What Really Matters, pt. I [Tio Jaime]

¡Hola! Everybody...
When I think of what really matters, I remember this story...

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-=[ Tio Jaime ]=-

I wrote the following three years ago, when my tio (“uncle”) passed away. It was during the holidays and because we must never forget, I’m reposting this in his honor…

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“If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.”

-- Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894– 1963)

“Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!

… silence

“Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!

… silence

“Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!

… silence

There is a faint sound and I realize they’re playing Taps. I don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s barely distinguishable to me. It’s a crisp, clear winter morning and each time my cousin’s husband, a member of the US Army yells out, “Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!” (or something like that), the ensuing silence is like a knife into my heart. The shock reverberates through me like a shot in the dark of night and my tears well in eyes before rolling down my cheeks.

It breaks my heart…

It’s Christmas morning mid 1960s in New York’s infamous Lower East Side (or as Puerto Ricans pronounce it: Loisaida). My three cousins, Miriam, Edgar, and Jenny are young children and they’re crying because there are no gifts under the tree for them. They are crying not because they didn’t get what they wanted, but because they thought they had done something wrong for not getting any gifts at all. There is no heat in the apartment; it’s cold, and the oven is on full blast, barely making on dent on the sharp cold of a cruel New York winter day. Water is boiling on the stove. My aunt Sylvia cries silently, not knowing what to tell her children.

We all lived in the same building on the Lower East Side: 704 E. 5^th St. I liked to joke that if a bomb had been dropped on “704,” the Rosario’s would have ceased to exist because we all lived in that building. I was only half kidding. It was a rat-infested building – a cold water flat -- and the bathtub was situated in the kitchen. It wasn’t uncommon to be eating dinner while a family member bathed. LOL! We saw that as normal. The apartment had no toilet; we had to share one down the hall with the apartment across from us. The owners were derelict in everything except one: they were prompt in collecting the rent.

Nine of us lived in that two-bedroom apartment, togetherness in those days was little different: having your own “space” wasn’t an option. We were working poor, children of first generation Puerto Ricans, factory workers, and the garment industry, janitors, washerwomen. There was one TV, owned by my uncle, Jaime, and the children would all gather at his apartment to watch King Family Christmas Specials on this HUGE monstrosity of a TV that had maybe a 9-inch screen. Togetherness was different in those days: it was cold and huddling together on my uncle’s big bed was also about keeping each other warm. To have your own space in those days meant you freeze your culo off.

Tio Jaime bursts into my aunt’s apartment and yells out, “Why is everybody crying?” My cousins, through the gaps in their sobbing tell Tio that they didn’t get any gifts and they don’t know why because they had been good. My uncle looks around, and in that comical way he had, he opens his eyes wide and yells out, “Aha! Here is the problem!” Pointing to the closed, securely latched window by the fire escape he explains that the reason Santa Claus didn’t leave any gifts was because that, “Sangana mother of yours forgot to unlock the window and he couldn’t get in! C’mon! He left your gifts at my place and told me to make sure I came and got you.”

We never knew until many years later what Tio did – not until we became older and understood what had happened. Unable to bear the sadness of his nieces and nephews, he sacrificed his meager salary so that everyone would have at least a little something for Christmas. Many years later, my cousin Cynthia, Jamie’s daughter, would joke that her Barbie died of starvation that year because they gave Miriam the Barbie Oven – you know those ovens with the light bulb inside that let you bake muffins and stuff like that.

We could never overtly thank Tio because he hated for these acts to be known. For him, it wasn’t valorous or a good deed, it was what had to be done – nothing extra, he would say. He did this many times, more than we would ever know.

Togetherness was different in those days, I think, because to have your own space meant your loved one would not receive a simple Christmas gift. It wasn’t an option…

Many, many years later, as a student at a university, I began a preliminary study on fatherhood within the Puerto Rican context and what I read in the research literature troubled me because it didn’t jibe with my own experience growing up Puerto Rican in New York City. While it was true that my own father was absent, I also had the luxury of surrogate fathers like Tio Jaime who taught me what it was to be a real man, with a real conscience.

“Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!

… silence

By now, my cousin’s husband’s voice is cracking with emotion and he too is crying because there is no answer. My heart cracks open and it seems that there’s a hole in my life and the sharp edge of a cruel winter wind blows through it mercilessly.

It breaks my heart…

My uncle served in the military and was part of that famous Puerto Rican unit, the 65^th Infantry Regiment.

A Company, 1^st Battalion…

Tio never liked to talk about his service, but we discovered that he participated the famous landing at Inchon, Korea to free surrounded US Troops. His unit received the Presidential Unit citation, The Meritorious Unit Commendation, and two Republic of Korea Unit Citations. My uncle detested violence and he was wounded during the war for which he received the Purple Heart Medal.

But that wasn’t what Tio was about. He was more about humor and facing life’s hardships with a laugh. Smiling in the face of adversity is how I will always remember my beloved Tio, forever thanking him for that gift.

“Cpl. Jaime Rosario, present arms!”

… silence

Love,

Eddie