Maritza, the mother

Immobile, Maritza heard the slam of the door when angered Cassandra left the kitchen in the middle of one of their cyclical, unresolved arguments. Cassandra was not her daughter anymore. Although they loved each other, she could not recognize that person who left so enraged leaving her in the middle of a sentence, just like that.

Martiza, now at 40, believed she understood life better than her daughter did. She had learned that each year adding to your life resume changes the "how to deal" with the crazy world, and changes people too. She remembers that when she was twenty years old, she felt as if life was a Grand Central Station with many trains going to fascinating places full of fascinating people, and that she had the energy and all her life ahead to ride them all.

Along the years and carrying the scars of her rough bumpy ride of her twenties and thirties, the version of the Grand Central Station metaphor she tells her daughter changed with time. Now that her daughter was in her 20's, in that lecturing tone, as distilling some secret wisdom out of her own life, she repeated to her daughter her altered version of her original metaphor: “Cassandra; life is like a Grand Central Station with many trains going in and out. Once you choose a train, what you are really choosing is a ride, not a destination.” Then, as if she was doing her a favor by making her anxious about the other shoe dropping, she would add with a "utmost-serious-matter” tone, “Even when you do not get to were you intended, it will take you somewhere. In any case, and no matter what train you choose, listen well: there is no return. You will be somewhere else, and will become someone else.”

She felt totally validated when one day in her job she received a Power Point Presentation called the Train of Life, with beautiful colored pictures y mellow music, saying practically the same thing. She was into something; "connected to the universe's wisdom", so she thought. Her search for happiness had included a failed marriage, many broken relationships, not finishing any of the different majors at college she tried, moves to three or four towns, and many jobs --bad and terrible. Her daughter did not have to go through what she went. She would make sure of it.

Soft and Beautiful

While doing the dishes this morning, I was remembering the 15 seconds flash-ads that interrupted, especially during the best parts, the most dramatic scenes of the craziest romantic love stories I used to watch on TV when I was younger. Targeted to housewives, who, according to the soap opera’s logic, had attained with their marriage the ultimate state of romantic bliss, each ad insisted to be the only one with the strongest grease cutter in the market that also left hands "soft and beautiful".

These ads perfectly idealized the dirty and smelly chore of doing the dishes. I especially remember one that began showing a clean plate under a jet of water held by a pair of stunning women hands that looked like masterpieces of a Hollywood’s manicurist. The model housewife places carefully the last plate in the dryer, and with deep satisfaction turns around smiling happily to her "male significant other", who in turn reciprocates her act of love by smelling and kissing her hands --oh, so endearing. (Yes, because with this product, your hands will smell great no matter what have been on those plates.)

It never dawned on to me that in these ads the person doing the dishes was never a man. Neither as a girl had I ever questioned it. But this morning, I begin to daydream of how I would market dishwasher soap for men that would entice them to do the dishes. First, I would announce it contains a “virility enhancer”. A new scientific formula, this enhancer would be a combination of a pheromone of a wild, hyper-sexual animal that is not in the endangered species list (how about the macaque?); the perspiration of some attractive super-athlete like Michael Jordan; and a designer fragrance called “Viagra Cologne.”

The model for the advertising campaign must have the looks of Kenau Reeves or George Clooney: eternally beautiful, athletic, with a cool, bloody killer’s look, and a super masculine sexy smile that turns on even men. Of course, whoever it is has to have beautiful hands. At the end of the ad, instead of showing his woman tenderly smelling and kissing his hands for completing lovingly his task, she gets much exited, and even when he has not finished, she impulsively begins to take his clothes off. They do not make it to the bedroom, but do it wildly on the kitchen floor. Then the camera slowly blurs and fades out, as an image of the product appears on the TV screen and in the background you hear sounds of a soccer stadium crowd shouting the product name during a score: Tigrooooool! Then a Pamela Anderson’s like voiceover in a very deep raspy voice finishes the ad with this line: …Tigrol… For men with soft hands, but very macho...

Gonzalo Rahman

At eighteen years old, Gonzalo gets high almost every day, but only enough to listen to his music better and feel good. What is wrong with that? His red eyes and silly smirk tell the others what he has been up to. Yet, he does not care: everybody does it. He uses milder drugs than his friends. So…

Gonzalos's parents migrated from very different countries and met in Houston, where he was born. His mother came from Puerto Rico, and his father from Lebanon. Yet, they found themselves falling in love immediately, as if they have known each other from other past lives. Every wedding anniversary they told him the same story perhaps believing that if repeated over and over, it would become eventually true.

This mixed family lived in a mixed society where mixed was the norm: Mexicans, "Centros", Natives from all parts of the South, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, African Americans, and, of course, the Whites. In Houston, love overcame race way too often, so thousands of mixed race children have to find their own place in a segregated society. Gonzalo had been working on his cultural identity at home, in the streets, and in his school, where race and identity was the base for friendships, and therefore for staying safe and alive.

In Houston, as a "mixed race", he had plenty of company. Through his father he knew the Arab community. He kept close contact with his mother’s family, whom he visited already a few times in the Island. Thanks God, he has seen more than the Texas deserts. He has seen the green mountains, "El Yunque", eaten the “arroz con habichuelas”, and gotten soaked in the three o’clock “aguaceros” or rainfalls in San Juan. One of his favorite memories was to get in shorts and go outside to play in the rain with his cousins.

The rain in Puerto Rico was nothing like the rain in Texas. It was trans formative. For few minutes, --or hours, or days-- the rain changed drastically people's lifestyle. The tropical rainfalls in Puerto Rico are a force to be reckoned with. Still, Gonzalo loved the rain: its noise hitting the metal roofs; its smell mixing with the earth; its cooling effect in the air, and the miraculous double rainbows after it stopped. Many times in Texas, he dreamed of the rain, and he missed it.

Messages in a Bottle

Bottle, envelops, emails, postcards, touch, looks, words, all carry messages with double messages, disinformation, “almost truths”. I believe it would be “a giant step for man kind” to create an instrument that actually discloses what the sender really wants to communicate. First, there would be no politicians and therefore the world would become much saner.

It is not that people would stop saying bad things. What it means is, everyone would deal with what is in people’s heart without lies or distortion, for good, or bad, the truth is the truth. When a person likes me or not; or if they are sorry for a mistake or not, in relationships it makes a big difference to know I can always count with the truth. It is less crazy making. That is in the realm of individual relationships, never mind how different would be at the level of international relationships, at work, everywhere.

Now at my age, after many bad experiences with Humanity, I have developed a warning system that alerts me when there is a lie floating around: I feel nauseous. Something feels “not right”. Yet these feelings are difficult to interpret since we are so good liars, even to ourselves. Society on the other hand has proven to me to be so insincere. The bad side to this reaction to untruth is that must of the time, wherever I go, I feel nauseated. It is not physical. It comes from the soul: "Soul Nausea". Even when I enjoy being around humans, sometimes it overwhelms me. I think hermits have something going for themselves.

I wish I could have a magic bottle where I could place people's messages to receive their true meanings. There are people who also suffer because of having problems expressing good things. Their words come out all wrong. I know they mean well, but the words that come out their mouths make me wonder. That makes me feel crazy too. A magic message bottle that gives me the sender’s real message would be great. I am sure it would get rid of my nausea and make the world a much pleasant place to live. Where do I get one?