Gia,

So many tears, so many prayers, so very many years! On July 18, 2005, God sent you to us, our Bitty Tiny Princess, our precious baby girl! By the time you are old enough to read this letter, you will no doubt have heard the stories (probably over and over again) about just what we went through to get you here and how very special you are! You are a miracle Gia, a true and living miracle!

As I am writing this, you are exactly 8 months old and already a shining star! You’re a constant joy in all our lives, making us endlessly laugh and smile. You should know that since the day that you were born not one of those days has passed that someone or another hasn’t commented on what a beauty you are … always smiling … always happy … and always with that sparkle in your eyes!

I promise you, Gloria Catherine, that I will do everything in my power to give you the best of what this life has to offer, not the least of which is love, security and home. You are surrounded by people who have been under your little spell from the minute you were born, especially your Daddy and Christian. These are the men who you adore most of all, and who no doubt you will be driving completely crazy by the time you turn 13! Oh, my Gia, what a life you have ahead of you! You are a treasure beyond measure beyond our wildest dreams! I will journey to you along the way, starting here with this first book, so that one day you can look back at the memories, the story of your life, and just how precious you are. Always remember, no matter what, that you are a living angel, and although it will be years before you understand what this means, please know that I will literally break my own heart into a thousand pieces before letting anyone else break yours. You are my brand new start.

Love Beyond Words …

Mommy!

How could I have ever imagined that on this bright, crisp morning I would leave my house blissfully fat and pregnant, only to return two days later once again empty and shattered? At a little more than halfway through my pregnancy, I woke up with what I thought were only cramps. I wasn’t too worried though, and in fact, had even tried convincing my husband, who wanted to take me to the hospital just to be safe, that I was fine and could wait until Monday to see the doctor. We had finally gotten settled into the new house, and on this particular Sunday there were NFL playoffs that I didn’t want him to miss. He was exhausted from the move and deserved a day off, and I knew that even a “quick trip” to the ER could possibly mean hours of our Sunday, and I just didn’t think it was necessary.

I thought about calling my parents, but opted not to worry them unnecessarily, as I truly believed that everything was fine and didn’t want to wake them. When we got to the hospital, we waited to be seen for almost an hour, all the while, my pain continually increasing. By 9am, I decided to go ahead and have him call my parents since they were probably awake by then, just to keep them in the loop. He never actually spoke to them, though, but instead, an aunt who was visiting at the time got the message. He told her what was happening and asked her to let them know, but also that everything was probably fine and we’d call them when we got home.

While Pete was on the phone, I’d gone to the restroom. No sooner did the door shut behind me did I realize that something was really wrong. As I walked back out towards Pete, I collapsed in the lobby and was soon being rushed to the ER. Meanwhile, against my instance to the contrary, my parents had already left their house which was just a few miles from the hospital.

Ten minutes later, and not less than two minutes before I delivered her, my Mother found her way to my room. There she stood holding my right hand while Pete was holding my left when Gina Marie, our precious baby girl, graced us all with her brief but powerful presence. She was 9 inches long and weighed just over a pound.

The few hours she lived were the longest of my life, and there are no words to describe my anguish. The baby I had prayed desperately for on my literal hands and knees had been cruelly ripped from my womb and now I held her broken little body in my arms. She kept trying to hold on to my finger, but her tiny hand was too small to grasp it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as I helplessly watched her gasping for air and struggling to live, then watched her take her very last breath.

I struggled for so long to find a single good thing that came from all that heartache and trauma, as it is something I will truly never understand. But what I can tell you is that there in that otherwise frigid hospital room, racked with grief and agony in my very darkest of hours, I had never felt so truly loved. How blessed was I to be surrounded by all the people I loved and cared for the most and who loved me in all the best ways they knew how? My husband, who after all he went through to bring that little girl into my life, and who despite my best efforts to push him away never once in our lifetime together at that point had ever physically left my side. My father, who despite his shortcomings, did seem to love me in all the best ways he knew how, and despite our many battles, I know would have traded his life for my daughter’s in that moment. My sister and one true and unconditional rock, there at the foot of my bed on her hands and knees sobbing inconsolably for the indescribable pain that I was in, that if she could have, I know she would have taken from me. And, of course, my beautiful mother who has loved me all the days of my life and I was blessed to have standing beside me when each of my children came into this world, and then again when one of them left it.

As for God? While at the time I couldn’t exactly “feel” Him, every single shred of my being knows that He was in that room with me leaving His footprints in my sand. He was weeping as He was holding me, as I was weeping and holding her as she was dying in my arms during this, the most bittersweet moment of my life. After all those years of praying for a baby, I’d gotten an angel instead, and although it would take years for me to make true peace with having to bury my own child, I learned that her death was really nothing at all, she’d spend both of our eternities watching me through her supernova telescope, and that the pain of losing her would eventually become one of my greatest gifts of all.

HELLO, GOODBYE

Where’s the Navigator of your destiny? Where is the Dealer of this hand? Who can explain life and its brevity, ’cause there is nothing here that I can understand. You and I have barely met, and I just don’t want to let go of you yet. Noah, hello, good-bye. I’ll see you on the other side. Noah, sweet child of mine. I’ll see you on the other side. And so I hold your tiny hand in mine for the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face. Heaven calls for you before it calls for me. When you get there save me a place. A place where I can share your smile and I can hold you for more than just awhile. Noah, I’ll see you on the other side. {Michael W. Smith}

I headed off to college in Corsicana, Texas, which was a welcomed and necessary escape from the scene at dear ole Allen High. At college, no one really seemed to care about the color of my skin, as everyone was just so different. Different colors, creeds, and backgrounds … different Gods, and diverse perspectives. It was there that I realized I was only a tiny piece of this multi-cultured tapestry of life, and it was also there, during my freshman year, that I met my future husband.

Dear GOD, was he good looking! Solidly chiseled, six foot two, 200 pounds, and deep green eyes to get lost in! We met at the local YMCA, and after many months of cat and mouse began dating and continued dating once I graduated and transferred to another college in north Texas.

My little sister had finally caught up with me and began her freshman year at the same college as me. We lived together in our own apartment, an experience I’ll always treasure.

By then, however, I’d developed a full-blown eating disorder, and at one dropped down to a 100lb size zero. My obliterated self-esteem had finally caught up with me and I’d gone almost an entire year without keeping a meal down.

My family tried to help me, but I was much weaker than my “dragon“. No one, including myself, understood what my disease was really about in the first place, which not only didn’t help, but ultimately just perpetuated my self-mutilation. After being hospitalized and intensely counseled, I dropped out of school mid junior year so I could go back home and recover, which I did, or at least I thought I did, the Christmas of 1990.

As for the guy? Sometimes I’m ashamed of how I insinuated myself into every aspect of his life in what could probably be compared to stalking. That January, after a bit of coaxing by my father, he asked me to marry him. My mom, sister, and I spent the next ten months planning our “fairytale” wedding for which no expense was spared.

We were married on October 19, 1991. Things were relatively simple for us back then. He worked a warehouse in Corsicana and planned to becoming a fireman. I became a paralegal in downtown Dallas and loved it. We made the cutest little home and began our life together.

In being honest, I was young and somewhat spoiled at the time, such that looking back, I realize that I was so busy preparing for the wedding that I completely overlooked preparing for being wed. Even so, it seemed as though we loved each other enough and were relatively happy. Things might have been just fine, but what came next became the catalyst for almost two full decades of struggling in the dark with a mental illness that had been manifesting in my fragile psyche since childhood.

STAINED GLASS WINDOW

Just beneath the rafters in a church of stone laid a stained glass window in the attic all alone. A work of art forgotten – a treasure thrown away. Taken from the sunlight, it was just a useless frame. Oh the things in life we take for granted, the things of wonder we could know. I want to be illuminated, full of Heaven’s light, shining through my life. Let the window of my heart reveal your love. I took the stained glass window and held it to the light … years of hidden glory reappeared before my eyes. Every brilliant color glowing like a fire. Full of revelation and created to inspire., Thirsty for your morning sun. Let your love in me unfold, all this beauty to behold. There’s a stained glass window in the soul of man – a pattern of perfection that was made with holy hands. With the light of heaven pouring through each pain, truth in all it’s splendor is revealed and will remain. {Clay Crosse}

We moved to Allen from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1979, back when Allen’s population was a handful of thousands. My mother, sister and I were three of only a handful of Hispanics when we arrived, which soon became one of the deepest and most toxic roots of my lacking self-esteem.

I’ll never forget the day when a gym teacher of mine, Coach Spann, made his way to the middle of the floor. As he reached for the mic to call us to attention, a very cruel girl all but leveled me in front of a gymnasium full of my peers during one of my deepest childhood traumas:

Look how Spic and Spann these floors are!

I remember that humiliation like a million tiny needles stinging my leather brown hands and feet as if it were happening this instant. In my mind, it seemed as though everyone was laughing at me, and all I wanted was to crawl under a rock and die. The funny thing is, at the time I didn’t even know what it meant. “Spic? What’s a spic?” It wasn’t until the friend that was sitting beside me leaned in closely, as if to shelter me from the trauma that I didn’t even realize I was experiencing and asked if I was okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?

A spic is a Mexican or wetback. She was making fun of you for being so dark.

I don’t remember how I finally made it from the gym floor to the bathroom but do remember staring into the mirror and crying. It was on that day that I began to despise myself and the skin I lived in, and though I did manage to have a handful of truly good friends until graduating high school in 1987 (many of whom after almost 40 years are with me still today), that moment scarred me for years to come.

Thank God for my family back then. At home, I was “safe”, with a roof over my head and my Mom never more than a heartbeat away. Looking back, I can’t remember a moment that she missed. Not one single lunch, class party, field trip or game, and never a “latched door” for us to come home to. From what I could see at that point in my life and for many years to come, my mother would have torn out her own beating heart for the sake of those that she loved despite her outwardly gentle appearance.

Of course, then there was Julie, not only my sister, but one of my truest, lifelong friends. She’s been my rock, my sounding board, and one of the only people in this world who’s ever truly understood me. So close are we that over the years when I’ve heard people talking about their sibling rivalries, I’ve been perplexed. Julie is everything that I am not, and together, we make a whole person! She, too, over the years has suffered many of the same prejudices as I, only her much more so since she’s always been so much darker than me.  Through it all, though, we have always stuck together and never once in my life has she abandoned me!

I was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and outside looking in, our family was picture perfect. My sister and I were raised by parents who chose not to divorce despite the multitude of odds stacked against them and years of turmoil and dysfunction that besmudged our family tree. My mother bore the brunt of childrearing, which as it turned out was not probably for the best and the primary reason I have many wonderful memories of New England. She did the best she could to make a safe environment for us. She suffered, struggled and sacrificed in every possible regard for the sake of everyone under our roof, most especially my father, and certainly for me and my sister. She was there for everything she could manage to be present for considering that she worked so hard at a career she’d built over years with Texas Instruments and Raytheon, and through that career she made sure my sister and I had all of the things we would need to get out there and survive, not the least of which was college educations that she paid for on her own. She took each of her roles as wife, mother, daughter and daughter-in-law as dutifully and faithfully as she possibly could under any and all possible circumstances. At one point in our life my father’s mother had even come to live with us after my Grandpa passed away and thereto mom took the brunt of her overall care and well-being, which I have to tell you is something I still don’t understand to this day, because my grandmother was a mostly cruel and selfish human being who cared nothing for my mother whatsoever, yet happily and selfishly enjoyed the many comforts and caterings to her every whim that my mother alone provided her alongside everything else she had on her already full plate at any given time without any regard or consideration for her overall care and well-being. What Ida wanted, Ida got, no matter the cost to my mother, and this was just how it was.

My mother didn’t exactly have a fairytale childhood much less was there an appearance of anything “picture perfect and charmed”. Born the second oldest of eight children, she’d been raising kids since she was old enough to change a diaper by the time she’d met my father. Her family demographic was probably near poverty level and I know for a fact that she never owned a store bought dress or new pair of shoes until after she married my father. Her Catholic faith was very strong though, and at one point she’d even considered becoming a nun. Life took her down a different path however where she would stumble upon the man and his family that would test her faith forever.

He was the youngest of four boys, born eleven years after the last. With a headstrong iron will, despite the psychological abuse he suffered at his mother’s hands, he managed to create a life filled with the most beautiful things for us out of literally nothing at all. Over the years, many have come to know him as a Midas Touch, as everything he’s ever touched has turned to gold. His father, Ernie, was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever known. He was loving and kind, caring and thoughtful, and all about his family. The man was a saint by even the harshest standards and I’d be hard pressed to find any shortcomings in his character. In the 18 years I knew him, I never once heard him raise his voice or a fist, and never once heard him say anything unkind about another. Which is not to say that he never ever said them, it’s just that if he did, he never let his impressionable grandchildren see it.

To this day I smile when I remember the “worst word” I ever heard him say: “Garl darnit!” This was his version of profanity, and it took a fair amount of anger or frustration to get him there. My Grandpa was the polar opposite of any man I’d ever known until the day I met my late husband, but I’ll get to that much later. Sufficed to say, my beautiful Grandpa was then and still remains one of the brightest stars that has led my pathway from the sky. The legacy he left behind was one of true love and kindness and the memories he left are completely unsoiled in my heart and soul. Of course, he was but a mortal man, and with that it is certain that just like all of us he’d had his moments, grievances, “grudges” and maybe even “yelling, screaming and profanity”, but as any truly good man and father should have, he was wise enough to shield the younger eyes that were watching and ears that were listening to anything less than truly impeccable words. Little did I know that he’d set a standard by which to judge any other human man against so deep inside my psyche that after his passing, it would take years for me to both understand and finally find that man.

Ida, my father’s mother, as we later found out, hid a dark childhood secret of her own, and thus led a miserable existence. Even from the grave she managed to pit her sons against each other throughout the entirety of their lives by manipulating them with her contingent based system of affection and reward. If she didn’t get what she wanted, when she wanted, how she wanted it, the regard to her sons was always the same:

I’ll fix you! I wash my hands of you! You’re nothing to me! I’m done with you! YOU’RE NO LONGER A PART OF THIS FAMILY!

Although my grandparents were not necessarily wealthy, Grandpa was a hard worker and they never wanted for anything. This suited my grandmother well. Unfortunately, that “what have you done for me lately” mindset funneled its way through to our own family home and ultimately almost cost me my sanity and life. Again, I’ll get into that later. Sufficed to say that in my lifetime, up to and including my very darkest of hours, I, too, have fallen prey to that familial gift that never seems to keep on giving and had all but blackened and asphyxiated our family tree. Dozens of times since as old as I can remember I’ve heard the very words that my father and his brothers grew up hearing from their own mother’s mouth:

I’ll fix you … I wash my hands of you … You’re nothing to me … I’m done with you … YOU ARE NO LONGER A PART OF MY LIFE!

It wasn’t until I was in my late 30’s that I began to recognize that my “picture perfect” childhood was nothing but a farce, and now I’m going to speak my truths, no matter the cost, because at this point I have NOTHING left to lose but the lovely Venom suit that’s been wrapped around my body from the moment I drew my first breath. Welcome to the pages of my life …

PAGES

What happens to a man when he spills his heart on a page and he watches words flow away then his feelings lie on the page alone there waiting for someone who cares to read them, to open their eyes to see them, to see if they can make his thoughts their own, to find out that maybe your life’s not perfect? Maybe it’s not worth what he gives away? You can see that this broken soul is bleeding. So, you can see your feelings inside yourself and wander through my heart. Letting you see through me now only consumes me. Forget your pain … you watched me fall apart. What happens to a soul when it’s trapped inside his emotions and all of these words he’s spoken, they bind him to the life he’s left behind, and every new step he takes he knows that he might not make it to all of these dreams that he has yet to find?

(3 Doors Down)