When it was time for me, the first in my family, to go to college, Papi didn’t understand why I had to leave. In the Dominican Republic, it is common to live at home while studying. He was angry — the preferred response of Dominican men to hide fear. We argued a lot in those days. He wanted me near, I later understood, where he could protect me from the world.
After I graduated, my parents and I became a strange unit. Even though I was living on my own, my plans were often assumed to include them. Wedding invitations would come addressed to the three of us. I became accustomed to considering my parents, to seeing them as an extension of myself, even if I did not live near them.
My father’s love spilled over to those I loved: kid, partner, friends, students. And when I got knocked up shortly after finishing my graduate studies, I was embarrassed to have to come back home again, this time with another life inside me. My childhood bedroom awaited me with warm blankets and gifts. My son was born in their bed, in their home, within the warmth of the security blanket they had knitted for me over the years.
Later, when I got divorced, my parents, together, helped raise him, reminding me — and this time, yes, now with words in addition to actions — that I was not alone. And when I was fired from a job at Harvard, my dad reminded me that in their home there would always be enough arroz con habichuela to go around. “Aquí siempre tienes una casa” (“You will always have a home here”), he said. His words gave me the courage to fight back.
Over the past decade, our goodbyes became more prolonged as my mom grew grayer and as my dad’s embrace grew weaker and more trembly.
