NOSOTRAS
Opening the Door to our Love Life
Rosa Sanchez and Ofelia Fox
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be quoted, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic without the written permission of Rosalie G. Sanchez.
ISBN 978-1-61539-670-2
Library of Congress Control No. 2009904386
© May, 2009
To Ofelia, my sweetheart, who forgave my shortcomings and now continues to be my source of strength in life.
Rosa
To Rosa, who God brought into my life to make my dreams come true and fill the journey with love.
Ofelia
To mediums, family and friends whose generosity keep the lines of communication open.
Rosa and Ofelia
Thanks to our dear friends Onley Cahill, Silvia Unzueta and Adán Flores. Without their help and unconditional support this project couldn’t have been possible.
Rosa and Ofelia
Nothing is in this book is fiction or has been embellished. We are simply opening the doors to our life. When we met, one lived in a house bought right out, the other rented an apartment; one was married to the owner of the cabaret Tropicana in Havana, Cuba and the other had a little boy everyone called Toto and was separated from her husband; one had a Cadillac in the garage and the other an old Ford parked on the street; one had a monthly allowance for incidentals that was as large as some salaries, the other worked at a radio station; one had a wedding ring with diamonds whose sparkles could be seen from another planet, the other didn’t wear any rings; one had a cook named Carmen and a maid named Milagros and the other had to do her own housework.
We are those two women and what you are about to read is nothing more than the detailed accounting of forty years of our life together and the continuous dialog between our souls. We have not interrupted our communication after the passing of one on the second day of January of the year 2006.
Every detour of our conversation will show you a little more of our life, past and present.
You are invited to listen to our voices and see much of what we saw along the road. You are welcome to look into our life. We believe that we were blessed with an extraordinary ride; you’ll be the judge of that.
For us it has been an adventure full of happiness and relished with enthusiasm and hope. For some readers it might not be easy to understand our feelings or fathom the intricate dynamics of love when it is as intense as ours. We hope that any doubt you may now harbor is not because this is the story of two women but because ours is not a very common bond between two individuals. And we always knew it.
Traditionally, pure unconditional and undying love has been reserved mostly for novels and between a man and a woman. If after reading this book you have any doubts about eternal love it might be because you have not met your soul mate. Perhaps you missed it by an inch or a minute or it is waiting around the corner. It is also possible that in the game of life you weren’t dealt the greatest hand and you may never meet your perfect match and walk away with the pot. Still you can bluff, stay in the game, and bid with enthusiasm and hope to the very end. We hope our story encourages you to do just that.
If you are a skeptic and communication with the spirit world falls into the realm of fantasy, wishful thinking or make-believe, ponder on the following: if you had read in 1910 that the driver of a Ford Model-T could open from his vehicle a garage door by holding a small box the size of a pack of cigarettes aimed at it, would you have believed it? Have you ever questioned the voice that comes out of a radio? Have you ever wondered if the images and voices coming from your television set are real? If just three dozen years ago someone had written about devices to see in the dark, doctors routinely ordering virtual tests to watch how our internal organs work or that in a corner of Los Angeles there were four individuals, each with a small device clipped to the ear, one carrying a conversation with New York and the others with far away places like Chicago, Mexico and Holland, would you have believed any of it?
There’s a generation that takes for granted all of the above and lives with means to transmit and receive in ways that were unthinkable not all that long ago.
Why should anyone doubt that in forty or fifty years some of the things we are writing now will read like a book recounting the beginning of the telephone or fax machine? It is possible that, leafing through this book a reader will be amazed that there were once people so naïve as to question contact between the spirits and the living.
We wish to share our life with those who respect our love and lifestyle and with those whose lack of knowledge or understanding prevent them from accepting either. We wish to share it all with the strong believers as well as the stubbornly incredulous. Welcome to everything that our memory holds!
Obviously everyone will draw his or her own conclusions. As far as we are concerned eternal love does exist and death is just a word.
Ofelia and Rosa
“Happiness is just a commodity. And some, wisely, invest in contracts of future happiness.”
Ofelia
A famous actor has died and old interviews with the movie star and philanthropist are being replayed on a cable channel. He was married to the same woman for several decades and when asked about their union he simply replied time after time: “I’m not comfortable talking about it.”
Like him, Rosa never felt comfortable talking about our relationship except within a very small circle. Reticent is a good word to describe her when it comes to our personal life, which really means our love life. It has never crossed my mind that she acts that way because she’s ashamed and I don’t think, either, that she will not change with the passing of time. Especially if and when she realizes that I’ve always been serious about sharing our story with others.
I hope that my words in CDs and computer files will not only constitute a large portion of this book but also serve to encourage and guide Rosa with her share of our story.
When we met it was hard to imagine even a close friendship between us. So far apart were our lives and our reactions! Rosa, separated from her husband, with Toto, her son, almost single-handed managed the Spanish programming of a radio station. Younger than I, impetuous, naïve and high-strung, she seldom, if ever, stopped to think about consequences. Being affluent, married and older I was far more mature, then, again, I was mature at 18, and even then deliberate and fully aware of consequences. In conclusion: definitely ours was not supposed to be a match made in Heaven. And yet, since we met in a long narrow corridor between recording studios, I felt a mysterious spark that told me that something connected us.
I lightly touched her chin as I introduced myself. To me, she was a twenty-something girl in a black and white summer dress that didn’t know, or cared, that I was married to the owner of Tropicana, a worldwide famous nightclub in Havana.
Rosa was destined to become the love of my life. However, it took more than a couple of years for me to invest it all in our future happiness.
“Yes… ‘You are my destiny. Heaven and heaven alone can take your love from me.’ The song was definitely written for me to dedicate to you.”
Rosa
She lightly touched my chin and my whole life changed. Forty-seven years later I am an elderly Anna Karenina standing at the platform hoping to, gracefully, be able to cope with life for just one more hour. I am waiting for that train whose schedule nobody has and, as I wait, I try to understand and accept what happened to my world. That isn’t an overly dramatic gesture but a fact of my life: every now and then I debate what shall I do if the wait becomes intolerably long.
For what now seems just a brief moment I was happy, she was healthy and we all thought she would outlive friend and foe. The foe was just one. The same that has haunted older Cubans that still dream of what was and desperately take every breath as if they were sucking in the oxygen of the past, hoping and waiting for just one thing: the return to the land of their dreams. A land that now exists only in their collective mind.
As I wait, mesmerized by the imaginary iron rails, I know I am far from being the person I was with her and I wonder in what corner of the Universe is Ofelia, so well hidden from me that I can’t reach out and touch her or hear her words for guidance or her laughter for joy. All I have now are her writings and her voice, repeated over and over, coming from recordings. I watch the same movie that replays in my head: the cruise ships, writing, playing Mancala or Backgammon while we sipped cocktails, engaging in tournaments of Canasta, dominoes, the Cuban dice game of cubilete, playing poker, planning dinners and parties, vacationing in places she had selected from newspaper clippings and were kept in a pocket of a calendar behind the door to our bedroom; and the two of us driving up and down, left to right on modern highways or back roads, stopping in places that often appeared to be a tiny piece of dirt on the map. If I was doing the driving there was Ofelia by my side, watching the scenery, ready to ask me to stop so she could take a picture, telling me a story or reading to me. If she was driving I was either studying the map or going over a tour book and reading to her a description of the next stop in our trip.
Stumping over those memories and sharing a few hours with family and friends who still feel her presence in our small parties and weekly games are my favorite pastimes now.
I am fully aware that I keep our past alive stubbornly refusing to let it fade or go away. I also know now that there are many who don’t have a present or a past to enjoy. So, I should be grateful for ours. I ask myself: why should anyone let go of the most wonderful and happy times? That’s the reason behind the simple acts of looking at old pictures, watching videotapes and DVDs and reading yellowing letters pausing only to write, take care of the cats, visit Forest Lawn, talk on the phone and read and send E-mails.
On the surface my life seems full. It is not. All hours of all days are empty of the most important ingredient: Ofelia. Sure, I talk to her, calling out the pet names used in the intimacy of our home often testing her patience with my fussing over anything and everything as we were getting ready to go out.
This book has had no less than five false starts, none because lack of words but by indecision. Mine, of course. Never before did we start a project not knowing in what direction we were taking it but the compass moved to another dimension on January 2nd, 2006 and finding true North became an impossible task for me.
Like in the novel, Ofelia is now the ghost and I am her Mrs. Muir. Unfortunately I don’t have the ability to call on her at will to discuss an issue, get a clear opinion or a good suggestion. I struggle in my search for an equilibrium that only she and her words could bring to my life and my thoughts.
We were the Yin and the Yang, complementary opposites, opposing forces bound tightly together, interdependent and intertwined giving rise to each other in turn. Her life was an eternal springtime and her sunny days made mine bright and warm and carefree. In my inner presence there was no tomorrow because my tomorrows were todays to be prolonged ‘til the end of time.
We were rooted together so intimately that in our reality there was no world other than our world. My pleasure was her pleasure and her breath was my own. It is very hard to believe or understand, but we briefly paused to interact with others.
God, the Divine Providence, Destiny, Fate or plain Luck had looked down and bestowed on us the grace of a not so frequently seen dynamic balance. We were so equal and at the same time so different but so intimately linked in body and soul that when she disappeared from my world I also disappeared as I was.
Our differences? Obvious to the naked eye! The first big difference: I am impulsive, she deliberate. I am scared of everything and when she was eighty years old she told me that she had never been afraid of anything or anyone. I teased her about refusing to fly unless it was absolutely necessary. She explained, in very simple terms: “When a plane crashes everyone dies.” In October of 2005, we were flying from Los Angeles to New York. I reached out to hold her hand and asked: “Are you OK?” She looked at me and softly replied: “Yes. It doesn’t matter now.” She was mortally wounded. The reason for her concern was of very little consequence that morning when we boarded the plane at the airport in Los Angeles. She kept my hand on hers, squeezed it, and said no more.
She didn’t look terribly sick, but she was very ill and knew she was the center of my Universe. I now wonder if, secretly, as we boarded that plane she fought against the idea of us getting to the end of the road, together, as we had lived. She had to know what my life would be like without her physically at my side!
There is another big, obvious, difference between us: in spite of my quick and strongly expressed opinions I am easily swayed. There was no changing Ofelia’s mind. She was firmly planted on her beliefs and convictions and in her dictionary there were no “rash decisions” because in her soul everything had grown with strong roots. Nothing of hers was superficial and yet she made people feel as if she was all on the surface for them to observe. Perhaps that is why it was so easy to like her. Ofelia seemed to belong everywhere and with everyone, all the time. No easy task for most mortals.
Self assured she proceeded, deliberately but without hesitation. She didn’t need approval or acceptance. Ofelia knew who she was and accepted well how others might perceive her as she took them fully aware of how and what they were.
I’ve never been one hundred percent comfortable with myself and there were moments when I must have appeared to be following her through life like a clumsy lost cub. But, as someone reminded me not long ago, Ofelia was not one to put up with such nonsense, at least not long term. And definitely she couldn’t have loved such a woman.
On the lighter side, there were other differences: she could down her own roasted jalapeño peppers as if they were pieces of candy and my nose runs at the mere sight of cilantro; Ofelia was forever tanning herself while I watched from the nearest shade. She was blessed with great metabolism and I gained three pounds just looking at a leaf of spinach. Ofelia could park on a dime and I need three assistants to do the same in a football field even if the car I drive is the only one there.
So, our differences were well defined and on the surface, our commonalities were deep and ran strong. Our perceptions were identical but our reaction choices were very different: she was a diplomat and I have never been able to cultivate diplomacy with any degree of success. We were equals in a terrain where ‘equality’ is often plagued by “I’m sorrys” and “I love you toos.” Our own brand of ‘equality’ forbade those terms that could have turned our life into a sea of politeness, habit, fear of loneliness or an intimate or public, silent or vociferous battlefield.
We did things that we both enjoyed and some were those that few do at ours or at any age. Often surrounded by people of all persuasions, having cocktails and snacks before the midnight suppers we made sure to give priority, not to the worn out ‘quality time,’ but to ‘just the two of us time.’ And to the very end my heart skipped a bit every time she held my hand or kissed me.
Many evenings we sat on the floor, torrid boleros (Spanish torch songs) or easy listening music filling the room, sipping cocktails, reading poetry to each other as our dog, Congrí, bored, let an occasional bark. We shhhd him as we held back the laughter to resume taping our romantic evenings. Why tape them? I don’t know. Perhaps remnants from our radio days.
“If brain, spirit and capacity to reason could come to an agreement…would we be eternally happy?”
Ofelia
More romantic than pragmatic Rosa and I invariably drifted to matters of the spirit but I must admit that usually I had to start the ball rolling.
Ever since I can remember I’ve been interested in the power of the mind, life beyond corporal perception, psychic
abilities, fields of energy, metaphysics and personal growth but I don’t recall Rosa ever selecting a book on any of those subjects and she once confessed that she felt a bit intimidated. I remember laughing off her fear of levitation and hypnosis. Yet, she encouraged me to attend classes and seminars and in all of them she was by my side. I took the lead, she followed and, attentive, Rosa listened to everything I commented or read to her on those subjects. We spent hours in places like The Bodhi Tree, enjoying the sweet smell of their incense, sipping tea and leafing thru books before I decided which to buy.
To be fair, earlier in life Rosa had been an avid reader. Romantic novels and biographies were her favorites. I remember buying for her a paperback of the biography of actress Marion Davies, more famous for her liaison with William Randolph Hearst than for her acting talents. We were driving along the Pacific Coast and had planned our first visit to the Hearst Castle. I drove to Cambria and San Simeon, where the Hearst Castle is located, while Rosa read to me with great fascination Marion Davies’s account of her life with William Randolph Hearst.
But…and this is a big ‘but.’ One day, before driving to the mountains for a week’s vacation with her son Toto, the dogs and the cats, I bought her another paperback. This time it was a novel by Pearl Buck. The plot mesmerized her. Even inside the cabin she hardly put down the book and I lost her for hours and hours. So I complained with the best smile I could find within me: “You’ve not stopped reading! I don’t think I’m going to get you any more books!”
It was a joke, really. Well, maybe. I never enjoyed sharing her attention. Not even with a book by Pearl Buck!
After that, consciously or not, the only books I bought for her were the Lin Yutang books that I chased all over town many years later. Lin Yutang, a Chinese novelist and philosopher was one of her favorites. They were a special Christmas gift and by then she had fought macular degeneration of the right eye so I didn’t loose her completely when she insisted on reading them herself a few pages at a time. She later told me that Lin Yutang’s novels: “Juniper Loa” (“Enebro Loa”) and “A Leaf In The Storm” (“Una Hoja en la Tormenta”) were among the most gut-wrenching love stories she had ever read.
I really can’t complain because Rosa, full of enthusiasm, was 100% my partner in every adventure and once dared to join me in loud “Oms” as we rested, leaning against a wall on Rodeo Drive, both oblivious of passerby’s puzzled looks. We had just left a seminar on the subject and I couldn’t resist testing the sound out in public.
Maybe through the process of osmosis she wound up being more involved than she realized in the areas that intrigued me because she was always on the lookout for things that would peek my interest. It was in 1990 that she contacted Egyptologists Molly and Mark Legend. Molly did a painting of my name in The Old Kingdom Alphabet of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mark gave detailed instructions on how to read the glyphs and the meaning of their personalization. She gave me the painting when I was 67 years old and it was a gift I treasured above many others.
Years later she found another special present: a gold Egyptian scarab. Stored in her extraordinary memory, I am sure, was a story I had told her: in the Tropicana, Julia Darvas, a singer-dancer, took off a scarab broach, which I admired, and gave it to me. The broach, sadly, stayed behind when I left my home in Havana. Now, once again, I had a gold scarab, symbol of rebirth, transformation and good luck.
I have taken incidents like these not as material gifts from her but as spiritual links that joined us. That is why I can say that Rosa and I are indeed mates in spirit.
When it comes to capacity to reason I shall not be shy or modest: mine has been above average and I maintained it functioning very well under the most difficult and stressful circumstances.
I want to step back to 1964, when I had to leave Miami for reasons that did not concern Rosa or relate to this book. It is a very long story that I will summarize this way: my life had caved in when my husband had a fatal stroke, I had run out of money and there were no employment possibilities in the tight job market of Miami where until then I had broadcast a daily radio message to exiled Cubans. I wasn’t paid for the transmissions; it was my contribution to the fight for Cuba’s freedom. There were no jobs to be had. Cuban women were routinely employed peeling shrimp and picking tomatoes in the Southern Florida fields, probably for less than minimum wages.
Rosa, Toto and I traveled west in my 1964 Chevrolet Impala, pulling a U-Haul tightly packed with everything we owned. In those years you could easily identify cross-country travelers because everyone driving thru the desert had a canvas bag full of water tied the front bumper of the car.
I felt good telling those that we met through the years: “I drove Rosa every single mile from Miami to Los Angeles!” Owning a feat? Staking my claim? Pride? I guess all three.
That trip was a 21-day journey full of new scenarios, emotions and, yes, some pitfalls too. About six days into the trip I came down with a virus that caused a change in the blood temporarily mimicking leukemia. The drive from Wichita Falls to Albuquerque seemed to last an eternity for us. It was in Albuquerque that doctors re-checked my blood and Rosa and I celebrated my perfect health with too many martinis in a small cocktail lounge where they made a daring exception letting Toto come in with us. There was also the “Fleur de Liz” motel, exotic name and unbearably lumpy beds, Gallup where a blinding blizzard, a slippery road and a heavy trailer made driving more than a bit treacherous to say the least, the Grand Canyon, where we didn’t want to go out into the freezing night, heated canned soup to discover that we had no bowls. Rosa quickly improvised using the motel large ashtrays. Years later, recalling the three-week adventure, we agreed: “Yes! God definitely protects the innocent!” We are living proof of it!
My brain had a couple of plans at that time: we would stop in California. That was Plan A. And in case I couldn’t get a job I had Plan B.
Plan B was simple enough: we would continue to Mexico where I had influential friends that could help me get gainful employment. To that effect we had secured Mexican visas before leaving Miami. Since Rosa had plenty of experience in broadcast media and advertising she was coming to California with three or four very promising business contacts. Getting a job for me was a different proposition since my whole curriculum vitae could be stretched only to two or three lines, at best. In my mind there was a thought pounding like a drum: “I am not about to let Rosa support me!”
The odd thing is that we forgot completely about Plan B once we arrived in the City of Angels. We didn’t think of a possibility other than my getting a job in Los Angeles. And that turned out to be not so easy.
My spirit was drowning in a mixture of new and contradictory feelings. I was relieved to have taken the action I had taken in Florida. I had done what I had to do. After many months of anguish I was without work and little money, in a place far away from everything I knew and held dear, but I could breathe freely. I was a happy woman looking at my new family: Rosa and her small boy Toto. With them my life was full and I could send my preoccupations to a far away corner of the brain where optimism and faith could take care of them as I filled job applications everywhere.
Soon my capacity to reason kicked in and took me to a beauty parlor. The assignment was simple: I have been blonde before. Make me a blonde again!
Disaster doesn’t begin to describe the results of several hours at the hands of the beauticians of a place near our apartment. I thought I wasn’t asking for too much. Apparently the task was beyond the possibilities of the place I chose. I had to go through two sessions, a burnt scalp and an embarrassingly temporary bright red before getting to be blonde again. That’s what it took to get rid of the strands of gray hair that announced to the world that I was a forty-year old woman looking for an entry-level job in any office that would have me.
My capacity to reason didn’t stop me from using Rosa’s overly optimistic suggestions for my resume so my employment background became a bit more impressive. The results were surprising: I was over-qualified for every single position I applied!
After many years I have an answer to that important question: “If brain, spirit and capacity to reason come to an agreement…would we be happy?” The answer is “no.” I left out an essential ingredient for happiness: love.
Experiencing love, giving and receiving it without any condition or fear is absolutely necessary to be happy for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year or a lifetime.
Only love can give us with all four at once: peace, joy, hope and dreams. Without it we only settle and mark time until real happiness crosses our path or we move to another world.
Toto took a picture of Rosa, Ofelia and Cognac at a
cabin in Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Ofelia on the right and Rosa at the left in Pacific Ocean
Park in Santa Monica, California, in 1964.
“There are no strange bedfellows. There are strange
beds and strange fellows that Providence fortuitously brings together.”
Rosa
Ofelia believed in fate and destiny but also believed in freewill. Is that a contradiction? Well, not really. Fate brought us together but cultivating our love was born of our own freewill however unavoidable our destiny might have been.
We had been born in Cuba but if the communist revolution had not taken place our paths never would have crossed. And for us to meet at a radio station in Miami was an even more serendipitous occurrence. I was working at the station and she was broadcasting a radio message directed to Cubans in Cuba and in exile.
Mutual attraction was instantaneous, quickly developing into a great friendship in spite of our age and background differences.
This was happening at the time when Miami’s Cuban community was growing by leaps and bounds and nothing could have been farther from our minds than moving across country and living together for the rest of our lives.
As incredible as it may sound now, overnight Ofelia found herself without money or possibilities of gainful employment. Times were tough for everyone. An old friend of my family, owner of a radio station in Cuba was cleaning the printing presses of the Miami Herald at night to support his family. And the decision for me to accompany her is now even more incredible but at the time all I could think of was to support and help her. Ofelia was assuming a big responsibility: she was taking my small son Toto and I to the other end of the country.
Our life in California began as fortuitously as our meeting in Miami. After twenty one days on the road towing the U-Haul we spent the night at a Holiday Inn in San Bernardino, about 60 miles from Los Angeles. We left early in the morning so we could arrive at the City of Angels with enough time to find a place to stay. We didn’t know anyone in California and were armed just with a Trip-Tick that the receptionist of WMIE had gotten for us in Miami.
Pulling a U-Haul during the rush hour through the Freeways of Los Angeles was no small feat but Ofelia handled it beautifully. After all, she had already driven about twenty three hundred miles across mountains, deserts, a blinding blizzard in Gallup and cities like Falstaff in Arizona where parked cars were covered by fresh snow still knee-deep on sidewalks.
Someone once wrote that Los Angeles is “a collection of suburbs looking for a city” or words to that effect. Finally we saw the sign indicating that we were entering the limits of the city of Los Angeles. Still she drove and drove through the heavy traffic until I told her to take the next exit. It was Sunset Boulevard. Later I confessed to Ofelia how that off ramp had been chosen by me: I had seen the movie! What a logical reason! Well, that’s how simple my train of thought was at the time and how things work out in life. We could have ended anywhere, miles away from the area where we had to be in order for everything else to fall into place.
Since we had just a cup of coffee in San Bernardino the first order of business was to have breakfast on that April’s Fool Day of 1964. We came to a Norm’s Restaurant and Ofelia swiftly entered and parked car and trailer inside their parking lot. By this time she was driving the Chevrolet Impala pulling the U-Haul with an expertise that would make any truck driver shake with envy.
After breakfast we began to cruise, aimlessly, checking out “For Rent” signs. It was cheaper to rent a small apartment than to stay in a hotel. With the trailer hitched to the car we needed two spaces to park on the street. After driving around for a while without any luck we decided that it was best to leave our belongings in storage and return the U-Haul. By early afternoon we were free of forty-three boxes that were left at the Lyons Moving and Storage on Highland Avenue, we had returned the empty U-haul at a gas station and the search for an apartment resumed.
“For Rent” signs were all over so we could easily take our pick. We had no clue as to where we were, other than we were in Hollywood. Ofelia stopped at a corner where there was a modern, white structure with a prominent “For Rent” sign. We went to the manager’s apartment and in less than an hour we had inspected a brand new furnished apartment and Ofelia signed a six-month lease. This is impossible nowadays with applications to be filled, large deposits required and credit ratings to be checked. In 1964 signing a lease was just that: signing a lease. Customers opened accounts at individual stores; gasoline was twenty-eight cents per gallon and uniformed attendants checked under the hood. Some gas stations even offered a free car wash with your purchase. This was a time when vehicles were left in the street, unlocked and often with the key in the ignition.
During the first days in our apartment there were many discoveries and surprises. But there was one disclosure that merits being mentioned here: all I could cook was chicken and yellow rice; and Ofelia didn’t even know to cook plain rice! The closest we were to home-prepared meals was a cookbook that she had bought in Miami. Jan’s, a coffee shop a block away, was a frequent lifesaver for the three of us.
Necessity was a great ally in the kitchen, so, soon I became a fairly good cook and many years later Ofelia became a consummate preparer of gourmet dishes that required unpronounceable ingredients and endless amount of time and gadgets to complete.
I had three job offers to pick from. The decision to accept KMEX’s was made based on how far their offices were from our apartment. All distances in Los Angeles seemed enormous to us. In June of 1964 I was not ready yet to drive in the city where we had taken residence. In New York I didn’t drive at all and in the Miami we had left there were no Expressways so it felt as if the
Los Angeles Freeways were racetracks, which turned my admiration for Ofelia’s driving skills into sheer idolatry. I thought she was the most brave and courageous woman in the world! In the meantime she was getting discouraged about finding work, however by mid July luck smiled at her and she was hired by Spanish radio station KWKW to translate their commercials from English into Spanish. KWKW’s offices were also close to both, our home and my job. The situation was ideal. In four decades we never had two cars. It was not an economic issue but a matter of choice. We went together to our respective offices and always had lunch together. Our jobs were chosen, then and for the rest of our life, on the basis of location alone. Only proximity to each other was a consideration.
Ofelia collected her first check on July 31, 1964. It was a long haul from her last salary payment from the Havana Business Academy in Cuba in the late 1940s. On July 31st she received from Howard Kalmenson check Number 1302 drawn against Bank of America, where she would later work until her retirement. She liked to tell friends that when she looked at the KWKW check for $79.97 she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry; because she was very proud to be earning a salary but couldn’t ignore that just a short time before, in Cuba, she could afford to pay much more than that for a pair of shoes. The only reason for concern at that time had been Ofelia’s employment. She didn’t resign herself, even temporarily, to the idea that I was supporting the family and tirelessly had looked for a job. From letters and notes she wrote me at the time I now see how concerned she was. I, on the other hand, didn’t see anything wrong with the situation and I felt very confident about her gaining employment. To me it was just a matter of time.
I was also increasingly aware of the fact that she was very attractive and incredibly sexy. Nobody had to spell it out for me: many had loved her and maybe she had loved many; but now she was with me. Just with me. And all I needed was that thought to be happy. Soon, as strange as this may seem, I couldn’t even remember life before her.
Ofelia learned very quickly all the surrounding streets and soon she knew the heart of Hollywood like the palm of her hand. Within weeks the street names rolled out of her lips as if she had lived in the area all her life and she drove through all the Freeways like a native Californian. I was in awe of her courage but I don’t think I ever told her then in so many words how impressed I was with her prowess behind the wheel.
One day she surprised me with a dress. We had been invited to a party and Ofelia thought, erroneously as we later discovered, that it was going to be an opportunity to meet other Cubans. It was a very pretty summer dress, white with small red polka dots. She had bought it at Ghepetto’s a little store near the apartment. Somehow I felt that her buying me a dress that I liked and fit me perfectly revealed two things: how well she knew my taste and my size and how much hers I had become in so a short period of time.
The apartment came with a double bed and Toto slept in the living room sofa. After the white dress with red polka dots I felt more at ease when her arm rested on me as we slept. I know that I would have missed its warmth had she not done it.
Ofelia’s skin had a special quality and when she touched me, ever so lightly and casually, there was a delightful feeling right in the pit of my stomach.
Never before had I felt something like that. Nobody else but Ofelia ever caused that sensation. Her skin was soft and naturally perfumed. When she touched me her tenderness filtered through her smooth skin making the contact very pleasurable.
I was suddenly aware of a strange feeling every time her hands moved to fix my hair or pull a zipper, lightly touching my back. And I definitely was perennially entranced listening to her stories and anecdotes from her childhood.
Over the years I frequently told her how deliciously soft was her skin and how I felt when she touched me. She just smiled: “You feel that way because you love me.”
And so, like Shakespeare’s character in “The Tempest,” Ofelia sheltered me and we became partners and strange bedfellows. It was in the double bed on the apartment of First Street that, innocently, we became former strangers that Providence brought together so they could have a wonderful life.
“…Heaven and Heaven alone can take you from me…”
Rosa
One of my nieces, a psychologist, was the first person to get my attention while I was still in the hospital, gathering Ofelia’s personal items on that terrible day: January 2nd, 2006. I’ll never forget her words: “Watch out for messages from Ofelia because she was very spiritual” To me, psychologists and psychiatrists were non-believers and for them mediums had to be either charlatans or sick. I had pigeonholed them in the box of professionals who accepted only irrefutable proof or concrete evidence of communication with the other side. My niece’s remark took me by surprise but hours later it hit me like a thousand pounds of gravel!
Time! As a couple, time was our best friend because we enjoyed its passing; no rough seams joined our minutes, hours, days and months to sum up to years and years. Time was also our worst enemy because it sped away with our lives and over four decades now feel like a brief moment of happiness. But time was never a better friend than when it served to bring me her first message when it was no longer possible for Ofelia to talk to me with a voice I could hear.
I was leaving the hospital in Burbank. For the first time in a lifetime we were not sitting next to each other. I was not holding her hand. She was not reading to me from one of the books that was kept handy. It was a grey morning and fine droplets of cold water were falling from the sky, mimicking tears from Heaven. They had to be tears of happiness for Heaven must’ve been flooded with a sense of joy welcoming Ofelia’s spirit on January 2nd, 2006.
Janet, my ex-daughter in law was at the wheel and we were driving pass the kiosk where the parking attendant found shelter from dampness and cold, the digital time at the gate showed in big bright red numbers a sequence that surprised me: It was 8:17. It could have been 8:16 or 8:18, if the car ahead of us had taken a few more or less seconds to exit. But the red numbers, so large as to not be missed by me were 8:17. It couldn’t be clearer: August 17! Our anniversary! As a matter of fact it didn’t have to be the month of August; every 17th was a special day for us and every 17th Ofelia expected my first words in the morning to be: “Happy anniversary” and if I didn’t say it right away she let out a giggle, like a small child that has caught you off base, and announced in a mildly accusatory but loving tone: “Happy anniversary!”
It was time, friend and foe, source, means and finally emissary of her first message to me! This unequivocal contact should have brought a sense of reality to my new life without her physical presence. Quietly but stubbornly skeptic at least this one time I should’ve felt my lover’s arm over my shoulders, consoling me. But nothing can ever console my senses of the loss of her physical being and nothing of the nature of what happened is easy for me to understand.
You’d think that something so peculiar would be proof enough, but no. Much more was necessary for me to believe. I wasn’t disrespecting her or the possibility that it was an actual message. I just couldn’t believe it!
My heart desperately wanted to get a confirmation that it was Ofelia’s doing. My brain was walking a tight rope. I later checked on the Internet the odds and probabilities with reputable mathematicians, one of whom declares that the combination of such or any three numbers “is not exactly common.” It is only fair to add to that assertion an element that cannot be casually thrown out of the mathematical equation: the fact that I was at the precise place and exact time when the display of those numbers was up. Therefore, declaring it “not exactly common” should be changed, really, to “an unexplainable coincidence.”
One of the most conservative opinions placed the possibility of just the combination of numbers at the rate of 0.139% specifying that humans are “pattern recognition experts” so we tend to notice things that have significance to us, even if there’s no deeper meaning. The report from the cold calculating mind throws a soaking wet towel on my excitement, but I know that too many coincidences, odds and probabilities throwing in “the pattern recognition” too, are simply not possible. The smartest mathematicians in the Universe can calculate ad infinitum and still will not convince me that my list of events and messages made possible by Ofelia are within the realm of the humanly possible!
Setting aside now human’s pattern recognition impulses that lead us to isolate what has meaning to us, I shall cite now the next oddity if you prefer to call it that: we used to go to the movies on a weekly basis. After January 2nd, 2006 I couldn’t see myself going to the movies, but two friends suggested it and I went with them. I hadn’t heard of the movie; they had. We had no clue as to the scheduled times of “Brokeback Mountain.” We drove by the theater and saw on the marquee that it was about to start so we bought tickets and went in. I sat there, for the first time in a lifetime without Ofelia to my right, holding my hand. And I asked myself repeatedly how could I sit there without her. How could I go to the movies without Ofelia? It was really unthinkable! The movie was unfolding and I got absorbed in the plot. Suddenly, there’s one scene: the divorce scene, and I hear a voice from the speakers: the judge passing the divorce sentence. And I hear “today, November 6th!” November 6th is Ofelia’s birthday. Yes, yes, yes! I know about pattern recognition. Why November 6th and not November 10th? There are 365 days in the year and this was the first movie I had gone to see without her! What were the chances of that being the first movie I would see after January 2nd, 2006? And soon, as this question danced in my head, there’s another scene, one of the protagonists is nailing a sign in front of his home. The number? 17! Our anniversary! Of course if you study probabilities and possibilities and odds etc. you might find that number 17 is, for whatever reason, high in the list of preferred numbers. Still, there were no other dates in that movie and no other numbers. Were they messages to me? What message? Well, maybe: “Rosa, it is OK. I am here with you!” At least that is what I’d like to think.
Some readers will not give any importance or even credence to the following because it might be easier to believe that the occurrence was just a product of my imagination, still, I must include it for the impact it had on me. One evening in mid June 2006, I woke up to see, as a partially fading hologram, Ofelia’s figure in front of me, at the foot of our bed. It wasn’t a dream. I had a chance to look up the time and speak to her in Spanish: “Gracias por venir a verme, nené.” “Thanks for coming to see me, sweetheart!” I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t imagining. It was happening and I was happy, full of excitement and pleasure and joy.
Afterwards I wanted more and more direct visual contact, so my euphoria turned into anxiety until I came to grips with reality: it may or may not happen again, until I die.
And if you wish to chalk one more to pattern recognition fast-forward to November 7, 2008: watching television is not fun any more. The enthusiasm of watching our favorite programs, holding hands, is just not there. Now I sit in front of the set like a bored lonely child watching with little interest, trying not to think about ‘the good old times.’ As expected I switch channels until something catches my eye. This time I stop at an episode of, of all things “The Ghost Whisperer” and there it is, in the first scene, a close-up of a keychain marked clearly with the initials “RGL.” Those are my maiden name initials! What are the possibilities and/or probabilities that I turn on the television set at that particular time when they are showing a specific scene that brings my attention to the three initials in the right order? Well, maybe Ofelia is trying to tell me that she still watches television with me. What better way to tell me? If you doubt, think about this: you are not exempt from ‘pattern recognition’ so, tell me: when was the last time you saw your maiden name initials, in the correct order, in any television program?
You may draw whatever conclusions you deem logical. In reality logic is just what one concludes to be logical and therefore, as reality is our own perception logic is our own conclusion. Both could be debated and neither can be proven.
“Love is the only paint that covers all imperfections with just one coat.”
Ofelia
Rosa believed with all her heart that I was perfect and all knowing, an opinion born, no doubt, out of her love. She deferred to me in everything and I liked it. We were insulated from all we had known, except for a few pieces of mail from friends in Florida and we didn’t have much money; still my only concern was to get a job and have a little bit set aside for an emergency.
When we left Miami Rosa gave me the money she had and from that moment on what was mine and hers became ours. I opened a checking account in both our names. To this day that first account opened in 1964 in Los Angeles is in existence, we never closed it, even after we opened other checking accounts.
We didn’t know a single person in California so we had no social life to speak of. For me it was very telling that I didn’t miss socializing at all. As a matter of fact I didn’t miss anything as long as I had Rosa. She had become the center of my new world. Cuba and my former life were mere possibilities left behind. And I knew that if we were to return she would be by my side. Anything else was unthinkable. For the time being we just went to our respective jobs, had lunch together and came to the refuge of our apartment and the limited TV programming of that time when all TV sets had tuners up to only number 13 and an adapter had to be installed to watch higher channels.
Rosa worked for the new Spanish Channel 34 but we didn’t have an adapter until Mr. Gamboa, the chief engineer of KMEX found out and promptly sent a technician to our apartment to remedy the situation.
We lived in the First Street apartment for just the term of the lease: six months. Feeling more financially secure we embarked in the search of a larger place. Our first requirement was that it had to be close to where we worked. In the mornings I drove Rosa to her job and continued to mine. We also met for lunch every day. KMEX-TV was located on Bronson, next to the Paramount Studios and KWKW-Radio was on Hollywood Boulevard, right above the Pantages Theater. We were very lucky: we found a place on Eleanor Street, within a two or three mile radius from our jobs. It was a two-bedroom upstairs apartment in a small, brand new building. I rented the apartment and we began to look for furniture right away. The owners were a couple in their early forties. They and their two children occupied the apartment across from ours. This ended up being a decisive factor in our moving out of Eleanor just one year after moving in full of excitement and enthusiasm.
As soon as we rented the Eleanor apartment we went to Sears where I opened an account and we selected living room, dinette and bedroom sets. We didn’t choose anything extravagant so the total amount must have been, perhaps six or seven hundred dollars. I signed the credit application and purchase documents and we left the store, happy with the prospect of owning something other than the portable TV set and an ottoman brought from Miami.
I knew Rosa very well so it didn’t escape me that, after our shopping spree at Sears, she was unusually quiet and preoccupied. I kept asking and probing, something I wasn’t used to doing because since my youth people voluntarily opened up to me. I just couldn’t figure out what had happened or what was going through her mind. She finally said: “I’m worried about the monthly payments. Maybe we should buy something cheaper and pay cash.”
All I said was: “Is that it?” And I called Sears to cancel everything. On the days that followed we cruised Western Avenue, which had inexpensive furniture stores for blocks and blocks on both sides of the street, picked out what we needed and paid cash for it.
I know that Rosa never forgot that episode. At the time she was not only relieved by my reaction for practical reasons but she was happy because I had given her proof that for me the most important thing was her happiness and peace of mind.
After the furniture for the Eleanor apartment there were many more living room, dinning room and bedroom sets in our life. God has been good enough to give us more than forty years together and gave me many opportunities to demonstrate to Rosa that she was first in my heart and first in my life.
“If Ofelia had not convinced me already that destiny plays a pivotal role in life I now would have to accept it: we are at the mercy of the mysterious ways of fate and God’s will.”
Rosa
There were no immediate signs of a storm brewing at the Eleanor building, but it was. We furnished the two-bedroom apartment happy to satisfy our taste within our limited financial resources. We both thought it looked beautiful.
Our circle of acquaintances was small and included only co-workers who believed us to be related, because that was the easiest way to justify our extreme closeness. More often than not they didn’t ask and we didn’t explain. The highlights of our social activities during those months were limited to dining out twice in the Hollywood area. The first outing was with one of Ofelia’s co-workers and her husband. We had dinner and enjoyed a belly dancer at The Seventh Veil right in the heart of Hollywood. The second was to celebrate our anniversary and Ofelia surprised me with dinner at a Hawaiian restaurant also in the heart of Hollywood where the big excitement of the night was fake rain pouring down the hut-like roof over the bar. I was excited and happy and Ofelia bought me a souvenir that we kept for many years on the dash of the car until the California sun practically disintegrated it. We also attended KWKW’s Christmas party in December of 1964 in a club in the Valley of San Fernando. She drove North for what felt like hundreds of miles until I could see the sign of the Encino exit. It was the first opportunity that Ofelia had to wear an evening dress in California and she was stunning, definitely the best dressed and best looking woman in the place.
Howard Kalmenson, the manager and owner of KWKW interrupted our financial bliss shortly after the Christmas Party. Howard apologized profusely as he fired Ofelia citing pressure from the station announcers. Apparently the radio personalities were unhappy with Ofelia. Our suspicion was that they felt uncomfortable, if not threatened, by a bi-lingual female who had the ear of the general manager. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Howard asked Ofelia to monitor the station and report directly to him; the personalities heard of it, according to Howard, and they gave him an ultimatum: “Ofelia or us.” And on that note ended her brief interlude at KWKW.
It seems that most of the times when a difficult moment came our way it was invariably accompanied by something that made us laugh afterwards sweetening any sour memories. About this time one Saturday afternoon Ofelia was driving on Beachwood Dr., not far from our home and she stopped at a red light. The car behind us did not stop and hit us with great force. At the time there were no seat belts so we were stunned to say the least. People came running from all sides to the see what had caused the deafening noise and two policemen rushed out of a patrol car that happened to be parked a short distance away. Everyone was talking at the same time. One of the patrolmen came straight to Ofelia and kept saying: “Don’t move! Don’t move!” Before we knew it an ambulance showed up and two men, carefully, took Ofelia out of the car and strapped her in a stretcher. I was beside myself and insisted on Toto and I accompanying her in the ambulance that took off, sirens blowing full blast. As they were taking her vital signs, one of the attendants asked her: “How far along are you?” She didn’t understand the question. Neither did I. The man asked again, getting from her the same puzzled look. Soon it was all cleared: apparently the car that hit us was driven by a woman who was pregnant and the patrolman that called for the ambulance didn’t specify which car was driven by the pregnant woman. They thought Ofelia was pregnant! Needless to say the embarrassed paramedics drove us back to our car that someone had already moved to the side of the street. A tow truck had to take it someplace where even the transmission was replaced. No, we did not hire an attorney or even thought of our own insurance. We paid for all the repairs of our car and a year later had to trade it for a new one because it never drove the same. We didn’t get a police report or know the name of the lady who hit us. As you can see now, if I say that we lived in another world I do mean it, literally.