Thursday, November 16, 2023
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My mother’s greatest joy was her family: building a life with my father, Manuel; raising her sons, Douglas and me; and delighting in her grandchildren, Christopher, Nicholas, and Sydney. She took great personal satisfaction and intense interest in everything to do with her family. She was truly a wonderful mother, and a remarkable human being. I wanted for nothing as a child, and I strive to raise my daughter Sydney in the same way my mother and father raised me.
Beyond the wonderful childhood she gave me, I will always marvel at my mother’s keen intelligence and sharp wit. She was a voracious reader, and I credit her entirely for my love of books. Before the Kindle and iPad, she would pack suitcases full of books to take to Spain. I still remember all the trips we would make in the 1970’s to the used bookstore on Nostrand Avenue to root out Hardy Boys books for me to read; my mother loved mystery stories, as I do to this very day. As I got older, we moved on to Agatha Christie, including my mother's all-time favorite, The Man in the Brown Suit. But her literary interests did not stop there: she was well versed in traditional works of literature, from John Steinbeck, to Betty Smith, to Richard Llewelyn, to Emily and Charlotte Bronte, just to name a few.
Reflective of her love of reading, she had an incredible vocabulary. I still remember all the hours she spent studying with me for the vocabulary portion of the SAT, which has served me well in my profession over these many years. But even then, I could never beat her in a game of Scrabble. She was an expert player, crushing me every time we played. It was never close. She was also expert at crossword puzzles. I remember all those Sunday mornings before I went off to college when she would breeze through The New York Times crossword. I have attempted that puzzle a few times over the years, but I have never managed to finish it.
Another special bond we shared was our love of movies and Broadway shows. She and I went to the movies all the time all over Brooklyn in the 1970’s and 1980’s. There were no multiplexes back then, just small theaters like the Brook, the Graham, the Nostrand, and the Midwood. We went to all of them. One vivid memory I have is when we went to see Halloween at the College theater back in 1978. We were both so scared we watched the second half of the movie from the back of the theater standing next to the exit door. We also went to many Broadway shows. If I had a day off from school and there was a matinee playing, we would go into Manhattan and stand in line for hours at the TKTS booth. And then, before each show, we would get cheeseburgers at Howard Johnson’s for lunch. I remember all of the many shows we saw, the highlights being A Chorus Line and Death Trap in the late 1970’s.
More recently, we would binge watch the same streaming series—typically mysteries—and compare notes. We also just recently re-watched together one of her favorite film series, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. I still remember when we rented them from Blockbuster Video in the 1980s, and how moved we both were upon our first viewing of the films. My daughter Sydney watched both movies with us, and I am happy she got to share the same experience with her grandmother.
If I were to describe my mother’s life to anyone who did not know her, it would sound too good to be true—traveling between her homes in New York and Florida, and then to her ancestral home in Spain, the restoration of which became a three-decade passion project. She lived a life that most people could not even dream of. It is a blessing that she was able to live her life fully and on her terms, doing what she loved, with the love of her life, for so many years.
