Within These Pages

Dear Aleta,

Happy Birthday! As you complete your twenty-fourth run around the sun, I offer my fondest wishes for your bright future. My love for you has been compounded by the love you’ve given me in return. Yes, as they say, love is boundless and it seems to grow as you give and receive it.

Life is like this little black book you hold in your hands. It has a beginning, middle and end. It’s a wide open invitation. May your pen, full in its fill and flow, dance across these pages. Do it with flourish. Do it with abandon. The parchment thirsts for it all.

Unleash your imagination. Your wildest wishes and hopes. The what ifs and phrase fragments that when stitched together form a narrative quilt. May this book serve as your meditation. And be a worthy companion when all isn’t always right around you.

Please excuse my wobbly cursive. You can tell by so much illegible handwriting these days that it has become an unnatural act, and penmanship a lost art form, all of us endlessly clacking away on keyboards, expressing with emojis, and relying on speech recognition to get our words across. How guilty I’ve become! May such a fate not beset you. One of my motives for presenting this to you.

Live without regrets! It’s my well-worn mantra to my niece who you know I love to spoil. I’ll never forget the day you arrived. My tears could have a filled a drum, happy that so many prayers had been answered. I cheesed a smile the size of Wisconsin. You should have seen the stares throughout the hospital as I carried the biggest stuffed toy I could find. An elephant with its trunk up to shower luck upon you. So apt a present then given your quiet strength and patience which define you now, not to mention your gift for recall.

Like when you wrote about announcing to us all, even to Pete the cocker spaniel, that you would visit faraway places and tell tales of strangers turned friends. I can still hear your giggles and see your arms flapping like a crane taking flight on the towpath along the Delaware. You were five, maybe six. The afternoon was portrait perfect, fall’s first chill, you between your mommies, holding hands. Me, trailing behind with the dog. An indelible imprint upon my heart.

It brings me even further back days before you were born when I partook in the baby naming fun. After much back and forth we landed on Aleta, the winged one. A nod to your abuela. And the essence of who you are becoming.

How I welcomed those weekends in the country. I raised my hand for every chance to come visit, to babysit for mi querida hermana Rosalita -- Rosie – and dear Monique. To give them a change of scenery, a chance to mend their relationship whenever it was frayed. You and I read all the Lyle The Crocodiles until we could recite them by heart. We gobbled up all the Nancy Drews and not before long, you as a voracious reader, even at thirteen, turned to Jane Austen and Isabel Allende. And they became your heroines, to emulate, to aspire to as you discovered your young adult voice.

Oh how you have matured into the beautiful woman and budding writer you are today. Your compassionate soul yet impish grin. Your heartfelt poetry, your take on undocumented brethren, the downtrodden, who keep the suburbs manicured and the corner bodegas humming. How you honor your heritage and uplift a common humanity in and out of our community.

And still you are able to chase your other bliss. The teacher tradition lives on in our Jimenez clan even as its surname finds its terminus in me. I’m so proud of how you are guiding your inner city fifth graders through these tough times. Even offering to tutor on weekends, not wanting any of them to fall behind.

How can I forget when we discovered that we both enjoyed Dancing With the Stars and fantasized mastering the waltz, quick step, or paso doble? We took up ballroom dancing and shocked everyone with our prizeworthy jitterbug at your Aunt Tina’s wedding. We put in the time and effort into our joint creative pursuit. And it paid off!

How grateful am I for our Sunday cocktail hour we kept going long after the social Zoom boom had reached its peak. Our lifeline in isolation. You in Jersey City. Me in Astoria. Taking turns choosing topics we would discuss, even fiercely debate. Though I contend that I will always be right about Ryan Gosling being sexier than Bradley Cooper. Though as you’ve often heard me say, I wouldn’t throw either one of them out of bed!

And right after that glorious day, when we last spoke, how we marveled at Amanda Gorman. That she was a bright star at high noon as the nation turned a torn page. How you saw yourself in her small frame, a girl of color, who has something worthy to say. And that she too serves as an inspiration. Not just to you but to so much youth the world over. And thank goodness for that.

Remember when you recited your poem of the boy “who cut through my heart as if a paper Valentine’s?” No dry eyes here. Then there was that warm for winter morning freeze-dried in my memory as well. Us in that upstate gazebo, licking on our hot chocolate foam mustaches. When you made me swear to keep your first time with a boy a secret then bribed me with your allowance to buy you a test kit which I did not mind doing so in the first place. How I was happiest when you made me your confidant, trusting me to help heal a hurt of yours.

So by the time you receive this, it means, well, I’m so sorry for not saying a proper farewell. That I have ignored your calls and texts of late. And that you are learning of my passing via the package you have just opened. I couldn’t bear to tell you or your mommies how this pandemic has diminished me. And so precipitously. I confirmed I was positive at the start of February when a casual cough persisted. While I cannot pinpoint how I got it thinking I had taken all precautions, it still found its way into me. The tough call not to gather as a family for the holidays now seems wise in retrospect. Well, the virus has literally sucked the life out of me! (Hey, you always laughed at my darkest humor.)

I may have handled this all wrong. And for that I’m sorry.

It’s a trite trope that the truth shall set you free. Yet I too must allow myself to be. To come clean before it’s too late. To confess that it was I who had agreed to be the donor to Monique carrying you to term. They had asked me if I would do it. It felt right at the time. It still feels right to this day. With my one regret after all. That they, I, none of us ever leveled with you, all of us colluding on the untruth that part of you was a withdrawal from a bank, selected through a database.

And so this may finally explain the hazel in our eyes, the curls in our hair, our tender tears at every Hollywood romantic manipulation. And our shared sense of wanderlust.

I know I’m causing much consternation as I leave more questions than answers. My hope is that with time you might understand. And even forgive me. The anvil of secrecy, the charade, has weighed down on me for far too long. Please, please, do not take it out on your mommies. They had their reasons for not rocking the boat with relatives even more so than they, or I, have already.

Within these pages, tucked and folded, is an envelope. A check. Yes, all $20,000 is yours. Please deposit it quick. Pronto, mi querida niña! Before the family finds out what I have done. Though that is up to you.

Should the check not go through, please contact Philip whose cell number and email I’ve included. Reach out to him. You do not know him but he knows you well. And he’ll expect to hear from you in your own time.

How fortunate am I to have him at this late stage of the game. Philip has been of sweet solace these waning days. I have entrusted him to carry out my final wishes and to tidy up my affairs. I’m sorry I’ve kept him a mystery. We go way back. But I was reticent to reveal him knowing how fond you were of Dennis. And that it may have seemed way too soon to be in love again after he and I parted ways. Nineteen years is a long time.

As for the money, I have but one request. That you spend it on what matters most. Take that new beau of yours out for sushi. Even on the computer I can tell that he is a good egg. Start a Roth IRA (Philip is a CPA and he can help you). Choose a charity. Read more books. Even acquire more little black books. And find a killer outfit for yourself. Perhaps after COVID passes you can finally cross off the top of your travel wish list – Barcelona!

Please keep pushing to your highest aspirations. Welcome each sunrise as it stretches its rays into a new day, just as it has the day before and will do so the day after. Have faith that it does.

Mi ángel, the present is yours to seize. Squeeze its sweet juice out for all it’s worth, in this crazy, beautiful world. Don’t let naysayers drag you down. Nor any setback. They are all but stepping stones on the path to your own success. All you must do is look beyond. And to keep on striving.

As long as you are writing, and what you create kindles more adventures for you, literary or otherwise, my dearest Aleta, I will be rooting for you.

I will always be with you.

As my last act I offer to you, a writing prompt (with apologies to Clint Eastwood) for this little black book:

Tomorrow is promised to no one. So today….

xoxo

(Tio) Rick