The Day a Father Was Born
I don't remember what I was thinking that April morning, one of the last of that month. I don't remember the weather, whether it was warm or cold, raining or sunny. Those details have faded from my memory. I only remember the frustration about what was to come, that I didn't feel prepared to face it, that I felt a great weight on my chest, like one of those great boulders that adorned the shores of my childhood in Puerto Rico. But I wasn't in Puerto Rico, but in Florida, the other Puerto Rican territory, which by that time already had many sons of the sea and the sun who had moved to its shores to live, to seek a better life. In my case, military duty took me to those parts, and it was in the city of Jacksonville where I was stationed, when I was supposed to join the ranks of fatherhood for the first time. I don't know who was more afraid, my young wife or me; I think it was me. Nothing had prepared me for that mission, nothing. The mission of bringing t...
