Who the F is Frau Kolb???
Memory is a tricky, sticky, mass of mental mush… shape it to plug the holes in the soul. I know that we, “make ourselves up as we go along.” Believe you me… we are all a fantasy. We paint our faces and if we don’t we look rusted and not to be trusted; old and out of it… so…we knit the fabric, the mantel of self importance from old lies passed down from parent to child… until a brave ONE comes and destroys the aberrant pattern.
Dr. Daniel E. Branagan; Mi Padre was an Ideal Dad
A few days after Father’s Day…. I’m thinking of my father.
I’ve written about him and our close connection before. Read Dr. Daniel E. Branagan; Mi Padre was an Ideal Dad , if you like...
Since his death, I’ve grown closer to my father. I have come to idealize him. He is a Saint, now. He visits me, with advice, when I need his support. An attorney in Dominican Republic, whose political/professional ambitions were thwarted, destined to failure. (He was naive, a firm believer in the goodness of man, his fellows, in the LAW, as a force toward good… redemption. He believed in THE SYSTEM, jails in his mind, served to “rehabilitate some…” Thus, he voted conservatively.) I admire him, never-the-less for his lofty ambitions and solid morality. He cared. He demonstrated and proved a fierce, attentive, love for me as a little person.
Toward the end of his life, my father went HOME. He went back to his “people.” He choose to avoid traditional medical care until the cancer had spread. It was too late when he tried. (Santo Domingo, the capital of Dominican Republic, has excellent doctors and offers excellent medical care at much less out-of-pocket-cost than in the United States.) I believe he died in relative peace, even though I was not at his bedside.
I saw him a few months before he died. I traveled through dimensions, as one does when going from one culture to another, to his heimat. But it was more than just a trip into a world I am a part of yet… I’ve not been there much in the last twenty years. I grew up visiting Santo Dominigo. During summer vacations, we’d go and stay with my mother’s family, in their old home, which is no longer in the family, it exists but the whole neighborhood around it was demolished in order to make room for progress. The old fashioned, brightly painted, tin-roofed and wooden homes, that decorated the neighborhood, were a "fire hazard, "and impossible to standardize. Whole neighborhoods, middle-class barrios vanished. Yet, the city keeps growing, moving forward. You don’t see street kids, looking to shoe-shine or beg a little change for their families, anymore. The government did something, schools, I think. I tried to move there, once. My father was living there, but he had a woman… he did not even like her all-that-much, he complained about her ignorance, or lack of interest in Mayan Codexes which are housed in the Faro a Colon ,a whole sad monument to, of-all-unfashionable-people, Christopher Columbus. He had no room in his mature, attempts at establishing his dream life, his public unfolding, his grand success for a twenty-something and lost, me.
Columbus, curiously enough “discovered,” Santo Domingo and made it his base of operations. He lived there and governed until his brother took over. Descendants of the family are still active members of Dominican Society. We are the oldest city in the New World, with the oldest church, university, and infrastructure. We had a powerful dictator for a long time, which means we have working roads, a functional telephone system, and a very stable society; despite unrest, poverty, and other ills (which plague all nations, except the northern European societies which benefit from their government’s former exploitation of colonies and slave trading, generations ago. Wealth, being a “civilizing,” factor.). Today, Thursday, 24 April 2014 Frau Kolb types, from a, "centered quiet place within," having slept well, dreamt of nothing… passed out from a day fulfilling obligations, duties.
What do you do that you don’t want to do, really? What fills you with dread until it is behind you and then you realize that it isn’t so bad?
Well, for me… sometimes, my children’s school projects, deadlines, homework, teacher conferences, meetings… Oh! It is all too much. I get really stressed out. I have to buy poster board! Tape! Do this. Do that. Help! Now, I see… why my mother never went to school to talk to my teachers. My father did when I was little. When he could… when he wasn’t working, selling furniture in Manhattan, New York City. He worked, a lot. He studied law, earned an attorney’s title and thought he’d take his NEW WIFE to America, like she wanted, for six months—get loaded— and be able to set themselves and her four little ones; in their home nation, Dominican Republic, in the Spanish speaking capital, first city of the New World, home to Christopher Columbus, and his clan: Santo Domingo. Of course, six months after arriving in New York City, they had long ago worn out the middle class digs where they dropped as friends of family for the first few weeks and had passed to less comfortable accommodations, incurring debt along the way. (They had a duty to send money home.)
The first job my father took in the United States was as a dishwasher in a restaurant. It broke his proud heart, yet he took the position. He was punctual, attentive, and compliant; a better dishwasher doing a better job, rinse, and repeat. Shortly, there after, he had a better gig in a nicer spot; always… punctual, attentive, compliant; like his parents, descendant of African slaves brought to the Caribbean, imported to St. Croix… part of an Anglo-Irish household of prominence; as domestics… house slaves, virtually… yet, English speakers.
My father’s accented English was faultless. He spoke it with flare and taught me to, “always carry a book with me,” after teaching me to read, at home so that by age three, I was very good at it. Then he taught me to play chess… that was fun, beating old men, playing in the park; a five year old girl in a handmade cotton dress with pink satin bows decorating her flat little chest… quickly executing a “check mate!” Her father, laughingly… collecting cash.
When I was a kid, growing up in Manhattan, I could always call my Daddy at work, on 14th Street near Union Station where he was the top salesman on the floor. He’d always answer, taking my after school calls, with glee in his voice. My father advised me, “Watch people. Their bodies never lie. Their intentions are always clear in their eyes, on their faces… you will see what they are thinking IF you look carefully enough. They will call you a Mind Reader... I see the ones that come in with the intention to buy and I facilitate their transactions. I provide guidance, information, and encouragement. I sell.” He would contrast himself to the, “young and inexperienced,” salespeople that would, “jump on everybody walking in; wasting their energy and leaving the real business of furniture sales to me. Hah!” He’d laugh. I’d admire his thunder. He was amazing so black, tall, fit like a knight; always ready for a challenge; thus, he died loving my mother.
“People…” my Dad would explain, “Love walking into stores; just to LOOK… that is why they call it a furniture gallery… they can’t afford or don’t want to buy… ignore these people and they will be thankful for it.” Yet, “Costumers are clients… ignore these people and well, not only will you not have a job for long, it isn’t fun selling furniture if you don’t DO IT.” and then he would look down at me sternly and say, “And... you know, Cari… most people can’t really afford good furniture. They can’t afford a sandwich for a girl on date-night, my Dear. They don’t understand that money flows whenever and wherever it wills… we just have to be there to get our share." Work! Pay attention. Read. Write. Bike ride. Walk. Repeat.
He trained me well to think, and thus fulfilled his duty; providing for me and equipping me with people reading and sales skills; teaching me to pay attention to others as a means of fulfilling my own needs, “going with the flow,” of money… instead of against it… he taught me to swim the high seas of responsibility and come ashore today with pride.
Hah!
Thank you, Dad.
Loving Thursday,
Frau K.
The Fragile Web
Dearest Readers of The Talkinggrid,
The best part about having one’s own blog is that one is FREE to write about touchy subjects; like family and Feelings.
We all have families and we all have feeling about our childhoods, when we were powerless. Some of us NEVER Grow UP and are thus, forever powerless.
I am the daughter of an adult child. She has never done a single harmful thing to any other person on purpose. She does it all by “accident.” She is never responsible. She is always and forever the the victim in any interaction. She will not relent in her defiance until one is at one’s wits end, screaming; desperate.
She is always in control. Spoiled and lovely old lady, pretty and cute, everybody likes her… people lean in to love her. She still gets marriage proposals. Hah!
Yet, she is exclusively attracted to Spanish, I mean European men, like her X husband, a man at least twenty years her junior, the one she married after she divorced my father for the second time, younger than her oldest son… ouch. My father was no thing like the little boys she digs. He was big, strong, craving power, looking for status, marrying her in hopes of entering into a very closed circle of elites in the island nation of Dominican Republic, where he was born, a parvenu with parents from the British Virgin Isle of St. Croix.
Feeling relieved. My mother has gone back to her home, far away. Having her stay with me for three weeks was intense.
First, I have to deal with the fact that she really needs a lot of care. I knew this was coming since childhood. I could tell she did not know... really, what was going on around her. I mean, she spoke no English… She was a Jehova’s Witness. She saw through the abuse of animals in the meat industry. She trained me to reject fast food, frozen meals, and canned nightmares. There was no Chef B… in our home. She cooked everyday and taught me the importance of eating fresh food. She kept an immaculately clean home. She cleans, in fact, compulsively. Which, has its plusses. Hah!
My father’s English, on the other hand, was very good. Sure, he had an accent, but his vocabulary was quite vast and he wielded language with real panache. Spanish, he was extremely precise, he was after all an attorney in Dominican Republic, when they met, in their hometown of Santo Domingo. When he was a young lawyer, at his first job and the Ricart girl was secretary to him and twelve other lawyers. Hah!
She got a cold. He paid a visit to the home. She could not see him so she returned the visit to his mother. He was not home. She met his mother and father. They loved her. She was so pretty. It did not matter to them that she had children. She was young, 26, or so… and a RICART! Wow, in their home and she wasn’t snobby. She didn’t seem to notice they were not… well like her.
What year was it? I have the papers, in a suitcase, in my closet, but I will not go look. No.. I will guess. I was born... yes, so it had to before that... and well they met, she got sick, he paid a visit at her family home where she was living with her FOUR CHILDREN.
Yes. She had FOUR. I am number FIVE!
She started young. She was determined, she wanted to get married, out of her house, away from her father. She was convinced. It was love. He, a young tailor from down the block, was no-where-near ready for marriage so… of course, beat her and drank. But she was raised on cruelty. Her father beat her and her mother every chance he got, because he had told Maria Dolores Perez, the pretty fashion designer, that he wanted NO CHILDREN, she defied him in having my mother, with his mother’s blessing. He never forgave her. My mother was born into a home where a sense of scarcity underlined every luxury, every piece of finery, where people DIE of Hunger, and the poor live in conditions, unthinkable to most… yet, after ONE week of my mother’s voracious appetite for LOVE, attention, and service, all the while, proclaiming her LOVE for Jehova, after ONE week with her I was tempted to punch her in the face.
Because, yes, she let me die…literally I flat lined in a hospital in New Jersey… as a child. I saw the white light.
Today, I’m a mother of two and I live in California. I eat organic food. I am a New Yorker. I have a Latin temper, yet I do not experience the desire to harm others. Typically, I’m a buoyant, if moody artist, creative type. Ha! What a human! She is absolutely shocking. I must be exactly like her. I know my daughter is like her. My daughter, by the way, has decided to start listening to me since she met herself, times ten.
My mother was, on the one hand, a very spoiled child and other the other, an neglected and abused, unwanted daughter to a M O N S T E R. This is my legacy. I am the child of colonialism. I am the granddaughter of the playboy Spaniard. I am the daughter of the attorney, who became a furniture salesman in New York City. My mother got what she wanted out of my father: a plane ticket out of Santo Doming. She got her kids out too. For them, my father and I were, strangers: I am in effect an only child.
Her mother decided to have the child and leave her in the care of all-loving, Alta Gracia Ricart, the wife of Eduardo George Ricart, mother of the three sisters... and ONE son, he was supposed to be responsible for his sisters. He was supposed to care. Yet, caring was not his forte. He learned to gamble at an early age. Going to the sporting matches with his Spanish born father... during the reign of the Caribbean’s most enduring dictatorial regime. His cousin, married to the son of El Jefe... life was grand for them... almost all the Ricart were a northern blond/brown haired hearty stock of Spanish, olive oil, international merchants and importers, of a product the island nation they loved, to vacation, so much FUN! Dominican Republic was for them an addiction. It had everything they wanted: pretty women, mixed girls everywhere, hungry lovely happy musical dancing entertaining people to serve and cock fights, are even more FUN than bull fights and YOU know that crazy SPANISH look Picasso had in his eye... Grandfather Ricart was a world class gambler, he worked for the state in its casinos. He loved to bet. Winning had No Thing to do with what he did. He was a broken prop for the state. It was his public duty to show how RICH and extravagant... My family, his sister, my aunt told me in November 2013, when I went to visit my father’s grave that, he was one of the political speech writers to... no one less than... the dictator. Not too surprising considering that his uncle was no less than Mejilla Ricart, the historian of the early Dominica People, who has an large avenue named after him, today, in Santo Domingo, the capital of our, the first nation in the New World, with the first church, first university: of which my father is a doctoral graduate.
Yes, grandfather Ricart was dashing. His entire family held sway that to this day, in Dominican Republic, I am home, like nowhere else... I speak and people hear in my voice that payment is forthcoming, that I KNOW what I am speaking of, and that I am comfortable in my own knowing... thus, I love Puerto Rico... I’ve never been to Cuba... I intend to visit St. Croix, where my father’s people are from, but... my grandfather’s cruelty lives on in my mother’s ability to laugh at me or my father’s best efforts to please her. She has the uncanny ability to drain me, wound me, leave me lacerated and not even notice that she inflicted any injury. Hah!
When I was young in New York, growing up... I left home early, and I always favored the taller blue-eyed more refined yet country boys. My boyfriend was all of the above and more, he got me a job cooking, which fortunately, I learned from my mother the importance of nutrition and domesticity... thus, I knew how important it was to learn to cook and I worked hard in low-level yet professional cooking situations, such as health clubs and other venues. At one point I made a turkey a day...
My father was by everyone’s, except his own, understanding a “BLACK MAN!” He never told me he was a black man. He told me he had to be careful, always wear suits, be extra polite, keep his hands in sight, be attentive, listen, pay attention, read more, work more, stay longer, be on-point: precise. He taught me how to fight. How to punch. Hit. How to be first. “Carry a book with you at all times!” Was a maxim in my home. He kept a library. He taught me to read. I went to school speaking fluent Spanish and pretty good English, too. I could read by age three. I was designated “gifted.” I was his girl.
My father worshiped my grandfather. He had grown up during the dictatorship. He had read the news papers about the leading families and how beautiful they were and how splendid it was that El Jefe was allowing the Jews asylum, from Nazi Germany, and how our highway and telephone system where the best in the Caribbean. My father was a quick boy, his dad a Marine Mechanic and his mom a domestic in a grand home, but she had learned British style service, which gave her a certain panache unlike the typical Dominica, housekeeper. My father was a boy with a talent, pitching stones with rat kill accuracy and listening to the signs on the wall. He was a shoe-shine boy. He was the one they could trust with a more important errand. He was fast, reliable. He got into law school and decided that baseball, was NOT a worthy profession for someone like him, much like I reached a certain point with cooking and realized I need a more intellectual profession. Besides, I’d always called myself an, “artist.”
Grandfather Ricart was very blond and blue eyed and a darling of the state, cousins with Octavia Ricart. You don’t need to look to far into the history of Dominican Republic, “discovered,” by Columbus; when he smacked into the island of Hispañola in 1492, to learn about the dictatorship... just look it up. The lists with the families that “owned,” Dominican Republic and decided who could and who could not... the name Ricart, figures prominently, for generations... in Dominican society and politics... today, my family, are administrators, educated people, servants of the state: forever.
You don’t have to look into the history of evil because, evil is common. It springs up from deep within a lizard’s heart, as it squirms from the sea floor out to the dry land, legs spring from deep within its boney self and running it goes to hide in a tree... the rest is my song.
Caribbean Roots & Personal History
The Museum of The New World El Museo de Las Américas deserves a visit and more funding for African Studies. I’d love to see the understanding and scholarship focused on the countless valuable lost human lives. I’d like to see these missing histories recovered and restored, polished and displayed, full of their inherent glory. For every human story is one of survival, strength, and fortitude. You just have to cast reality in the bright light of romantic thinking.
“Was hast du gesagt?"
I insisted we visit El Museo de Nuestras Raices Africanas in Old/Viego San Juan Puerto Rico. Unless we really aimed, we were not going get there. The target was an hour away via auto. In order to visit the museum we had to escape from the manicured reality of vacation paradise. It was so glaringly comfortable, at the resort, we almost couldn’t leave. Hot tubs, infinity pools, sunken bars... I was being extravagantly pampered, ensconced in pleasure, getting massages, downing Piña Coladas, making small water color paintings, and reading my beloved Judge Dee novels.
Yet… we had to go to Old San Juan. It turned out that the Museum was not a dedicated museum anymore, rather a mere suite of rooms or a salas, a devoted to the plight of a portion of the ancestors of our Caribbean forefathers, in the larger museo.
The culmination of the trans-national flight was to be in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We were planning to visit my father’s grave, with the children. Thereby, creating indelible family memories. A sub-text to the trip was helping me to reconnect with myself. Any deep questioning of the self may prompt you to visit ancestral lands and places where you are instantly factored in as a vital part of the community. My pueblo, the people of Caribbean and I connect, click... being immediately familiar, yet appropriately formal, as we are... Therefore, there was no resistance, only the unwavering laser focus of my husband, propelling us toward leaving the staged comfort of our resort in Fajador, a sea-side marvel, made complete by its private beaches on Palomillo Island to visit the city of Old San Juan and specifically the museum where I hoped to learn more about the humans that were abducted and introduced to the Caribbean as chattel, the African slaves forcibly imported to the “so called,” NEW WORLD.
My loving Big Scientist German husband worked his magic to execute this significant excursion out of the usual travel loop to Hawaii, which he loves and has kept us flying west and very rarely east, for several years... He knows exactly what I require to unwind: a private beach, a doting staff, fried plantains, watercolor tablet at the ready, a stack of Judge Dee Murder Mysteries, and plenty of rum, to boot! Yet, this trip was about more than mere poolside decadence with a splash of creativity. It was a soul-healing journey into the facts around who I really am.
Yet, the hands of the masseuse were small and strong, covered in olive-oil gloves, reminded me, in her effective silence that everything is done differently in the Caribbean. The caring touch connected me with memories of my mother, she used olive oil for skin treatments, too. Then I had a bath in coconut milk and a rice-based scrub. They washed my hair and put a berry-red stripe in the front. My nails were polished and I was ready to take the shuttle to Old San Juan. We paid for a private taxi, instead.
Post Spa Treatments: Frau Kolb is ready to visit Old San Juan
Police patrol the second oldest city in the New World, a statue of Ponce de Leon, seeker of the Fountain of Youth and first governor of Old San Juan, wearing pantaloons and armor, presides over a town square under renovation. Hah! The field where soldiers met with cannon balls is in resplendent display, thronging with international tourists.
This museum visit came on the heals of my trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles California. My intention was to take-in for the first time, really, the "African heritage," which is evident in my fine tighter curls and milk chocolate good-looks. People keep telling me, I’m a “black person,” yet the darkest man I ever knew was my father and he never mentioned this obvious “fact,” to me. His own sense of identity had little to do with the his onyx hue of skin. He had no concerns about his own racial identity. I received little instruction in what it meant to be “Negro,” my father’s policy, was to assimilate, to blend in with the machine, erasing all traits that might make him appear foreign. Thus, he wore suits and polo shirts... however, never able to fully blend in, he favored his polos in bright yellow, which looked great on him, by the way...
The Afro-Latinos of Santo Domingo... Old San Juan, and... I hope to visit soon: Havana... are my people in that they recognize me. My real name, is common in the Spanish speaking Caribbean. (Upon re-entry to the United States, I return to the land where people mispronounce my name with impunity.) I open my mouth and speak my Spanish and immediately doors fly open. My voice is familiar and without meaning to be, commanding in a trust-worthy, generational sound of inherited privilege, which humans trust… just think how American women swoon for posh sounding British actors, take Hugh Grant, for example… my voice iis reassuring to the locals, because, thanks to the fact of my wayward, unwanted, mother’s origin, I come from the social elite of our island nation(s). Thus, my voice is a sonic key to trust and immediate higher status in the Caribbean, the land(s) of my parents and grandparents. It even works, sometimes outside the Caribbean. Yet, in Los Angeles, so close to Mexico, my Caribbean Spanish is met with questioning.
I saw my grandfather’s photo for the first time, last week.
My father was ambitious. He married my mother because he firmly believed she was his ticket into the upper echelon of Dominican Society. One of a large family, a group of mostly Africans from the English speaking Isle of St. Croix, he saw the Dominicans as a dashing and heroic people. Known in the Caribbean for their fabulous leader, El Jefe, their great infrastructure, and Spanish pizzazz… He idealized them. He had read about the dazzling members of my mother’s extended family his whole life, growing up in the slums, shoe shining for needed family sustenance, his mother a domestic in a fine home, where she learned table manners... and brought these “better,” customs to her shack-home, in pieces. Shards smuggled out from under her patron’s noses, she learned that eating was to be done on many plates and slowly... no rushing, she urged my father. He listened with one ear and ran out the door to his next adventure until he fell in my mother’s carelessly laid, yet effective, net of beauty and welcoming gestures, knit by her fine last-name, and her descendant from the ultra-glamourous playboy and socialite’s darling, Ricart, son of the Ricart that was the brother of… Ah!
Spanish Conquistadors... addicted to gambling and the beauty of the native women and the importance they were vested with in the Caribbean… Who cared about them back in Europe?
Mother was looking to get out of Dominican Republic and my father’s status a young attorney, a graduate of the local University, the first University in the New World, The opportunity presented itself, which made him a welcome immigrant to the United States, when professionals from everywhere were invited to uproot and come earn in the land of milk and honey. His education made him a welcome immigrant to the United States, in the early seventies. His legal degree was a shining neon sign saying, “EXIT,” to my mother, who was fed-up being a piece of meat in a country where sexism makes virtual slaves many women. My mother was the singular secretary assigned to the thirteen recently graduated attorneys. She has a gift for organizing. She became a treasure to the department. Men were vying for her attention. Yet, was welcome and loved by my father’s mother, my namesake, upon a chance meeting. Besides, my mother had more than her fair share of baggage. She had had four children, who were living with her at her Aunt’s home.
Daniel Branagan was the best father. He talked to me all the time, lecturing on ethics, body language, street smarts, safety, and critical thinking skills. He taught me to think like a stray cat, assessing danger in a wild New York City of the early eighties. He taught me to defend my positions. He taught me to read the signs in the sky and the writing on the wall. I’ve always had a library, because my father always had lots and lots of books. He demanded that I “always carry a book with me,” to this day, I do. Falling into the American work forced he earned a decent living selling furniture at a store on 14th Street near Union Square, in my native isle, of Manhattan.
Christopher Columbus/ Christobal Colon, statue in Santo Domingo, Capital of Dominican Republic. He was the first to lay claim to the treasure isle of lovely, old Santo Domingo, thereby “discovering,” America.
So... we hit the Museo de Nuestras Raices Africanas. I was looking for answers, deeper understanding, roots... not Hollywood made but real and indelible. Sadly, there was only one, rather shabby, room devoted to the African diaspora, in the Museum of Latin American, which was very well conceived and gave me the opportunity to learn more about Puerto Rico’s and Dominican Republic’s native people, the Taino. Sadly, the exhibit that was meant to be so enlightening, it was supposed to show what the living conditions on a slave ship were like and to really instill pride in the many descendants of the erased people, stolen from Africa... there was one image... I found haunting.
The video instillation which was supposed to show us HOW it felt to transported as cargo in a slave-ship felt, literally, failed to turn-on. It was broken. I wanted to see it and I was crushed because the halls/salas devoted to the native people of the Latin American jungles were particularly vivid and did enhance my understand of a part of my ethnic, physical, cultural being. They hired a European master realist sculptor to cast members in vanishing tribes as models of the vibrant culture which is being erased by the “NOW or flowering of... But there were no bronzes of the lost Africans. None. No record. We have the proof of them in us, in our blood, our music, language, and dance.
We are partially all African. We are Jewish. We are Chinese. We are Caucasians. We are.
I was ready for another dip into the abyss. I had endured “the horror, the horror!”
I had visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. I’d witnessed the monuments, read books on The Holocaust, but... finding proof, respect, honor, of the people, kidnapped and sold... this was “curiously absent.” I am becoming ravenously hungry for a history of my father’s ancestors, the once enslaved people, descendants of the stolen human loot of Africa. It looks like I will have to continue searching for poignant records and moving museum exhibitions focused on the Caribbean people’s African roots, origins because I did not find all the answers I was looking for at El Museo de Las Américas.
I demand to know more about ALL my ancestors. I learned more about my mother’s father on this trip, than I expected. My grandfather grew up attending cock-fights, horrific gambling matches, with his father an heir to several family fortunes, writing eloquent poetry and political ballads, he died young. I knew that his father was born to a well-off Spanish family and that he visited Dominican Republic to attend a cock-fight (how despicable!) I knew he had blond hair and blue eyes because that fact had so impressed my dark-brown Daddy. My father, Daniel, the Black Knight, so rushed to believe the Dominican propaganda machine’s messages, he embraced a love for his nation’s unique beauty, the warm and inviting water, the delicious fresh food… Ah! My beautiful black marble sculpted father, loved the air, the water, the land of his memory so much that he returned to Dominican Republic, time and again until he returned to die there, only to be taken for the last ride of his life... but that isanother story…. by his adopted “son,” and chauffeur, his final caregiver… betrayed his trust by never paying a cent of the promised money, my financial inheritance, a contract he signed, in illiterate haste, which released me from guilt and duty in that he was false in his dealings with my father’s will. (Thank goodness I wasn’t sitting around waiting for that pocket money! I forgive the traitor. Yet, I think… what a silly move!)
My father’s investment in time, love, and energy pays off in my life daily and in that I know how to manage, how to observe the law, and how to float and swim toward goals, yet not against the current, with it, in flow… how to align myself with prevailing benevolent powers, seeking protection in the authority of my accomplished husband, for example…. that I am able to move forward despite challenging circumstances which befall us all. My sense of honor demands that I keep my father’s memory alive because I am grateful that as his daughter I received a tremendous dose of intelligent attention from the moment I was born until I showed that I would be falling in love with some other male and leaving him, someday. Thank goodness, in a wave of clarity toward the end of his life my father woke-up from the dream of empty ambition. He forgave me on his death bed for being me. He died blessing me and telling me that his birth family had failed him. He said he had adopted a new son, a man, his driver… a man with not one but two wives… looking identical… like twins and yet one was the dried up virgin and the other a wet valley of seductive corruption.
My father showed bad judgement in his choice of chauffeur. Hah!
I’m so glad that my Papa gave me his blessing before dying. I wear his good wishes with pride. It is somehow linked in my mind that I’ve developed an obsession with Judge Dee, mystery novels by Robert Van Gulick, a 1950’s Dutch Diplomat Chinese studies school and … they... well they... sound like Daddy and the rough yet organized world he faithfully described; he taught me about the unchanging universe. He taught me the law the justice of the universe. The righteous truth that there is more than enough for every person within themselves to create abundance for others. I read Judge Dee and I hear my father in the solving of simple mysteries with a handful of clues… I also LOVE my Big MONKEY, my sweet German Husband that underwrites my explorations of the past and supports my ongoing investigation on Talkinggrid because he is the father of our family and trustworthy and kind, like my Daddy was when I was his baby Monkey.
Next year: we will be traveling to Europe and covering more Muse News abroad. So… get ready and donate NOW, why don’t you buy yourself a freakin’ ad, or donate some cash like artists, independent art collectors, musicians, and holistic healers, and other supporters of The Talkinggrid do. Thank YOU again to all those that contribute with encouragement and by reading. Please, let me know IF I made too many offensive errors. I’m OPEN to donations and suggestions. Thank you!
Ah! I unlock myself before YOU, lucky regular readers of the Talkinggrid!
YOU Loyal supporters! I thank YOU! This site is getting more and longer visits, daily.
I upload more and take responsibility for all its errors and mistakes, many are on purpose… others are happy accidents, which prove this site to be what it is: the work of one, artist, woman.
Yours truly,
Frau Kolb
