Veronica Jorge is out of the office this month, so we’re running one of her columns from our archives. Hope you enjoy it!
Hispanola, which means the “Spanish island,” became the first Spanish settlement in America. It is my mother’s native country and today we know the eastern section of the island as the Dominican Republic; a fertile land abundant in mines and minerals and rich in a great variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and flowers, where the sun shines brightly year round.
The merengue, the country’s traditional music, embraces you throughout the island for dancing is an entirely social activity independent of holidays or festivals. Any gathering includes dancing because Dominican’s don’t just listen to music, they live it. Emotionally, the merengue celebrates life wherein you partake of the rhythms of love, family and friendship. The most skilled dancer moves in unity with their partner, as one.
My mother, 
Celina Antonia Luna de Jorge, (isn’t that lovely? Like a song in itself), left her beautiful, beloved island, and part of her heart, when she came to America at the age of seventeen. Like most of our ancestors, her family traveled to America in the hope of a better future. I’m happy to say that she found it. (She had me!).
Mom is most fully herself, most fully alive when she is surrounded by her family and cooking us all of the traditional delicious foods of her country. She fills and satisfies us with her peace and joy. And like the savory aromas that waft through the air, she makes our hearts swirl to the rhythms of her warmth and love.
And that’s what I want my writing to be like; a dance of words wherein writer and reader move in sync and taste the flavors of love, friendship, loss and new found purpose, joy and laughter. Writing that, in spite of sorrowful events or hardships, celebrates life and fills the reader with hope that today is indeed worth living.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I love you!
~ Veronica
Veronica will be here next time on May 22nd.
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I killed one of the characters in my novel.
(It was more like two, but I have no qualms about the second one.)
I came up with a death scene I really liked and just had to use it, so someone had to “go.”
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Nineteen-year-old Helene languishes in a squalid French prison tormented by questions she cannot answer. Why was she arrested? Who could have made a wrongful accusation against her? And if so, why?
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Once in a while you come across a book, that after reading it, makes you pause and think, even marvel because you’ve encountered life from an entirely new perspective. Alison Green Myers’, debut novel, A Bird Will Soar, is such a book.
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Winter.
Lifeless, asleep, dead.
All is gone. Lost.
Until the last frost melts away. -
As the year draws to an end, preparing to close its final chapter, I think of the beach.
It might seem perfectly normal to those of you living in sunny climates, or to snow bunnies hastening away from the cold. But to those of us in areas that have already seen our first snow, it might sound strange.
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