Sharing The Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO) announcement of the recipients of the Lydia Garcia Author Fund that I founded in honor of my mother. She was Lydia Pitsirilos in her adult married life, but this grant speaks to her firstly as a young girl. Congratulations to these wonderful writers announced (visit their post here), and to all those who submitted for consideration, all of them having their unique beauty in artistic creation and collaborations. 

My mother’s dream was to become a writer. I only knew this because when I told her I had written a novel she disclosed this life wish to me, along with why it never happened. Her guidance counselor told her she couldn’t be a writer because “there were no Puerto Rican writers.” A dutiful first born daughter like myself, she listened and became the nurse they told her to become. And she was a loving nurse, as she was a mother.

We are direct people and deal the cards of grief with humor. We are also loud. About three years ago we were looking for a funeral home for her mother, my grandmother, and my mother was falling out of her seat reading out loud the user reviews for Ortiz Funeral Home. Mind you, we had also just buried my dad. I had said to my mother as she read the reviews: “Ma!” I called out to her like that even if she was just two feet away, like Dorothy Zbornak did her mom Sophia, and living together like them. “Ma, when you croak I’m gonna start an author grant in your name for Puerto Rican writers, or those writing of the Puerto Rican experience.” She just smiled, kinda with a smirk, in the same way when I’d tell her with pride that I had a story coming out and she’d come back with: “Yeah, but are they paying you?” Still, she left me little Wonder Woman cards with handwritten notes of how proud she was of me. She never read anything I wrote, and I was relieved she gave me this privacy. But I always asked permission to include any shared family stories. I don’t know really what was behind that smile when I told her that I’d start an author fund after her death, or what she felt. But I wanted her to know that this was my intention, allowing her a living chance to respond. 

With this same smile is how I see my mom now, smiling at these writers across genres and mediums honored with the recognition that indeed we write, indeed we thrive. Keep creating.

Love you, ma.