Sutterwriters

LILLIANA C. MÉNDEZ-SOTO Lilliana C. Méndez-Soto was born on in Chicago. She is a first-generation Cuban-American and has enjoyed writing since early childhood. Since receiving a Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 1988 at the University of Michigan, she has worked in various areas of pharmacy practice. After undergoing open-heart surgery to repair a mitral valve in 2003, her writing began to spontaneously flow again. Sutterwriters has been a great inspiration and part of her healing journey.

Broken

My father lay in bed for days, my mother bringing him meals, trying to soothe him, letting him do less and less. Half his face lay still when I crawled into bed between them, and he attempted a feeble smile. It went on for weeks, but soon he was back at it. At the 40-hour-a-week-job, at writing his dissertation, at trying to regain a life he'd lost to exile. At 25 he had a doctorate in Cuba, and at 26 he began again as a busboy at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago with his brother.

Law school had been different. He'd flunked out trying to attend while working those first years. His English wasn't good enough. But he persisted, persisted, persisted. I did not know then the love he held in how hard he worked. Why later he pushed me and pushed me. On my high school test scores my educational goal said: "Ph.D." when I was only 16. Now I realize why, though I hadn't filled out that form on my own.

Back then, when I was 7 or so, I didn't know the stories of Cuba. How you used to work all night at the American tire factory, vulcanizing rubber, breathing God knows what into your hard-working lungs. You'd shower and go straight to school. Lead student demonstrations, protest against Batista. Take a nap, then court my mother in the evening before going back to work. Study on the bus, study on your lunch. Didn't need to study much-even here you got your Ph.D. summa cum laude.

No wonder you pushed me. No wonder grades were so important. They were your ticket to a better life, my ticket to choices. You never made me feel less than because I was a girl, always pushed me to do my best, sometimes scared me into doing my best. You said you weren't a rich man, but you could give me an education so I could take care of myself. Take care of myself, take care of myself. Myself.

How hard and easy that is. Easy when well, impossible when broken. No matter how hard we try to be independent, not let others in, comes a time when we all need: you, Mom, me, my husband. We all break. Was it the tire factory that gave you the cancer? Was it the anger you carried from your youth that in your independence you held on to so tightly? Came a time you really needed me, just as you needed Mom when half your face went still. They called it Bell's palsy. They still don't know too much about it. And they never could figure out exactly what type of cancer kept coming back-it kept changing, remained elusive.

Yet you showed me in the end it was OK to be broken, it's OK to need, OK to let yourself be taken care of. Though you never liked to ask, though you never really did ask, and even now, oh, how I hate to ask.