 19:14.  While the words may be slightly different there should be no doubt that the meaning is the same.  That we are all, Children of God.

With the Pandemic of 2020, the most vulnerable is our aging population, not to mention our healthcare workers.  While I am comforted that my parents are not around to be exposed to this disease, which would have definitely taken their lives given their health problems, how can we as a country not do everything we could to protect those lives we value so dearly?  I remember seeing this politician say he would give his life to protect the economy and way of life, and wondering why would we even debate this.  Why did we feel we had to choose one over the other?  This is America!  The nation that put a man on the moon!

As we get closer to this election my hope is that we all look deep inside and remember who we are as a people and what really unites us.  During 9/11, we huddled together and cried over our nation's shared loss of 2,977 lives.  With a pandemic that is currently taking this many lives roughly almost every 3 days, and more than 230,000 of our loved ones so far, as it continues to ravage our country.

America is not about a single person or a specific President.  It is about We the People.  It is about us getting together to take care of each other, to respect each other, to Love each other and what we strive for. To make a more perfect union.  Not that it is perfect but that it can be improved, by valuing everything we contribute to it as a society and as a diverse nation.

Words matter.  Our Behavior matters.  Our Soul matters.  Our Moral Compass matters.  

In my final words, I voted, not just for me and for my own values but to represent the over 3 million US citizens and primarily my family living in Puerto Rico that can’t vote for themselves.  

Mater artium necessitas

According to the UK website phrases.org.uk, the phrase "Necessity is the mother of invention", which they say translates to "Difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions" and appears to have been documented in Plato's Republic, but has also been traced back to it's first Latin use back in 1519.

Back in about 1990, when Dan was about a year old, I was talking with my sister-in-law Denise about how difficult it was to load the car with all of the stuff we had to carry, such as the car seats, diaper bags, extra clothes, and not to mention the 20 lbs. 1.5 year old, who was dead weight when he fell asleep!  We thought, wouldn't it be great if we did not have to lug the car seat and could just put the child in a seat built into the car?  Lo and behold, in '92, Chrysler introduced the built-in child seat for toddlers with other manufacturers following suit.

As an early teen, I was always inquisitive and curious. Wanting to know more about how things worked. I had a chemistry set and tried to make lava spew out of a volcano only to have it just go up in smoke. Literally, with a strong smell of sulfur requiring the windows to be opened for a long while.

Later in my years, not knowing the difference between AC and DC, I took an old car stereo and wired up an AC plug to it and plugged it into my outlet in my parent's apartment. Needless to say, I blew a fuse and my dad's gasket at the same time when the spark burned the wall.

As a junior in high school, I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, with the cassette tape drive (I could not afford the slow floppy disk, until at least a year later) and would spend hours typing in by hand the hex codes of a game from the Compute magazine I bought so I can learn to program and play a game at the same time. Oh how frustrating it was to transpose the digits in the magazine during the hours, if not days input, only to get an error and then having to go back and re-enter the thing again.

To think that I actually contemplated going to a music college to pursue a degree in music when all along, my calling was to become an engineer. Had I done so, I don't think I would have woken up so many times at night, to scribble something on a notepad that I was dreaming about, so I can remember that thought the next morning.  Even today, I wake up in the morning, mind racing, about a problem I worked on the day before, only to get a good night's rest and the inspiration to solve that which puzzled me for hours the day before.

Thomas Edison once said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

Today I came across a news article about a new mailbox alert sensor that Amazon is releasing a week from today.  The sensor, which is something they are adding to support their sidewalk wireless service that has been in deployment for the past several years, will tie to the Ring and Echo platforms and notify users when a person opens the mailbox.

It immediately brought back memories of a project Dan and I worked on when he was in elementary school which we called "You've Got Mail", pun intended.

Dan, I guess Edison was right.  We should have never given up.  We were sooo close! What should we do next?

Spread Your Wings

Last weekend, Luisa and I officially became empty nesters.  We moved Nick and Erin to their new place so they can begin their new life.  The following day, Erin immediately started graduate school and Nick started a new job.  My back is still in pain from the heavy furniture we moved up about 34 steps.  This of course, is to remind me of both the hard labor of last weekend and the excitement we had for them starting their new adventure and the next phase of their life together.

I remembered when I moved out of my own parents home to my first apartment right before Luisa and I got married.  The thrill of the new place that I called my own, and the uncertainty of what was to come next.  I remembered flipping all of the lights on in the entire place because I could and then coming to the realization, "Hey, I'm paying for this now.  It costs money." and then shutting off the lights except for the room I was in.

Luisa and I have been waiting for this moment, to begin our own next phase of our life for quite some time.  Not because we were anxious for both of our sons to leave, but because this is what parents are supposed to do.  Put all of their time, energy and focus in their children. Raising them to be independent and to think for themselves but to nurture them with a foundation that allows them to be amazing adults and contributing members of our society.  To take the best of what we have taught them, to learn from where we fell short, and to strive to do better than the previous generations that have come before them.

I have a lot of bird feeders around the house including a humming bird one right outside the kitchen window.  I am amazed at how many birds surround our house and enjoy viewing them as I drink my coffee.  I have a special affinity to the Cardinals and have written about their visits in past posts, reminding me of my parents who lived at Cardinal Woods Way.

In Erin and Nick's new place, they have a very cool patio area and for all of the grief that Nick gives me about how I love the birds, he mentioned that they can get some bird feeders and place it there so they can watch the birds come to feed as well :)

I couldn't help but think of the symbolism of the birds I constantly watch to Nick and Erin leaving their respective homes to start their new adventure and life in a new place.  In a Boston University Blog post, entitled Nature vs Nurture: How do baby birds learn how to fly?, the author wrote:

Nick and Erin, on behalf of both sets of parents, I am sure we have done everything we could to help nurture you, and to prepare you for this stage of your life.  I am sure there are things we could have done differently or even better but I am also sure that what we did, was with the best intentions we had for you, with our mutual interest in giving you everything we could and to help position you to succeed and to better than we have done for ourselves or our parents did for us.

To Nick, when mom and I made a decision to move from NJ to SC almost 27 years ago, it was for Dan and for YOU even though we did it almost 2 years before you were born.  We made the decision to lift up our roots and move to a new place, not knowing anybody, to create a better life where your mom would stay home to raise you and your brother.  To dedicate every second of every day to benefit both of you and raise you both how we thought best.  To position our family better financially, but also to primarily enable us to dedicate more time with you until this point.

The excitement in us beginning our empty nest phase is a combination of your mom and I wanting to focus on each other and remind us of what it was like before you guys came into our life, but also for her and I to celebrate what we believe was a "mission accomplished" moment having given our blood, sweat and tears to you both.  To toast many glasses to each other and smile at what we have accomplished.  Yes, though you don't like hearing it this way, but to create our legacy.

Which brings me to the next point.  You and your brother ARE indeed our legacy.  When you are in your new town, with the love of your life, remember who you are, where you came from, what values we instilled in you, what things we taught you and what we deemed important for you to remember and understand.  Primarily the values of Love, Family, Faith, Respect, Honor, Your Heritage and the hard work that came before you that you and Erin will indeed build upon.

This is your chance to spread your wings but also realize that we are just a phone call or roughly 2 hours away from you.  Just like some of the birds that hover over their babies to ensure that they can successfully learn to fly, we will watch from afar as you do the same and are here should you need us.  We love you and want nothing but the best for you both.

Now Spread your Wings and Fly!

Close your eyes

I love watching movies.  For me it is an opportunity to escape from the intensity of my days but also a chance to learn, think and reflect.  One of the movies that did that for me was A Time to Kill which was based on John Grisham's 1989 book.  I actually read the book back then before watching the movie when I had a lot of time on a plane traveling to Asia on business regularly.  Yes the book was better but the movie was very true to the story.

In the movie, during one of the final scenes, the defendant's lawyer gives the closing argument in the case.  (Note:  This is a very intense, descriptive scene and I struggled with placing it in here verbatim but decided it is warranted given the topic of my post.).  The lawyer, Jake Brigance (played by Matthew McConaughey) says: "I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white!"

Thinking about recent assassinations of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery over the past couple of months, I could not stop thinking about something that jumped out at me.  

One of the early videos that was played continuously was Ahmaud walking into a house under construction the day he was killed.  Luisa and I commented about all of the times she and I have walked the neighborhoods where we lived or pulled over to a house under construction when we were hunting for a house or just dreaming of the kind of home we would like when we first started dating, where we would walk into the house under construction to look at the rooms, the framing of the house, and think about what it would be like to own a home like that or if we would make changes to the layout. As a matter of fact, in recent videos of the same home that recorded Ahmaud, you can see a white couple doing the same thing and walking into the same house to look at the construction. 

With George, the context or should I really say the pretext was that the police were called because he was trying to purchase something with a fake $20 bill.  It reminded me of when my parents moved down to SC when they retired.  My dad was 70 years old when he retired.  They worked until practically the day before they moved down, working full time, while also beginning to collect SS income at 65.  For 5 years, my dad would collect his SS and store it away, preparing for the move so that he could have his retirement.  We were shocked at how much they saved for this.  Having lived in an apartment all of their lives, they were able to purchase their first home by moving to SC.  Within 4 months of moving down, they moved into their brand new home.  In preparation for that big event, Dad gave me the cash that he had accumulated, and I mean cash, because for some reason he thought it was best to just take the cash from the bank in NJ and close his account than transfer it electronically to a bank here.  I took several thousands of dollars to the bank to open the account.  

When I gave the cash to the teller they put it in a machine and one of the $100 bills that dad gave me was fake.  The teller wanted to know more about it, and I was shocked that it was fake having never seen a fake bill.  I told the teller about my parents and where the cash came from.  The teller thought nothing of it, said OK, and confiscated the money. 

What if I closed my eyes and imagined that Luisa and I did not look like how we do and looked like George or Ahmaud?  Or what if George or Ahmaud looked like us?  

It's time for us to reflect on this and understand the undercurrents of what is driving this pain for our brothers and sisters of color.  If we are truly one race, the human race, and are all God's children, created in the image of God, how could it be that this acceptable to any of us, white or black?

It is time for us to take a moment to close our eyes and put ourselves in their shoes.  

Jane Elliott, a former school teacher, known for her involvement in the anti-racist movement, gave a speech to a predominately white audience on Race and being Black in America.  

Now open our closed eyes and let's do something to fix this problem of our own creation for God does not see black or white and loves all of his children.