My mother and father had what you might call a tempestuous relationship. It started out rocky enough: my dad was already married with three grown sons, when he had an affair with my mom, with a daughter from a previous marriage, who's husband died of cancer, it represented a second chance and an escape to freedom. For my father, fifteen years her senior, and whom had known my mom all her life, it must have represented a chance to revisit his youth he'd known since she was a child. It was a May/December romance they had to wait 'till their middle ages to consummate. My father had been a cop before the fall of Batista, and had used his political connections to have my half sister sent to America, where, still being a minor, after six months, she could claim my mother on humanitarian grounds. He then used up his remaining favors to get him, his wife, and his children, out of Cuba and onto Ellis island, where freedom surely beckoned him to its shores.
Once all that had been arranged and achieved, the affair began full swing. From what I remember, and what I've been told, it was not an easy time for my mom, being "the other woman." Many lonely tears were shed, and a good catholic girl from a small town like my mom, must have felt the weight of guilt acutely.
Eventually, she got pregnant, and being a woman in her forties, there were risks and complications. I was a rather large and heavy baby (12 lbs. I think) and they had to perform cesarean section in order to deliver me safely. Years later, my mom would show me her cesarean scars whenever I misbehaved and say, "Look what I had to go through to bring you into the world." And like the petulant child I was, I answered, "I never asked to be born!"
My mom told me once, that my dad never wanted her to go through with the pregnancy. But I never felt anything but love from him. He would dote on me, whenever he was around.
And there in lies the heart of our rather complicate trinity. My dad had a wife and children he lived with. He'd visit us every couple of days. But still, I remember his absence was keenly felt by the both of us.
My mom was a seamstress in a clothing factory and she'd get home late and tired after a long day of work. It's easy to see why, in my early years, I acted out so much. I craved attention and lacked structure. In many ways, I still do.
My sister hated my dad and the effect the relationship was having on my mom. She couldn't wait to get out of the house, and as soon a she turned eighteen, got married and did, with a man who had a short temper, and would later abuse her, both physically and mentally.
She told me once, she used to change my diapers, and would baby sit for my mom. I have no memories of this. Indeed, my earliest memories of her after she moved to Miami, and my mom followed soon after, in order to "keep the family together." This would be about 1971, when I was 8 years old.
Within 6 months, my father got a divorce and followed suit. My parents got married in 1972. I know this from rummaging around their room without permission and finding the marriage certificate in my mother's dresser drawer.
They lived together for two years and fought all the time. And made love too. This, I also discovered, having walked in on them "in the act", once I learned the trick of opening locked doors with a butter knife.
Eventually, my dad moved out, but not far. He rented a little studio a few blocks away, where he kept a cat as my pet, fed me lunch after school, and bought me comics to read. It was a routine I grew to love.
I think I blamed my mom for my dad's absence from our home. I remember I used to claim I loved my dad more than my mom. Eventually, they got back together. In a two bedroom house, where my uncle also lived, my father insisted I needed a room of my own.
Not long after he moved in, and the anteroom was constructed, he died of a heart attack. I was asleep in my room while my mom and uncle accompanied him to the hospital. He forbade them to wake me because he didn't want me to worry. But in the morning, my uncle awoke me, telling me why I had to go to the hospital. And not long after I arrived, he was pronounced dead.
Now comes the resolution; the point that I've been leading up to. Despite all of the strife, and all of the ups an downs, there at the funeral, with my dad lying in an open casket, my mom shed all the tears which I was unable to. They were not phony tears, or begrudging tears, or the tears of misspent affection. They were genuine and heart felt, and remorseful of all the days lost. A river of sorrow, racked from a heart of regret. And I? Shed not a one. And felt guilt for years after, for never having done so.
So that now, I do not know who to blame.; only, that love is a journey on a turbulent sea. And more than that, I've never known, in all the years I have lived.
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