I Don't Look Like this on the island!(Radrook) On the Island I Would not Look Like this!


As human beings, all of us yearn to remain forever young, and find signs of aging after we reach our late 30‘s unpleasant. However, some of us are more prone to accept the inevitable than others. My father was one who initially very vehemently refused to admit that he was aging. Instead, he blamed it on having to live far from his island of Puerto Rico, and honestly felt that returning there would somehow magically rejuvenate him.

He usually expressed this quaint idea early in mid-winter mornings before going to work. He'd begin by standing at the window quietly gazing out at what sometimes was a raging snowstorm and say:

“Que nevera!" "What a refrigerator! And to think that I now have start plowing my way through it to work in that car with those faulty brakes close to the that river, on those slippery streets, and risk sliding off one of the piers!" Which according to him, he barely avoided doing once.

Then, after going to the bathroom mirror and critically gazing at himself, he would emerge somberly as if having seen a ghost, and as if carrying the world on his shoulders, and announce that he was aging because he was not living on the island.

“On the island, I would not have these bulging bags under my eyes, and these arrugas [wrinkles] on my face. The reason I have them is because I am living here. In Puerto Rico I would not look like this!"

At that point, my mom, who had been observing and listening as usual, would ask:

“Really? Then how exactly is it that you imagine that you would look in Puerto Rico-Hipolito?"

“How would I look on the island, you ask me?" he would say as if feeling that he was about to reveal some profound truth.

"On the island I would look like this!"

He would then proceed to firmly place the palms of both hands on the sides of his face and force the skin back until the bags and the sagging skin would disappear. The problem was that it didn’t look natural. His lips would be stretched back and his eyelids as well. All it resembled was some kind of botched-up plastic surgical job that made his face look mummified, or as if he had been wearing some kind of a mask.

After a brief silence, during which she just gazed at him as he stood proudly assuming he had very convincingly proven his point beyond all reasonable doubt, my mother would respond with:

“So that’s the way you imagine that you would look if you were living in Puerto Rico?"

“Yes! That is exactly the way I would look if I were living back in Puerto Rico!"

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Mira Muchacho! If that is the way you would look in Puerto Rico, then you would really have a have a serious problem. You look like a momia, [ a mummy] So if I were you, instead of constantly complaining that living in the USA is aging you, I would get down on my knees and give thanks that you are here in the USA and don't look that way."

“Ah, you take it as if it were a joke, right? But in your heart, you know very well that what I am saying is true. Of course, here in this refrigerator, I look “acabau!" [finished] Over there, I would look much younger!"

Well, she never managed to convince him that the geographical location and climate were not the cause of his aging. In fact, he was so certain of it, that after a medical appointment, he mentioned it to the doctor in the reception room when about to leave his office:

“Well, I see absolutely nothing wrong in your physical appearance Mr. Dios," the doctor said. “You look perfectly normal for a man your age" [Dios is the way that the Anglo American doctor pronounced the surname Diaz. Unknown to him, Dios in Spanish means God.]

The doctor's response seemed to freeze my father in his tracks. It was as if the doctor had spilled a bucket full of ice-cold water on his head and then delivered him a swift kick to the teeth. After a prolonged silence, during which he looked as if he were being attacked from multiple angles by some kind of predatory wild beasts, my father responded with:

“No! No! No! Señor. No! No! No! This is not the way that I would look on the island! On the island I would look much younger. It is this country that is doing this to me!”

“Well Mr. Dios, ” the doctor calmly continued,“...it isn’t reasonable that you want to look the way you looked in Puerto Rico twenty years ago. Twenty years is a very long time. Time has an aging effect on all of us.”

Of course, my father left the doctor’s office vigorously shaking his head, and referring to the doctor the son of a great harlot, and fuming over what the he had just told him, while my mother kept telling him that the doctor had been absolutely right. That it was indeed unreasonable for him to expect to look as young he had on the island 20 years before. Whereupon my father would once again press both palms of his hands on the sides of his face and do the mummy-resemblance thing with my mom responding as she had done before.

Me? Well, I silently agreed with both the doctor and my mother since I had only recently personally undergone physical changes from childhood to adolescent to adulthood, and knew that if time could do that to me, why should my father feel that he was an exception?

Of course, had my cousin George been present, as he very often was in order to observe my parents' antics, he would have been rolling on the floor laughing, whereas at that time, I just didn't see any humor in it at all. Now? Well, now I find it hilarious.

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