Category Archives: History

Honoring and understanding your history

The ‘Delano Manongs’ and the importance of historical accuracy

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The most effective way of destroying people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
– George Orwell, English author and journalist

Filmmaker Marissa Aroy introduces her documentary to a standing-room-only crowd.

Filmmaker Marissa Aroy introduces her documentary to a standing-room-only crowd.

Having missed the “Delano Manongs” at the CAAMFest 2014 (Center for Asian American Media Film Festival) in Oakland in March, I was so happy to be given another chance to see Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Marissa Aroy’s documentary about the Filipinos’ contribution to the Delano grape strike of 1965. The Manilatown Heritage Foundation hosted the screening of “Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farmworkers” at the International Hotel Manilatown Center (868 Kearney Street, San Francisco, CA 94108, mfg@manilatown.org) last Saturday afternoon. Marissa brought to the forefront the “buried” history of the manongs, a term of endearment for the older Filipino bachelors who came to the U.S. in the 1920s to work in the agricultural fields and subsequently struck for higher wages and better work conditions in the Delano vineyards in September 1965, in the heart of the Central Valley of California.

After the 30-minute screening, two local social justice organizers joined Aroy on a Q&A panel. Audience members wanted to hear Aroy’s take on Diego Luna’s biopic, Cesar Chavez, which was released in March. I haven’t seen the feature film, but many in the audience had. I trust the reports that they reported – that the Filipinos were pushed to the background and that the plucky, straight-shooter Filipino labor leader, Larry Itliong, was also relegated to second-class citizen status in the movie despite the fact that Itliong organized the original strike and convinced Chavez to join. In particular, Filipinos were outraged that in the pivotal scene in which the growers finally sign the union contracts Larry Itliong was in the crowd witnessing the signing and not being recognized as one of the negotiators who got the growers to sign in the first place. In reality, Itliong was seated at the table, alongside the growers and Chavez. Critics responded that the Filipinos were being petty, quibbling over an “insignificant” detail as the placement of Larry Itliong in a movie that was, after all, about Cesar Chavez.

Marissa addresses questions about historical accuracy in films.

Among other topics, Marissa addressed questions about historical accuracy in films.

Here is where I call foul. If the detail is inconsequential, why bother deviating from historical truth? When a historical movie deviates from the truth several times, viewers, especially those knowledgeable about the events and the time period, begin to distrust both the person telling the story and the story itself. And those who don’t know the history subsequently accept what they see as the truth. Marissa was asked about that particular scene in which Itliong was placed in the crowd and not at the table. She said she could only conjecture, but from a filmmaker’s perspective, she thought that a stronger, more outspoken character like Itliong – who was sporting a goatee, dark-rimmed glasses, and a cowboy hat at the signing – would “take away” the spotlight from the quieter figure of Chavez and therefore would not be placed prominently in the scene.

Critics again say it’s not about Itliong or the Filipinos. And again, indeed, the movie Cesar Chavez is not. They say, tell your own story. And so Marissa has – she spent five years making the documentary. That’s why it’s important to have a movie like the “Delano Manongs” in circulation. It demands to be seen with a greater distribution. Luckily for us all, Marissa reported that the documentary, which has been shown in limited engagements thus far, will be aired on PBS stations in 2015. But we can’t wait until next year to talk up this documentary and its insistence on recognizing the contributions of the Filipinos to the UFW. Those of us know the truth need to relentlessly educate those who don’t. For me, that’s part of the reason I wrote my novel, A Village in the Fields.

There has been talk of systematic and subtle – to the unassuming public, that is – erasure of the Filipinos from UFW history. It’s sinister in its subtlety. It shows that the gatekeepers of the legacy of the UFW and Chavez feel threatened by the legacy of the Filipinos, which shouldn’t be the case. When we are united against an evil, as was the case with the farm workers fighting against human rights violations, we win. When we break down within, we all lose. So it is with the retelling of this period in time. It’s a disservice to American history to rewrite any part of our national history. Think of Orwell’s words. Give credit where credit is due. The Filipinos started the Delano grape strike and they were instrumental in the creation of the UFW and in the victories gained at the bargaining table. Do your own research. Watch the “Delano Manongs” and spread the word. The truth.

Ripe Ribier grapes in September - the jewels in the fields.

Our own grapes of wrath.

My literary vacay

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Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
– Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet, philosopher, naturalist, and leading transcendentalist

My library chair is calling me!

My library chair is calling me!

Not surprisingly, I have a stockpile of vacation and discretionary days, plus two floating holidays. Unfortunately, you can only carry over a certain amount of vacation and discretionary hours into the next fiscal year, which for my company is July 1st. When I checked my hours a few months ago, I realized I had to take time off. But when? There’s never a good time to take off because something is always due or meetings are scheduled either on the fly or weeks in advance. I understood that any time I would take off that wasn’t labeled “family vacation” was going to be writing time for me. I was not prepared to take a week off now, however, as such a chunk of time required activity that had to be productive, as far as I was concerned. I am not ready to sit down and write the second novel. But I am ready to sit down and read, conduct research, sketch characters, and plot storylines – all valuable, of course, and a precursor to actually writing.

The one thing I did know was that I did not want to take the same week off as my kids’ spring break. If I took off the same week they were out, I knew it would not be the “me” vacation that I so desperately wanted and needed. My kids were off last week. It was nice downtime for them. I am off this week, though I still have to push through some revisions, attend a meeting, write a summary, and respond to necessary e-mails. I scheduled an appointment with my acupuncturist to start the week off to be in a good place physically. In the weeks leading up to this week, I tried to clear off my home desk of tasks I needed to complete in order to have a clean work space and thus a cleared mental state of mind.

And thus yesterday so began my literary vacay. Note that I didn’t call it a stacay. Even though I’m going to be parked in my library chair with my tall stack of books on the Filipino-American War, pen and notepad, The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, cup of tea (now gone cold), and most important box of See’s chocolates for sustenance, I consider this a vacation where I am not really at home. These books will be taking me to another country, another era. I scarcely will feel or hear the crinkly leather seat I’ll be inhabiting.

My trusty companion, Rex, will show me how to relax.

My trusty companion, Rex, will show me how to relax.

I will admit that once I was ensconced in my library chair yesterday, with a fortress of books around me, I started to panic. How would I ever get through all these books, remember all the historical details? How much time would I need? How long would it be before I get to the point of writing, and then how long will the writing process be? Will it once again be a 17-year odyssey as it was for A Village in the Fields? When you’re 52 and you have a full-time job and two kids, these are natural questions to ask. Stopping and smelling the roses is an iffy optional activity. I am often aware of seconds, minutes, hours, and making all of those measurements of time count.

I allowed myself to flounder a bit while I figured out what I could do. I thought back to last year and the year before – how did I restart and finish the first novel? Somehow, those years are smashed together when I look back. Last year, I finished the novel, blogged three times a week, and had an insane work schedule, along with helping with my kids’ schooling and attending their extracurricular activities, at the expense of sleep. I had more energy and was younger, of course, in those 15 previous years. Am I smarter as a writer after having gone through this writing exercise? Yes. So that’s what I told myself to hang my hat on. I did it before; I’ll do it again. Better and smarter. Don’t think about time. Just keep going. It’s what makes me happy, so in true Zen-like fashion, I told myself to enjoy the doing.

I hear my library chair calling me. It’s gotten cold again and I must warm the old leather. And read. Take notes. Most importantly, dream.

Required reading list.

Required reading list.

March is Women’s History Month

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Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.
– Maya Angelou, American poet, memoirist, actress, and American Civil Rights Movement activist

Worn-out leather and jeans who well with vegan cut-out blouse.

Worn-out leather and jeans mix well with vegan cut-out blouse.

The National Women’s History Project‘s theme this year for Women’s History Month is Celebrating Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment. The Project honors 12 women whose lives and work serve as a source of inspiration for both girls and boys and women and men to make our world a more compassionate and more equitable place for everyone. In honoring these women and bringing their accomplishments to the forefront, the Project is making good on its goal of “writing women back into history.”

With that in mind, I thought a worthy exercise in honor of Women’s History Month would be to write a short essay on a woman in your life who exhibited character, courage, and commitment, and inspired you to do the same. For me, that’s easy – it would be my mother. Born in 1926 in the Philippines, she endured the occupation of her homeland by the Japanese in World War II, forced to witness such atrocities as the bayoneting of babies thrown into the air in the town square. “We looked away,” my mother had murmured when I asked her if the story my sister had told me was true. She worked to help put her brothers and sisters through school. She forsake true love and ended up marrying my father and coming to the States after the war. Instead of working to get her teaching credential here – she was a school teacher back home – she picked grapes in the summertime and packed oranges in the wintertime for decades, until she retired. She saved money like crazy, though she and my father didn’t make very much money, and we grew up never feeling poor, though we lived in a rural farming community. My mother instilled in my two sisters and me the importance of education, especially higher education, and being a good citizen. Those were the facts of her life, but there is so much more.

Boxy blouse, jeans, kitten-heel pumps, and clutch are an easy uniform to throw on.

Boxy blouse, jeans, kitten-heel pumps, and clutch are an easy uniform to throw on when mornings are hectic.

The day after my mother passed away on January 3, 2012, my old high school friend, Kimi, wrote about my mother in an e-mail to me in the early hours of the morning: “She was steel. Thin, lithe, wiry, graceful, resilient, unbreakable; tempered. She was beautiful, proud, determined, resolved, smart. If she had lived in a different time or place, if she’d had our opportunities, we can only imagine what she would have accomplished. But, she took the yoke and humble, coarse work that was available – and she lived her dreams through you. As an observer, and not the one grinding away to meet your mom’s expectations, it was always clear to me that she was very, very proud of you, Joyce and Heidi. She built the runway, you flew. She was happy. She felt accomplished. In the end, she achieved her dreams and she had a good life.”

I wrote Kimi back, accusing her of making me cry. What haunted me, what moved me the most of her words – If she had lived in a different time or place, if she’d had our opportunities, we can only imagine what she would have accomplished – still resonates with me as I think about Women’s History Month. My mother was at once meek and determined, dutiful and unrelenting, bearing burdens and yet strategizing for a better life for her family. Had she lived in a different time or place, had she been led to more windows and doors, she would have opened them and gone through. She would have built the runway and taken off herself.

Against a creamy cut-out blouse: Anthropologie statement earrings, stack of rings by Kate Peterson Designs (El Cerrito, CA), Alkemie scarab cuff made of recycled metal, and Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago).

Against a creamy cut-out blouse: Anthropologie statement earrings, stack of rings by Kate Peterson Designs (El Cerrito, CA), Alkemie scarab cuff made of recycled metal, and industrial Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago).

How many girls and women in the world today don’t even know that windows and doors exist? How many never realize they could entertain the crazy notion that they can build their own runway and take off or actually have a voice and the audacity to dream big and make good on them – as a result of the tyranny of governments and politics, religion, misogyny, and on and on? How do we as women, who are privileged and who have had our basic needs and more met, reach them?

When I think of all those questions and wonder where in those pockets and dark corners of the world those girls and women may be, I understand the desire to write women back into history, to use our voices, and shine the light on women’s accomplishments. These subversive acts  – which one day won’t be subversive, though we must always strive to be subversive when it comes to advancing girls and women – plant the seeds. And when we scatter them all around us, beautiful things will grow.

So what can we as individuals do? Nora Ephron entreats us to be the heroine of our lives. Do the small things in our homes, our neighborhoods, and our communities. Nurture and use your gifts for good deeds. Create windows and doors. Go through them, but make sure someone is behind you doing the same. Be compassionate. Be courageous. Be present. Be.

Mixing textures: weathered chambray, metal, nude patent, vegan cut-out, and faux snakeskin.

Mixing textures: weathered chambray, reclaimed metal, nude patent leather, vegan cut-out, and faux snake skin.

A Village in the Fields: a beginning for the beginning

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We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
– Anais Nin, French-born novelist and short story writer

I finished my novel in December, but needed to proof it with one last check. This past quiet weekend was the first time I was able to get to it. Now that it’s done, off it goes. The end of the proofing stage means the beginning of its outbound journey.

Agbayani Village in Delano.

Agbayani Village in Delano.

To celebrate the launch of its next journey, I offer the beginning of A Village in the Fields:

Chapter 1: Visitors, Abgayani Village, Delano, California, August 1997

The fever was relentless—like the hundred-degree heat that baked the brick-and-tile buildings of Agbayani Village. Fausto Empleo lay on his bed listening, the window wide open, the curtains still, the table fan unplugged. He didn’t move, though his body pulsed with the chirping of crickets. The groundskeeper’s dog barked, and he imagined jack rabbits springing across the fields, disappearing between the rows of vines. Dusk was spreading across the vineyards like a purple stain, a crushed Emperor grape. With the sun gone, the silver Mylar strips hanging from poles that bordered the vineyard lost their hard glint. The crows—their caws growing in strength—swooped down to snatch the ripe berries as the shadows of the oleander bushes stretched across the grounds.

The heat lingered. Even as the world outside went black.

Fausto clapped his hands. On the third try, the nightstand lamp threw out a circle of light. His nurse, Arturo Esperanza, had given him the lamp weeks ago. Fausto usually laughed when he clapped. The lamp was magical, Arturo had teased him. But this time he drew his arm across his face to hide from the glare. He sucked in his breath, making his ribs ache. Something was seeping into his nostrils—burning wax from a candle, the faint trace of sulfur as if from a lit match. But he had no candles. Again, smoke and musty-smelling wax filled his lungs. When he lowered his arm, his room was studded with hundreds of tall, white tapers anchored in pools of wax—at the edge of his bed, on the dresser, icing a bouquet of plastic flowers, on the windowsill, his desk, the top of the television set—spilling milky lava across the linoleum. The flames merged into a constellation of blazing stars. He turned away, his face prickling from the heat.

He shut his eyes. “Well, God, are you calling me?”

The wind-up clock on his desk ticked like a giant tinny heart.

“Because if you are,” he said, struggling to unbutton his shirt, now cold and damp against his skin, “I’m not ready to go!”

He opened his eyes. The candles vanished as if by the force of his voice. He shook his head. Why did he say that? He was the last of the retired Filipino farm workers at the Village. The rest of his compatriots had passed away. There was nothing for him here. He should be begging God to take him now, but that would mean he’d given up, and he couldn’t admit to such a thing—not yet.

He willed himself to sleep, but sleep came in fits. He woke up in the middle of the night. The lamp had been left on, but its light was weak and it sputtered like a trapped fly. The room was silent; the wind-up clock had stopped at twelve-twenty. Before Fausto could clap, the light went out. A second later the lamp came back on, only to be snuffed out in an instant. It threw out light a third time, but it soon dimmed and then the room darkened for good. Fausto drew the sheets to his chest, afraid that something was going to drag him from his bed.

He listened for a knock on the door. Didn’t his mother tell him, as a child, never to answer a knock at night? It’s an evil spirit come to get you, she had warned. If you say, “I am coming,” the evil spirit will take you and you will die. Though she had counseled him many years ago to be “as silent as Death,” he cried out now, thumping the left side of his chest, “I’m still alive, son-of-a-gun! You go get somebody else!”

Ribier grapes from the Central Valley of California.

Ribier grapes from the Central Valley of California.

Looking forward to 2014

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For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
– T.S. Eliot, poet, dramatist, and literary critic, from Four Quartets

When I was in elementary school, my sister gave me a diary for Christmas one year. I had previously used a notebook and binder paper to record what happened or what I did on days that were worthy of recording. But once I got a real diary, I was spoiled and for several years afterwards I would get a new diary for each year. Soon my entries evolved from one-liners of what I ate or who came to visit to events that made me happy or sad followed by an analysis of why I was happy or sad. I created a tradition in which at the end of the year I would reflect and read what happened that year. I would write about what was memorable and what I learned. And then I would focus on my hopes and dreams for the following year.

A timeless LBD that reminds me of The Great Gatsby and Art Deco.

A timeless LBD that reminds me of The Great Gatsby and Art Deco.

I’ve since abandoned writing a daily diary. I rely on the e-mails that I send to friends as a record of what happened and what I was going through internally. I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions anymore, either. Or at least I don’t formalize them, write them down, and take assessment after a certain period of time has passed in the new year. When I write my holiday e-greeting letter, I do take stock of what I and my family did for the year, and at least in my head I reflect on the year and what goals I had set for myself that were achieved and what goals are yet to be met.

I think about what the New Year promises and what I want to do in the New Year. I could be detailed or I could just throw a blanket statement that covers everything. There’s something really attractive about simplicity, especially when I feel so cluttered with so many things in life right now. So yes, I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution list this time around, but it’s going to be one that will be easy to achieve. So here goes:

Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago) and Abacus earrings (Portland, ME).

Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago) and Abacus earrings (Portland, ME).

Be mindful of the present, the here and now. More often than not, walking Rex in the early mornings is a task that I want to cross off my daily list of things to do as quickly as possible. During the fall, however, I took time to enjoy the turning of the leaves from green to deep reds and vibrant golds and oranges. I enjoyed the Christmas decorations on neighbors’ lawns and trees. It was a crazy busy month of December, but I made sure to enjoy our decked-out halls by, for example, bringing the laptop down to the living room to enjoy the fire and smell the tree while I worked. It kept the spirit in me. And I want to continue that mindfulness.

Get my novel out there, in whatever form and through whatever channel in which it was meant to be. I will try just a few literary agents this time around, but when I set out to finish A Village in the Fields last year, I had already come up with a plan to get it up quickly on Amazon, per the path a few colleagues from work have taken. Stay tuned.

Keep writing, read more. I’m looking forward to resuming research for my second novel, which I had abandoned back in 2006, and doing character sketches and plot drafts. I also look forward to revisiting old short stories that wise old eyes are now looking at anew and revising them, as well as revisiting old short story ideas and perhaps resurrecting them. Most importantly, I look forward to carving out more time to read – the single thing that makes a writer better.

Textures in the form of faux fur and velveteen, and gold accents.

Textures in the form of faux fur and velveteen, and gold accents.

Write more profiles for my blog. One thing that suffered a little as work overtook me this past fall to the end of the year was not having the time to interview amazing women for my blog. I have a backlog of women to interview, and I really hope to carve out time to return to this part of my blog. Stay tuned.

Take better care of my body. I cannot ignore the creaks in the knees as I walk down the stairs in the morning or the pain in my thumb joint, which I fear is arthritis and not carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes, I am getting older and with it comes aches and pains. But if I eat right, get some sleep – let me repeat that to myself again, get more sleep – and add greater variety to my exercise routine, some of those afflictions should be alleviated. I can’t stop time or growing older, but I can impact the quality of those years and the process.

Scatter joy. On my first trip to Maine perhaps a decade ago in August, my friend, Jack, indulged my request to check out this quaint shop called Flying Pigs, at least I think that’s what the shop was called. I came across a plaque with the words “Scatter joy” that was attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I picked it up but put it down. Then at Christmastime that year, Jack sent the plaque to me, and it has been hanging above a door in our library for the last six years. Every once in a while I look up and remember how it came to our house, and it reminds me to do just that – scatter joy.

There is nothing more gratifying than seeing someone I care about smile or laugh or be happy because of something I said or did. It’s infectious and it makes my day. It’s easy to do. Every day. Scatter joy. Happy New Year’s Eve!

Time for a little New Year's Eve celebration!

Time for a little New Year’s Eve celebration!

A Village in the Fields: The novel is done

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One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
– Jack Kerouac, American writer, poet, and artist, from The Dharma Bums

Musings on finishing and on the process
Although I have completed a handful of major revisions of my first novel, A Village in the Fields, which I had begun in May of 1997, as I headed toward the finish line with this final revision, I wondered what feelings would come over me. Would I be relieved because I feared my interest and energies were waning? Sad that something that has been with me for more than 16 years would finally be coming to a close? Or empty, having completely given everything – the shirt off my back, my last pulsing emotion – over to the whole of the novel, to the final scene, the last word? It is all of the above.

A reason to go out and celebrate.

A reason to go out and celebrate.

I think about all that has happened these last 16-plus years – getting engaged on a trip to Italy and marrying, home remodeling, giving birth and raising two children, undergoing a major house remodel and addition, enduring numerous job changes, immersing myself in public school battles and volunteering at the schools, losing Bailey, and losing and letting go of my mother. All of these events have helped to shape the novel as it moved along its journey of 1,000 pages to 600 pages to its “slimmed down” current 444 pages, which included the loss of a major character and the methodical approach to resolving literary issues.

During a break this past year, I took out the folder I had kept of the many – but not all 60 – rejections from literary agents that I had received from the end of 2005 to the beginning of 2006. With each rejection that I got in the mail, I sank deeper in my despondency and self-doubt. I put the manuscript away. I stopped reading. I stopped writing. I did other things. It was not hard to be immersed in other things, especially when you have young children. I thought about it every once in a while, but I was too wounded to do anything but think about all that effort and time that I had invested and yet easily cast aside.

Fluffy faux fur capelet and clutch on pale pink and cream.

Fluffy faux fur capelet and clutch on pale pink and cream.

At some point, though, I went back to the manuscript. My good friend, Kathy Brackett Verschoor, had written to me, asking if I had met up again with my main character, Fausto Empleo. She was missing him, she told me, and longed to reconnect with him. And so it was that I was missing him, too. I yearned to finish his story, his life. The writer inside me wanted to reemerge. Could I do it again? This time there would be no expectations. I just wanted to do him justice. I wanted to tell his story. And so in 2010 I reopened my files and ever-so-slowly re-acquainted myself with Fausto and together we got back on the road again.
As I wordsmithed the last pages and printed out the last chapter, I thought about what it meant to me to have finally finished the novel. I started it two years after my father passed away. I had wanted to give him something I had written and published, but at the time I only had one published story to my name. My father, with his second-grade education, had asked me how to spell words when he sat down to write letters to his relatives in the Philippines. When I had won a literary prize at UC Davis as a senior in the English Department, he cut out the article about it from our local newspaper and kept it in his suitcase of documents under his bed. I found it when we were going through his personal belongings after he had passed away. Well, I told myself ruefully, whenever I would get around to writing a novel, I would dedicate it to his memory.

Texture, texture

Texture, texture

I also wanted to hand a published novel to my mother. She was very excited when I went away to Syracuse University for my graduate studies, but she thought I was going to teach English at the college level, which was never my plan. So when she told me about a teaching position at Modesto Junior College my last semester at Syracuse and I told her I didn’t want to teach, after a lengthy long-distance pause, she asked me why then was I there in the first place? I immediately answered: I want to write. She didn’t understand. She read the Reader’s Digest, the National Enquirer, Women’s Day. She had no time for fiction. After she passed away, and my sisters and I were cleaning out her bedroom, I looked for clues as to how she viewed me. I found a half-written letter to her cousin, Noli. When she wrote of me, it was to say that I was working hard as usual and mentioned the kids. That, I deduced, was what she thought of me, always working, which was true, and taking care of the kids, which was also true. That was my world, nothing more, nothing less.

Carmela Rose earrings and vintage Weiss aurora borealis brooch.

Carmela Rose earrings and vintage Weiss aurora borealis brooch.

I can’t help but think what she would have written had she had a book I had published sitting on her nightstand. Maybe she would have read it, maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe it would have been tangible proof that validated my time in graduate school in her eyes. I can ponder all I want; the truth is I can’t change or fix what did or didn’t happen. But after she passed away, a literary fire was lit. And I vowed that I would finish it in 2012. I was already working on it in 2010 – ploddingly – and then in 2011 her illness stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t finish it in 2012 because of lack of time and energy, though I slowly worked my way through 2012 and into 2013. As I put the last chapter in the folder and then into its box the other evening, I thought to myself that in its current state it would have been good enough for me to give it to her like that. If she were still alive.

Sometimes we may not understand why things happen, or why things happen at a particular time in our lives. In our humble human state, we may try to work it all out in our heads and in our hearts because we need that order amid the chaos. I’m reminded of an essay by William Paley, “The Watch and the Human Eye,” from my old college philosophy textbook, A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, which made an impression on me back in 1981: “There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, without a contriver; order, without choice; arrangement, without anything capable of arranging; subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; means suitable to an end, and executing their office in accomplishing that end, without the end ever having been contemplated, or the means accommodated to it.”

Gorgeous vintage Weiss brooch amid the fluff.

Gorgeous vintage Weiss brooch amid the fluff.

For me, once I understand and accept, I am done with the mourning or the self-pity or the denial, and I get up and determine what to do next. I wanted to go back to the novel because that is what I feel is my gift to nurture, to hone, and then to share. Having a gift does not mean it is ready to share. I didn’t realize it back then. I had to work even harder. And so I did.

The phrase, “in writing, you must kill all your darlings,” has been attributed to various writers, but I’ll hang my hat on William Faulkner as the author. I slashed and burned. I had to be convinced that one of my major protagonists was a drag on the narrative, which took a few years to be convinced – by my good friend, Jack, and David. I didn’t know how to write a novel when I first started out. I just kept going, guided by my historical research, but nonetheless blindly. I knew the beginning and the ending, but not the middle. So the major protagonist was deleted. Chunks of writing were deleted, with alacrity and without remorse. Every word was agonized over, wordsmithed again and again. I came to enjoy this whole process. Careful with the hammer and chisel in hands that were growing more assured with each day, trying to find the shape, the body.

Close-up: Kate Peterson Designs stack of rings, J. Crew glass bracelet, Carmela Rose earrings, and vintage Weiss brooch.

Outfit close-up: Kate Peterson Designs stack of rings, J. Crew glass bracelet, Carmela Rose earrings, and vintage Weiss brooch against a backdrop of neutral lace and fluffy, soft-as-a-cloud faux fur.

I came to accept that it took time I did not have. While I was despondent that I did not have the chunk of time I needed to fully focus on it, I found it in little bits and pieces. And that was good enough. A week of vacation here, a long weekend there. Stay focused. There will be a moment, I told myself, when I will hit “save” and I know that I am done. Older, wiser, better for the years that have gone by and for the experiences – both joyful and mournful – that somehow are in those pages.

I raise a glass of wine, happy for the moment. Fittingly, the end of 2013, the end of one journey. I know it has another, more difficult, journey to make in 2014. This time, however, I’m not apprehensive. It will find its way in the world, which has changed so much in the last eight years. And I will return to the second novel I had begun while I was waiting for the first novel to find its home. While I don’t profess to know how to write a novel now, I have a more formed idea. I don’t expect it will take another 16 years. I have more confidence and faith in myself. I know to be true to my heart and to find a way when there is no path before me.

One last excerpt from the novel:

Fausto walked out of his room and into the courtyard, with Rogelio beside him, Rogelio’s hand resting on his back. The sun branded his head and shoulders the moment they passed the shade of the oak tree. Heat seeped through the weave of his cotton shirt and into his skin like a menthol ointment. The hundred-degree temperature would have sapped him, but he felt refreshed, sharing silence in the open spaces.

They walked in a wide arc in the cleared field. Rogelio marveled at the hardiness of the plants and weeds that took root in the sandy soil. It made Fausto look at the land with appreciative eyes, although dust dulled everything in their path—the once-shiny leaves of nutsedge and the patches of yellow-flowered sow-thistle. Dust tipped the starry seed heads of Bermuda grass. It heathered the spear-shaped oleander leaves. Pink and white oleander blooms drooped, although their almond scent simmered in the heat.

Rogelio steered Fausto toward the building. “Let’s get some water and go back to your room. I don’t want you to get heat stroke.” But it was Rogelio who was wilting. He blotted his face with Fausto’s handkerchief, but fine beads of perspiration kept forming on his upper lip. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Fausto gazed at the tips of the cypress trees above the tiled roof. He wanted to put a hand over his heart—it was racing again—yet he didn’t want Rogelio to worry or the day to end. But now that he was done talking, he felt empty. Although he was grateful to be with Rogelio, he was still waiting.

Onward to 2014, to the next journey with confidence.

Onward to 2014, to the next journey with confidence.