On making each other whole

“Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla; cerrado, un amigo que espera; olvidado, un alma que perdona; destruido, un corazón que llora.” —Mario Vargas Llosa, “La fiesta del chivo”

My parents are the authors of their own love story. That sounds incredibly redundant, I know. Common sense tells us that every couple pens a story of their own. No two couples are the same. No two love stories are the same. Every love is unique; every love is its own. But my parents’ love story is special.

Within my parents’ love, there is enough story to write a book that will never come to an end. It is not expected, and it does not sound like it comes straight out of a romance novel. It is not like the plot of a Hallmark movie, but it is true.

Camelia, or Mama for me, and Juan Carlos, or Papa for me, come from two different worlds: one from Puerto Rico, the other from the Dominican Republic. They are two halves that create a whole. They could’ve done without each other, but they also can’t survive without each other. They mimic their parents’ love stories, what with worlds apart coming together, but still manage to make it their own.

My parents filled my childhood with books: picture books, chapter books, fairy tales and nonfiction, so my brain, I now understand, would have a place to retreat to when things got hard. But they needed these fairy tales, too. My parents are each other’s safe haven. They are what these books were to me. Together, they are safe. They are each other’s open book.

With each page of their open book turned, each mind speaks, each one waits, both forgive, both hearts grieve. Theirs is a story of love and loss, but love and loss experienced together. Theirs is a story that has taught me that love is unconditional, but not stereotypical. Theirs is a story of love, is love, in love. I am a creation of love, full of love, in love.

Every thought spoken, every moment waited, every mistake forgiven, and every heart mended has allowed my parents the love story they’ve created. An over-two-decades-long love story evidenced by a loving home, two loving daughters, two loving dogs, and loving each other.

Like the thought and the moment and the mistake and the heart complete each other, so do my parents. They are whole on their own and they are whole together. They help each other in ways only they know how.

And here lies what I want out of love.

***

“El alma vive adentro mientras la persona vive. Es la parte del individuo que siente. El alma de un poeta siente más que la de una persona cualquiera. Y eso es lo que inspira al poeta a escribir sus poesías.” —Esmeralda Santiago, “Cuando era puertorriqueña”

They say the soul is what lives inside the person while they are alive. It’s the part of the individual that feels. My parents have good souls. I am good because they are good because they feel, and they feel more than the average person. Individually, they are not poets. But together, their story is poetry.

Two souls come together to write poetry because they feel more than the average person… sounds about right to me! I feel and I feel and I feel and it’s because my parents feel and feel and feel. How did I get so lucky, rewarded with parents that are able to feel so deeply with me?

When I grow up, I want to be a writer. I want to author books, but do I have what it takes for poetry? I am not a poet, but can I meet someone to write poetry with? If I exist in tandem with other people, with the one, will I feel complete? Is it only by meeting the one that I will be able to write poetry?

What if poetry, for me, means writing my story through the lens of more than one person?

I think poetry, for me, includes my paternal grandfather and his Dominican origins. It includes those that were exiled and imprisoned in the name of the bloodline because isn’t that just so tragically poetic? Poetry, for me, includes my maternal grandmother and the realizations about myself I’ve come to by trying to be more like her, by trying to feel more like her, because isn’t feeling the rawest form of poetry anyway?

And poetry, for me, includes a love story that I will be able to author with another. Like my parents, there will be supporting characters in our story, because a loving story between two people can only stem from the larger product of their love. But poetry? That’s what they create, together.

That’s what I’m desperate to create with someone, somewhere, somehow, soon.