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Happy Anniversary

Ever since that magic moment I met you, you have held my heart.  I knew you were someone special right from the very start.  I knew that one day we would make a beautiful family.  I knew that our love could be forever something that’s just between you and me!  Happy Anniversary to My Perfect Match!  Let’s toast to this special day!!  Happy Anniversary, My Beautiful Wife! 

Foster Children Navigating the Transition to Adulthood

Foster children who have reached the age of 18 and are out of the system often face a challenging transition into adulthood. These young individuals, who have already experienced the instability of moving through different foster homes, now confront new obstacles as they navigate life on their own. Without the support and resources, a stable family environment provides, they can be at a heightened risk of homelessness, unemployment, limited access to education, and inadequate healthcare. The abrupt shift from being under the state’s care to being responsible for their own lives can be overwhelming, leaving them without a safety net…

Travel Across America

This story is about traveling across America on a bus and what it feels like. I was in McAllen, Texas, visiting my son, and I needed to get back home to Greenwich, Connecticut. McAllen is in deep Texas, close to the border with Mexico and very close to Reynosa, Mexico. Usually, I would fly from McAllen to La Guardia with a stop in Houston. But I wanted the experience of going by bus. I wanted to do it on a train via Amtrak, but the rates are just as expensive as flying, and part of the trip would be done…

Aging in Rhode Island

Rhode Island Office of Healthy Aging (OHA) is the chief advocate for the senior citizens of Rhode Island, older adults living with disabilities, and their caregivers. The division is committed to empowering the elderly by availing the necessary resources the residents need to undergo strong and healthy aging1. They offer a variety of services such as healthcare assistance, housing assistance, transportation assistance, food assistance, and help paying bills for seniors1. The Area Agency on Aging in Rhode Island supports the state’s senior citizens and elderly. The centers administer a number of assistance programs. Examples include consumer education on health care, medical counseling, case…

Beginnings

To know who I am, where I come from, and what experiences shaped me. And what lessons those experiences have taught me.  Memoir in progress titled “Faith’s Hand: One Chance Encounter That Changed My Life.” I started thinking about writing a memoir of my life in my teens. Whenever I met someone new, I told them my life story (living in Santa Cruz, meeting the Hartleys, coming to America, growing up in Greenwich, and being adopted by the Hartleys. All this happened when I was young (14); they would say what an incredible story it was. They also mentioned how…

Quito and living with my Mom (Maruja Gomez)

This story is about my Mother (Maruja Gomez) and the great times I remember growing up with her. Quito is the capital of Ecuador, and it sits in the valley between two mountains in the Andes mountain range ranges called the Andes. Because of this, the city enjoys a relatively mild climate of 60 degrees all year round. In the early 1960s, we lived in the modern part of Quito, as my Mother was a live-in housekeeper for a wealthy family. Every few years, she would move to another job as the families she cared for transferred to another country.…

Running Away

Why did I run away from home so much while I lived in the Galapagos Islands? I had just turned ten and was living with a father and stepmother I had just met. From the get-go, they treated me as a servant and not the stepson I was. My mother had made a deal with my father, meaning I was to live with him until I turned eighteen and was considered an adult. There were many reasons why I ran away from home: mistreated, treated like a servant, blamed for everything that went wrong, got beatings, went to bed without…

Visiting Tikal

In the late 1990’s, while I was in Guatemala, I took a weekend to visit the Mayan ruins of Tikal in the north of Guatemala. Tikal is set in the jungle bordering Mexico and British Honduras. There are a lot of Mayan ruins in both Mexico and Guatemala but the well known are Tulum, Copal, and Tikal. To get to Tikal from Guatemala city, we flew to the town of Santa Marta, then took a bus to Tikal where we spent the next two days exploring the lost city and all the ruins.  You could sense the amount of time…

Writing my memoirs

Pivotal, in the sense that my choice determined what came next. For example, Meeting the Hartley’s that one particular morning outside their hotel. I was there because I was on my way to work. They were there because they were filming their latest documentary. Furthermore, their visit to Galapagos was an afterthought as their main focus was Peru and Machu Pichu. Ecuador and the Galapagos were a way to spend more time in South America that summer. Yet, this encounter, how I reacted to it, and what followed, would not have happened any other day or any other place. The…