One would think that going dancing should be easy. After my twenties it became harder and harder and complicated. There weren’t Ubers and I didn’t live in the city. That night in 2002 that I danced on a tiny little dance floor, muy pegado con la gente, squished in tight with the folks, in the mountains, dancing merengue and bachata, I was in love with dancing all over again.
I was a club girl, totally. The night club, the Mission in Hartford was a favorite. One of my best friends also danced there too. We probably brushed arms, legs, boobs and butts, we didn’t know each other then, but we reminisce about that time. We were both in love with the music, the people and of course the dancing. I didn’t grow up dancing merengue or bachata or salsa. I grew up with disco and r&b in the background. I won’t get into my musical tastes.
Trying to recreate that feeling of dancing in the mountains of Dominican in Connecticut, well it just didn’t work. I think there are several missing parts, family, open air and just being able to walk across the street to the Colmado, where the dance floor exists is HUGE. During Luis’ first years in Connecticut we tried to find a place to dance and yeah, no success. Let me tell you why… Entrance fee, nope. High priced drinks, nope. Competition dancers (at least in the Latino dancing world), such a turn off for Luis, nope. If we drank, we had to drive home so one of us needed to be careful, nope. People don’t want to dance til 12 midnight, nope. Not the right music, nope. Switching partners, I guess that is an island thing, nope. And on and on!
Sometimes when we come here to DR we don’t get to dance because someone passed away and therefore there is no music, nor dancing. It is the way here and I don’t question it. It is just sad for us as it is our only little coveted time to dance how we like to.
Last night, here in the mountains, I danced, we danced and it was great. And today I am sore! That is funny, as I am working hard on strengthening my bones. I want to dance more but I just haven’t done it. Zumba is not my thing lol. Either way no judgment here, but my source of inspiration showed up last night in great form! Here she is!
Duvina, as she is called, raised her family and has grandchildren who live close by but she mostly lives alone. She has a hike to get to her house but she walks everywhere. She always leaves her little sandals at the door when entering someone’s home. She is then barefoot and is maybe 85. No one really knows, nor does she.
Always a mixed crowd- all ages.Luis dancing with his mom. She loves this!
Berimon, in the red shirt, is a cousin. They both are dancing hard and mostly that is how people dance minus the hard grinding at the end of the video lol. That is the youth, occasionally you will see older folks grinding.
There is a band that plays everything. They were great at keeping the crowd going. They held a competition, best dancer wins 100.00 dollars, not pesos! And Duvina becomes one of the contestants, wow. My hero, everyone’s hero. The contest is something new around here. The guy who hired the band asked them to do it. As it is holiday time many folks who live in USA are here to be with family. Some folks who work all year, hard as hell doing the hard ass jobs that most Americans won’t do, save their money to come back to DR and enjoy it, be generous with it. In some cases it isn’t as sweet as I make it out to be. But in this case, this guy is always generous with the community. He raised the award to 300.00 and basically gave each couple dancing 100.00. I won’t get into how little people make here. As I said, generous.
Duvina and cousin Marino doing their thing!
As Christmas Eve is upon us I wish everyone health, safety, family in good health and some form of happiness even if it is just a good time dancing in your kitchen.
In December of 2002 I found myself in the emergency room as I thought I had malaria. Malaria? Yes Malaria. According to the CDC travel center, I had to take malaria prevention medication during my trip to the mountians of Dominican Republic in the spring of 2002. After meeting peace corp folks while I was there, I decided to ditch the medication at their recommendation. And I didn’t take anymore upon my subsequent trips in June nor November or ever again. I was 32 at the time. After doctor visits and bloodwork, the source of my feverish night sweats and malaise was clear. I was in menopause. And to add to the gut punch, my ovaries were measured, they were tiny the size that belonged to a woman of 45 years of age. Imagine my confusion. I was also told I would never have children. If you know me, I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me what I could and couldn’t do. Never mind the fact that I never wanted to have children, or get married for that matter. For the record, I want to share this as I have never written it down. This is my story.
Me and Luis, summer, 2003. Los Dajaos, Dominican Republic. *before filters.
In the summer of 2002 I met Luis, my husband. In October of 2003 he flew to JFK, NY from Dominican Republic and we began our life together. There are many beautiful details about how our life started but this story is not about that. I did not travel to DR with the intention of falling in love, yet I did and here we are.
I know my story about infertility is not unique. I also can’t say that anything of what happened is scientifically perfect or willed out of desire or mere luck. My heart goes out to all the women whose story is different, I see you. It became abundantly clear that I am my mother’s daughter. She too had early onset of menopause in her 30’s. I never thought it would happen to me too, she didn’t either. There was no one guiding us to say “hey maybe you want to think about this”. Although, I probably would not have listened if someone had.
Even if I had wanted to do the in vitro thing I couldn’t because there weren’t any eggs to use, so I was told. At the time I was into yoga and meditation and my teacher suggested acupuncture. I scoffed at such a thought, I am a wimp around needles. However, love changed my tune. I was married and we wanted children, I wanted children. A long time friend’s sister is an acupuncturist in West Hartford, CT. Soon after my first appointments with her I was addicted to the feelings of energy and calm that became my body. Number one, I was stressed, number two, my menastral cycle was short and number three, my blood was thin. My stress was internal and deep.
I made changes, I began a heavy root, dark greens and stewed meat diet to strengthen my blood. I had been a vegetarian for about 10 years. I will not get into those details nor belittle my life in my 20’s. If I wanted to give my body a chance to produce a baby I had to change. I drank medicinal teas, received acupuncture twice a week and worked on being less stressed. And of course in order to have a baby there is sex. I took my temperature daily, took notes and timed sex to help make a baby, fertilize an egg that was said to not be there. In 2005 I miscarried.
There are very few photographs of me pregnant or things that people do to remember or record a pregnancy, just my words. I am not superstitious but clearly I acted in superstitious ways. And the reality is when I look back on the situation my artistic self, my photographic self wanted nothing to do with the moment. I compartmentalized things, for my safety.
I remember a thoughtful conversation with my head of school, she was genuinely concerned for me and my health and of course for women. She was the head of the beloved all girls boarding school, Miss Porter’s School, her name, Burch Ford. I admired her and her dedication to girls and the school even when I disagreed with her and some of her actions. She truly wanted to know if stress was the root of my situation. She wanted a definitive answer. I didn’t have one to give her. But in 2021, I think we all know that stress is a factor for many ills, and my family has sure had is share of generational trauma, deep rooted stress.
The day that the doctor called me to tell me there was nothing else they/we could do, I had intended on calling them to share that I was pregnant again. Two years in the making, that little heart beating on the monitor was a sight to see. My pregnancy was amazing, I walked on clouds. Mostly, it was regular and uneventful. What helped it stay that way was the doula that we hired to help me. A favorite student of mine recalled that I was a total bitch during my pregnancy, that is not how I remember it.
At the time my mother was in Florida and my mother in law, in Dominican Republic. I wanted to be sure that I had someone in my corner. Luis’ English was ok and all of this baby stuff was so new. There were no close friends who were having babies. The doula was my life line, she helped me not be afraid of a wonderful and natural moment. The day that Rio was born we had dropped my mom off at the airport early in the morning, she missed his birth. She had been visiting for my baby shower.
That evening my water broke during dinner while we were in the dinning room at Porter’s, my job. It was a surprise to say the least. The moments leading up to this birth were unforgettable. My midwife said to hang tight and she would see me in the morning, ha! Back at our house, Luis was nervous and I was rooting in my bed trying to get comfortable. He offered to make me tea and proceeded to boil water in the serving tea pot not the boiling tea pot. It was at that point I decided we needed the doula. Luis was a nervous wreck. She arrived around 10:30pm. Rolling and rooting in my bed, I didn’t really have signs or contractions to say the baby was coming anytime soon, also no pain. But some time after 11pm I announced the need to go to the bathroom. That moment, me sitting on the toilet, I screamed… “the baby is coming!!”.
The miracle of Rio is that he arrived, I became pregnant against stupid odds. He also came into the world with lighting speed. I couldn’t make it to the birthing center to give birth naturally with the doula and midwife. We rushed to the emergency room at UConn, a 5 minute ride, speeding of course. It was below freezing temperatures and I needed all windows down, I was panting like a dog. The doula pleaded that I don’t push. She was afraid, as she shared with me later, that I would have the baby in the car. It was too cold that night. I was wheeled into emergency and told again “do not push”. The doula was miraculously at my side, poor Luis was parking the car and when the doctor arrived they were ready for me to push. A few pushes later baby Rio arrived. Luis missed his birth while parking the car.
A birth happened and it was incredibly uneventful and yet beautiful. My doula asked the emergency doctors for me to birth in the way I wanted, naturally. As time was of the essence, there was no time to be hooked up, or medicated or anything for that matter. All I could do was deliver my baby, our baby, naturally and in minutes. His name is Rio Jose, named with an earth name and named after the Joe’s in both of our families. Rio arrived that night of January 15th at 11:58pm to be exact, he came two weeks early. As UConn is a teaching hospital, our birth story of speed became the whispered story, many came in to see me and Rio.
Adoni, 5 months old. Farmington, CT on the grounds of Miss Porter’s School, 2008. Photographer, Solangel Patino.
Was there emotional turmoil at this time in my life, sure. But I choose to remember the beauty, trust me this is not easy to write about. We were deeply in love, acupuncture kept me calm and focused, and our doula gave me freedom to know that I could birth naturally. Our second baby came 22 months later. This time we were prepared. When my water broke we drove immediately to the birthing center. This birth lasted 3 hours. My water broke at 6:30pm and Adoni Cedar was born on that night of November 2nd at 9:30pm. So call it what you will, a miracle or two, faith, acupuncture, eating meat, or LOVE.
Trigger warning…for me. I registered my 14 year old, Rio for public high school. While filling out the form I was brought right back to his first year of Kindergarten, where it all started.
Río at his Kindergarten graduation. Happy kid.
The summer before kindergarten when I registered Rio, I proudly filled out the questions that asked if he spoke another language with the answer yes. When asked if we wanted the paperwork that goes home to be in English and Spanish, I said yes. When asked what language he spoke at home I answered English and Spanish. This is true, he is bilingual since the birth of his words. And there folks, is when it all began, the crumble of what I thought Kindergarten/school should be and what it actually was.
By some law here in CT to protect children, my son was tested in his first week of school because I checked a box that said he spoke another language at home. Harmless right? Well there began what I considered the problem. He failed the test, and then was taken out of his classroom for extra help, daily. None of this I knew until 1.5 months into school. Principal also said to me that most kindergarteners would fail the test. And there I was in the principal’s office crying. Could I say then what I was crying about, no, but I knew deep down something was not right.
Rio wearing his favorite shirt to our first NYC performance, STOMP. This is the shirt he was asked to remove while in school because it was considered inappropriate.
I want to preface all of this with “desire” and “need” to homeschool. We desired to homeschool but our reality would not permit that. I was employed full time at Miss Porter’s School, an all girls boarding school in CT and our family lived on campus and for the most part I liked my job and loved my students. Rio attended the local public school with all of his daycare peers, also my peer families of my employment. Our desire to homeschool was dreamy, like we will spend our winters in Dominican Republic. However, I never thought what happened to Rio at school would drive me to quit me job and decide to homeschool my kids. And in the end it was a need. By February I told my head of school I was not returning, after 14 years of employment, my beautiful, talented and amazing students who kept me returning year after year, nothing was going to stop me and our new family plan. I made a dramatic decision, even revolutionary. It changed our lives forever.
Coincidentally Rio’s entrance into high school is during a Pandemic, Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter movements, so we are raw, sensitive and I am looking at and reviewing things with the eyes of a hawk. The registration form again asks the exact same questions and I quickly find myself going back and changing my answers. All so that he will fit the norm of what is versus the reality of our home life- bilingual. How can we be proud, recognized as normal and human all at once? What I learned that year from Rio’s school even in 2011 is that he was sized up and judged before he even had a chance. I guess I was braver than the generation before me that refused to teach its children to speak Spanish, me and all my cousins the result of 100% assimilation caused by racism.
Rio Fernandez Bilingual, Father from Dominican Republic, Mother half white and half Puerto Rican
It didn’t matter that I was employed at one of the most prestigious schools, it didn’t matter that Rio actually spoke English and spent his whole little life in an English speaking daycare, it didn’t matter that he too was a loved child in his daycare and he was given the stamp of approval- ready for Kindergarten. None of it mattered, thankfully his self esteem was not destroyed that year. As I worked in all girls education I learned about what works for girls and what works for boys, also what doesn’t. What had alarmed me and had me in the principal’s office when his teacher had no time for me was the simple fact that he was being removed from the classroom daily to get reading help. Many said, come on, what is the problem? He is getting help where when he needs it.
My issue was, I didn’t want him removed from the classroom. Everything I had read said it would cause future problems, especially with self esteem and that was my major cause of concern. Here are a few negative things I remember about that year.
Teaching kindergarten at second grade level, too rigorous for a 5/6 year old
Removed from the classroom daily, seen by peers as different or less than, humiliation
Being asked to change his “inappropriate” shirt, humiliation
Being asked to stop singing an “inappropriate” song in front of his classmates, humiliation
Asked to read and saying a word incorrectly, laughed at by his group, humiliation
Not feeling supported by his teacher, abandoned
Spring baseball, happy. This was during his Kindergarten year.
Some of these points could be seen as part of life and growing up, I get that, but all bundled together weighed heavy on him and us. In late fall of that year he was playing with a group of friends right after school and they all fell to the ground together and he fractured his arm. That winter while we were in Dominican Republic, 6 weeks after the initial fracture, he slipped and fell and broke it in the exact same spot. The Dominican doctor angry asked us why he didn’t have a cast on him. Me, horrified as they, the doctors here in USA, said he didn’t need a cast. Río had a removable plastic cast and they said after 6 weeks he could remove it when not playing. It was a freak accident, he slipped on a wet floor. A lot happened to Rio in 4 months at 5 years old. It wasn’t even January yet.
Dominican doctor, “kids are monkeys, we always put a cast on them”. Our doctor here in USA, broke a sweat when cutting of the “thick” Dominican cast.
When looking back on this time with both boys, homeschooling and all of it, I would not change my decision. New to homeschool moms and dads, grandparents and guardians you will get to know the real you and the real them during this time- be ready to have every single thing you thought to be true questioned, turned over and possibly thrown right back in your face. And the truth is I am flexible, go with the flow and a spontaneous person. All of this did not matter. Two independent, stubborn and non conforming, self starter adults expected their children to be conforming, easy and submissive- not.
The image on the bottom is summer time before Kindergarten, the other two images are from the fall after Rio’s first year of Kindergarten. It is hard to not read into the drawings. That fall was very difficult too as we changed everything, we moved houses, towns and no more school or old friends.
Everyone wants to know why now, why on earth would you send your kid to public school now? Simple, he wants to go. We have been looking into attending school and prepping for freshman year for the last two years. He is an athlete among other things and wants to participate in seasonal sports. Connecticut laws do not allow homeschoolers to participate. There were other paths but we have arrived at this moment. If we wait this year out in terms of thinking of health, we are propagating fear. Masks are in our present and future.
I feel like a dog rooting around in circles and I can’t find my spot. These last few weeks have been very hard for me. My mind is filled with sadness, loneliness, regret, anger, guilt and I guess all of this is called grief. By the way, regular life won’t let me be, I keep bursting into tears wherever, whenever. The night I came back from Florida Adoni got into bed with me and asked me “how long are you going to be like this?”
The week of my wedding, 2004.
Joe’s death slammed this internal discussion right up against my face. Thoughts about decisions we made or didn’t are going around and around. My brother and I grew up latch key kids living in a one parent household with an estranged father. Our lives were not easy but we were loved. We started on the same path of alcohol together, that was easy.
My friend’s son is searching for a job and she was sharing the details. In which I said (screamed inside) don’t let him get a job at a restaurant! That was fear speaking out loud. I can blame many things, mostly adults not adulting. But here is the reality, at 15 years of age I was already drinking and when I started working, I drank there too. Thanks to the adult bartender/ friend at the restaurant she said “Here ya go, wink wink…a coke with a little something special”. I could have said no, but I didn’t nor did my friends. There were three of us working there together, my best friends from highschool. We made really good money bussing tables, and learned a lot about the life of adults mixed in with alcohol. Was it good times, maybe. We played hard.
I am 15 here, do I look 15? My mom is cutting the tag off my uniform. I am starting my first job at a restaurant. Beautiful family moment.
I am sticking to the discussion of alcohol for awhile as I mourn the passing of my brother. His passing is because of his addiction and his disease- alcoholism. My childhood friend recently said I was living proof that God exists. What does one do with that statement? I cried. I am searching for all the reasons of why this statement is true. I love myself and it took me a long time to get here. But I have never thought of myself as extra special, or even regular special, just Marlo. But I know this to be true, I am a survivor in more ways than most people know.
We met in middle school, 18 years old here. My best girl friends who bussed tables with me.
Fast forward three years and I am 18, it is summer time and I am partying like no other. I am also blacking out, like a lot. After I had moved on to bussing tables at a fancy restaurant called Apricots in Farmington, CT. It was the late 80’s, and my eyes got peeled wide open. I have finished my freshman year of college, unremarkable. My history professor marked my essay with a D on “All Quiet on the Western Front”. I wrote about a force the main characters had developed together to which he commented,”this is not Star Wars”. I failed my communications class in my major and failed my Art history class. That year there was a program that followed freshman, I was one of them. Meaning I had the dean on my side all year. At a school with thousands of students I received extra attention. Yet my first year was terrible. I partied the entire time, worked 2 jobs and failed classes all while living on campus. Meanwhile my brother is becoming his best athletic self in his Junior and senior year. When I think about it he was a 3 season athlete and in great shape.
My graduation from high school, 1987.
So back to my summer, and I am drinking, and having a grand time. And as luck would have it, I fall asleep at the wheel. Driving while intoxicated, I totaled my car and my face. I broke my jaw on the steering wheel. I did not hurt anyone, just myself. Literally my life changed or I decided to change my life. I was one of the first in my family to attend a four year college. My sophomore year was different, I spent that year cleaning up the mess I had made the year before. I spent 6 weeks of my sophomore fall semester with my jaw wired shut. I also stopped working at the restaurant. One of my greatest accomplishments is that I eventually earned my BFA and my MFA.
Back to the present, when I returned home from Florida, after watching my brother exit this world, I had hard a time sleeping as one can imagine. I already grind my teeth, thanks to genes and a broken jaw. I woke having had a terrible dream and my ears hurt as my mouth spent the night grinding the shit out of my head. My jaw is my life long punishment for my car accident, my life changed that day. But see, that is the point, I changed my habits and the rest of my life is history. My life is still happening-I am Still HERE! My brother however had multiple “opportunities” to lay claim to a life changing moment and he never did, as far as I know. I can’t tell you how many accidents and injuries my brother sustained in his life time, not to mention the things he did to his body on purpose, nipple rings, tongue ring, tattoos and even branding on the back of each calf.
He made a trip to Florida in 1991. He sent me a postcard that I had tucked away in an album. Makes sense that this picture is from that trip. He was a great wrestler, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.
His energy was amazing and infectious, always the life of the party. Right up until his death he was trying to go somewhere. We have been told stories of Joe as a baby, he rocked his crib all over the room, pulling down curtains, locking himself in the room and causing much havoc. My parents nailed his crib to the floor, he rocked the crib loose. So they ditched the crib and let him sleep on a mattress. All my brother’s life he has rocked to soothe himself, wherever there was a rocking chair he claimed it. He even rocked while standing or jiggled his leg while sitting. In his last hours, he really wanted to bolt from the bed. In an effort to calm him (on top of calming medicine and morphine) I rubbed in between his eyebrows and I rocked and jiggled his bed. After he seemed calm, I sat down, looked at my mother then him and that was it, he took his last breaths. I will never forget this.
Joey was 2 years old in the pictures of him in the crib. Maybe he is 3 in the one of him in front of the Christmas tree.
Joe, I am so sorry if you ever felt ashamed living the life that you lived, one because I didn’t accept it and two you knew it. I begged you to move to AZ with me, hoping you would see the light, make a change. And then it appeared like I left you there when I moved on. I realize I never looked back to bring you along with me. I realize that we had been doing so much of our lives together that the year I left AZ for grad school, was also the year that I started the next chapter of my life without you. This was totally a normal part of life, right? But when I look back and think about our entangled web I feel an immense amount of guilt. The sadness is overwhelming as I think about the years that have passed by. As I could only spend short amounts of time with you. Good times yes, but they were so hard for me as I wasn’t living in the way that you were, you were living a non stop party and eventually addiction. I know you tried to change, tried rehab and just couldn’t make it work. Always, I couldn’t wait to see you and then I couldn’t wait to leave. I wanted you around my family on my terms and you arrived on yours. But you must know we loved you all the same.
Adoni, my son, with Uncle Joe, 2011. “jump a froggy, JUMP!” Adoni was 4.
First I will preface this by saying I was baptized but it ends there, my faith is not based in an institution or tradition.
“R.E.M. ‘s hit song came out in 1991. “Losing my religion” is actually an old southern expression for being at the end of one’s rope, and the moment when politeness gives way to anger. But if you were missing that key detail, you’d think that lead singer Stipe’s vague imagery was clearly a comment on the Judeo-Christian tradition.” If I wanted to project…. the words to this song make it easy, and my brother and his life, and my life. Watch the video, listen to the words of the song and have a good cry. That is what happened to me this morning, I turned on the radio in the car and this song was on, I lost it. The coincidences of life are stunning. The video is linked below.
Earlier this week trying to be present with my brother, I asked him if he wanted to listen to some music and he says sure and lists these groups, The B’52’s, R.E.M. and Jane’s Addiction. We, together loved these groups and their songs. I haven’t heard R.E.M. in years, until this morning. I play Dance this Mess Around from B’52’s, he actually bobbed his head for a few and we don’t even get to finish the song as his needs, the reason of why he is in the hospital, take over. I am in Florida and my brother is in ICU and has been since last Friday. Yesterday, unexpectedly as these things are never expected, the doctor tells me to my face, there is nothing else, medically, they can do for Joe. He is dying- my words. I won’t list all of what is wrong but all of it is because of alcoholism, which has caused liver failure. The sweetness is all I can see in my brother’s face and eyes even though he is in the most terrible of physical condition.
So how does one process being told “this is it”? I am numb. He knows, that yes, it is true, this is his last life. Time to go home Mr. Kitty with multiple nine lives. Your last life has been lived. My heart is broken. Joe signed his DNR papers today and he began the process of Hospice. As I write this he is being moved to “in hospital” Hospice care. Our mother also signed the papers. Do you hear me…his mother, our mother signed Hospice papers for her son.
My husband, Luis, my boys, my cousin’s boys and of course my brother in the back being goofy. Adoni’s face is for the fact that his face was literally in my husband’s armpit. 2019.
I stayed at my cousin’s last night, my mother needed some privacy. Our conversation went like this. We talk about many things, mostly our boys and how we are raising them. All our boys are in the picture above. We talk about my brother becoming the poster boy for alcoholism. I cry. We talk about the fact …this hurts too- she and my best friend both lost their brothers when we were young. My childhood best friend’s brother died in 1991, same year the R.E.M. song came out. My cousin died when we were senior’s in higschool, 1987. Why they each died is tragic and I can write about later. RIP, cousin Alan and family friend, Jared. We talk about the finality of her brother’s death and my friend’s brother’s death. It isn’t new information about how difficult these years have been for me concerning my brother. Their brothers are dead and mine is alive and stuck in addiction. It has been hard raising a family without my brother, without their uncle, without his brother in law, only for Joe to be present for little fleeting moments and always under the influence of alcohol. I didn’t loose my brother physically but I lost him emotionally to alcoholism years ago.
My brother and Adoni in Dominican Republic. My brother is a kid at heart. 2009
The nurse in the ICU today wanted to give me a hug so I let her (um Covid-19) and I sobbed. We talked about generational alcoholism. She stressed and emphasized self care and showing my children, my boys, what self care is. Which brings me back to my conversation with my cousin last night. Our boys are 12 and 14, they are coming of age. They need to know better what self-care is and how to do it correctly. Learn to recognize when there is something wrong and deal with it as negative self soothing is not the answer. I want my boys to know it is ok to be vulnerable in manhood.
The R.E.M. video shows the lead singer as vulnerable, in fact all the men and boys in the video are vulnerable. This week we have seen my brother’s vulnerability, us 3 women he cares for the most, his girlfriend, me and his mother. Allowing us to see him in the condition that he is in, seeing his acceptance of his fate, he said to me, “I did this to myself”, and him signing the Hospice papers has to be the bravest and most painful task he has ever had to do in his life.
Maybe 1989. Joe with our maternal grandmother, Rena. He loved her dearly. I shot this photograph at the beginning of my photographic education/career.
With Love, Marlo and the Boys 