Grandpa Berto and Grandma Cheva

Last week, our oldest granddaughter, Joy, and her husband Joe, had their second baby boy.  Meet Rhett Alexander:

What most people probably wouldn’t realize is that Joy’s great great great grandfather could have been about as dark as her husband.

My dad’s father was Alberto Atanasio, or “Grandpa Berto.” He was Italian and Greek. I love it that my maiden name, the Greek name “Atanasio,” comes from a language with its own alphabet. 

Ατάνάσιω

All my life, I believed that Atanacio or Atanasio meant “Thomas” but I can’t find that anywhere -- instead, it is a form of “Athanasius” and it means “immortal” or “without death” (thanatos) or “eternal life.”

So maybe it was a given that one day, with a name like that, I would embrace John 3:16:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” ~John 3:14-16  (New King James)

I did believe in Him, as soon as I found out about this, and He has never failed me.

The other great thing about Atanacio is that it begins with an alpha (Α) and ends with an omega (ω). These are the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet. You may recognize those two Greek capital letters in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus proclaims that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  He is truly “without death.”

ΑΩ

If I ever met Grandpa Berto, it was very briefly or I was very young. For the most part, I rely on pictures to tell me what he looked like.  From the few pictures I’ve seen of him, Grandpa was fair, with snow white, rather curly hair. But my Uncle Sam has relayed some details about his father, so I’ll tell you what I know.

I’ve already told you he was Italian and Greek.  His father’s family migrated from Italy to Sicily, and then from there to Puerto Rico, where no doubt his European ancestors mingled with the local natives, but the timing is not clear.  Berto’s father was Emilio Atanasio.

His mother, Eudocia Medina, was blonde and blue-eyed.  The name “Medina” is found to be Castilian Spanish (or it can also be Muslim or Moorish, but for now, we’ll assume Spanish, since Eudocia was fair-skinned.)  And, of course, he grew up speaking the Spanish language in Puerto Rico.

Grandpa Berto was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and raised in the Catholic Church.  Here’s a picture of him, but nobody really knows where this picture came from.  I’m told that the robe is a liturgical garment called an “alb” and the black rope belt is a “cincture,” used in religious services (the mass) by members of the Catholic Church.  He may have been chosen for some type of service in the Church.  Or, maybe he was cast as Gabriel in the Christmas play?

Growing up with seven brothers and sisters, Grandpa Berto got a job cutting sugar cane.  When the company that owned the machinery sold it to a company in the Philippines, the cane workers had to find other jobs, so they moved to other places where there was similar work to be had, either to Hawaii or to New Jersey.

But Grandpa moved to Brooklyn instead of New Jersey, where farm labor jobs were not plentiful.  That’s where he became bi-lingual. He needed a job, and the factories were all owned by Poles, so he learned Polish.  You “do what you gotta do.”

---

Dad’s mother, Eusebia Ruiz (or “Cheva” for short), was from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.  Her mother, Maria Valentine, was also blond and blue-eyed, and it is supposed that she was English.  But her father, Simplicio Ruiz, was one of the indigenous islanders, who were a friendly and beautiful dark-skinned people, the Tainos, a tribe of Arawaks.

The famous explorer and navigator Christopher Columbus, his expeditions, his discoveries, and his shortcomings, have been notable topics for discussion in 2020. His statues and memorials have been pulled down along with those of others, such as Confederate generals and slaveholders, who all seem to have fallen from grace. But there’s actually a massive monument to Christopher Columbus bigger than the Statue of Liberty in Arecibo called “Birth of the New World,” 360 feet tall.  I think that one will stay put for a while.

You may have heard stories about the Spaniards who came with Columbus to the New World and what happened to the natives in the Caribbean under their rule. But as I learned about the Arawaks, and particularly the Tainos, I spied this comment from a descendant of this people group -- curiously, on a Black History Month page:

“I have been doing a lot of research, my brothers and sisters, and the term “black” is a brand the Europeans try to put on us just like “Indians” were put on my forefathers who were Taino aboriginals.  Yes, you all have many key points.  There were high pigment humans in Northwest Amexem and Southwest Amexem (aka “Americas,”) and also in the islands around them.  With this being said, we cannot blame the low pigment.  We must love them and understand what happened in the past.  We must learn and build our communities and not be separated by black, red, yellow, or white.  We are all living beings and we must all love each other.  THERE IS ONLY ONE RACE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND THAT IS THE HUMAN RACE.  I am a Taino, and I love my ancestors, so we must learn and not hate.”

I love the comment and wholeheartedly agree.  We cannot blame the low pigment humans!  You can read more about “Amexem,” what has been described as "an ancient name for the geographical region," here.

Grandma Cheva had fine, black hair and dark skin, but not as dark as her ancestors.  She would be called a Mestizo, a word that means a healthy mix of lighter European and darker native American parents, similar to Rhett. She grew up with four brothers and sisters, some who turned out lighter, and some who turned out darker.

Here’s a picture of my family with her, before we moved to the Philippines.  Notice the darker-skinned Taino in her?  And if she looks short in the picture, it’s because she really was -- my mother was only five foot two, and I was eight years old.  Grandma was “mi abuelita” -- my little grandmother.

Grandma Cheva was also raised in the Catholic Church.  Like Grandpa Berto, she also migrated to Brooklyn, where everything is free, of course.  It was there they met and married, raising four children, including my dad, who was her number three.

The family didn’t have much, but they got by.  The oldest of the four, Aunt Mary, saw the youngest, Israel, being born, and decided against having any children of her own.  Israel never married, and Uncle Sam was married later in life with only two children. So most of Berto and Cheva’s descendants are from my dad.  In those days, when you believed you had had enough children, the solution was to get two beds.

Sometime after the move to Brooklyn, either before or after they got married, they both moved away from the Catholic Church, and began attending a Spanish Pentecostal church. My uncle says they were converted.  In case that is confusing, just think of it this way.  In the Catholic Church, thanks to Christopher ("Christ-bearer") Columbus, the people of the island, including my grandparents, were introduced to and taught about Jesus (along with Mary and other saints). But in the Pentecostal church, they went a step further, and learned to know Jesus, and to have a personal relationship with God through the sacrifice of His Son.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” ~Ephesians 2:4-9

And:

“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” ~John 1:12-13 

Unfortunately, Grandma and Grandpa were legally separated after several years of marriage because they weren’t getting along too well and they didn’t believe in divorce.  It’s hard to know how the marriage fell apart for sure.  My uncle says the rumors of Grandpa Berto going crazy were not true -- they just had some kind of disagreement -- but we’ll never really know.

In the end, Grandpa Berto was hit by a drunk driver, while riding his bicycle. He died in 1972, after a long hospital stay.

Grandma Cheva passed away when my son David was a baby still -- that would have been in 1996. Uncle Sam really wanted me to come to the funeral, so I brought my nursing baby with me and we met him at the airport. My dad and all his siblings were there.

It didn’t take me long to really regret never having taken Spanish.  Indeed, another time, when we had made the trek to New York, my grandmother had asked me, very disappointed indeed, whether Spanish was not taught in my school, and if so, why had I not learned it?  It was hard to tell her I had taken French instead.  And now, here I was, surrounded by unknown cousins, who had come from various parts of the City, other states, and even from Puerto Rico, some of them with blue eyes and blond hair and some dark-skinned, but all of them speaking Spanish.

It wasn’t till I went back for the funeral that I understood how greatly my grandmother had been loved in her community.  In fact, she had to have two funerals because the facility was too small to hold all the people who wanted to be there.  I only had to go to one of them, and I tried desperately to understand even a word or two, but because both of the funerals were in Spanish, the tributes and accolades went over my head.  I was sad because I wished I knew more.

David made little squeaky baby noises and I tried to keep him quiet, but he would talk.  People only looked and smiled, saying he reminded them that even in death, there was Life.

Eternal Life.  In Jesus.  One song, sung as a solo, made me weep uncontrollably and I didn’t know why because I had no idea what was being sung, but I knew it ministered to my spirit.  I found out later it was a hymn I’d never heard before, but was a favorite in the Billy Graham crusades:

Face to face with Christ, my Savior, Face to face what will it be?

When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ Who died for me?

Chorus:  

Face to face I shall behold Him, Far beyond the starry sky

Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by.

I wish I had been able to communicate with my grandma about the things that mattered.  But this song reminded me that she is in the presence of Christ, our Savior, and so I will be too someday.  And then … we’ll have a good, long talk!

Introduction to Dad

On Sunday, I met up with my dad again.  This time, I brought my husband Eric, our younger son David and his pregnant wife Brooke, and Tim, one of our grandsons.  Dad set up targets at the edge of his woods, and he taught me how to shoot a gun.  Now, my veteran friends can no longer tease me about never having shot one.  And, of the three of us who shot those guns off my dad’s back deck, I actually hit the target first.  (See Margie polish her nails upon her chest.) On the way home, Eric asked if I felt like I could defend my family now.  “Nope,” I said, “I don’t own a gun.”  Maybe sometime I will.

Dad didn’t tell us a lot of stories, growing up. Mom told us stories.  So most of what I have known of Dad was not gleaned through careful research or private investigation.  It’s stories from Mom, plus my personal observation, and more recently, from asking questions now that Dad’s in his 80s..

I did get to talk with him this weekend about many things that had never been said, stored-up secrets from many years past.  I felt as if our hearts have finally been fully unlocked to one another.  And I felt like many years had been wasted because we had not done that sooner.

When I announced that we had to leave, he said, “Why?”  It would be a long trip, and we wouldn’t be home till midnight.  And I had to work tomorrow.  That’s the practical, down-to-earth answer.  But, I knew the question clearly meant more than that.

My dad grew up on the other side of the North American continent, and led a very different life than my mom.  I mean, what are the chances that these two would ever meet, let alone get married and be my parents?  It’s just that, with God, nothing is as random as it seems to be.

Dad was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY.  This neighborhood is also called “Little Poland” because of the number of immigrants, and Dad says they called Greenpoint: “the end of the pickle,” probably related to the color green and the neighborhood’s roundish shape.

He grew up with an older brother, an older sister, and a younger brother.  They all had Bible names -- Maria, Samuel, Daniel, and Israel -- and they went to a Spanish Pentecostal church.  I went there once when I was very young.  Mom told me I heard the music inside the building and began dancing outside. Unfortunately, that was very much frowned upon because this church didn’t believe in dancing.

They did, however, believe in speaking in tongues all at once, and that made for a noisy service and a long one.  A little later, when I was still young but not very young, I remember being there again.  We had to walk under the elevated train (the “El”) to get to the church building, which was quite an experience at the time!  And then, because the service was long and I understood nary a word of it, like a typical child, I got a little cranky.  Also, I had a stomach ache.  We had to leave early because I needed to throw up the meal we’d had at the Chinese restaurant before the evening service. That didn’t impress my grandmother.

Dad learned to skate at a local rink until he became quite good at it.  He acquired a brand new pair of roller skates when he won a contest, rather like Hans Brinker, but when he brought the skates home, they were confiscated by his father, who didn’t believe children should play with toys.  Dad wasn’t unhappy, though.  He was just happy he’d won the contest.

Dad and his cousins also had their own street gang of sorts.  There were enough of them that they could hang out together and look out for one another, like in West Side Story.  (Maybe that’s where Dad learned to dance?)  I only know a few of the cousins’ names, like Uncle Raulie with the thick black-framed glasses, and Uncle Iggy. (Yes, his name was Ignacio Atanasio, and his son was Ignacio Atanasio JUNIOR.)

After attending high school at The New York School of Printing, a trade school, Dad enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1952.  It was still a very new branch of the service then.  He considered whether he would rather be in a ship during a war, with bombs falling on him, or on the ground shooting at the enemy, or flying overhead dropping the bombs … and the Air Force won out.  Not that he was ever a pilot, but it sounded logical.

It was during his enlistment that the spelling of his name changed.  All his family spelled their names “Atanasio.”  But when Dad enlisted, it was determined that the name on his birth certificate was definitely spelled “Atanacio.”  So that’s what he became for the rest of his life, and then that’s what my siblings and I were, when we were born. I had to teach Siri how to pronounce that recently, but I could spell it very early in life because my mom always had to repeat it to everybody, two letters at a time:  “A-T … A-N … A-C … I-O.”

At age 17, my mom wanted a name change from Ware to Atanacio. Her family life had been very bad and she took everything she could scrape together to buy a bus ticket and leave her past behind. Her way of doing it was to suddenly show up on the doorstep of Dad’s family’s apartment in Brooklyn with two garbage bags full of her clothes (since she had no suitcase), and stay with them through Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 1955, before Dad’s next assignment at Strategic Air Command, Andrews AFB, in Maryland.  

My Spanish-speaking grandma took her in because she had nowhere else to go. By the end of January, 1956, with little fanfare, Mom and Dad were married by the Justice of the Peace in Washington, D.C.

I was born October 1, 1956.  After we moved to Travis AFB, California when I was only 9 months old, my sister was born in December of ‘57, and my brother was born in February of ‘60.  We lived at the Travis AFB Trailer Court.

Dad was a “20-year man,” serving in the military till the end of 1972.  He had many different assignments, both TDY (temporary duty) and PCS (permanent change of station).  Our family lived in several locations Stateside, as well as the Philippines, but Dad also was stationed in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Vietnam.  He was in Civil Engineering, where he did jobs like inspecting for termites in the Philippines and building revetments (walls around the barracks for protection) in Vietnam.

When Dad was gone for several months at a time, Mom did the best she could, but a military "widow" is not a fun thing to be.  We had (of course) no cell phones or internet back then, so no Skype or Facebook, and we couldn’t call overseas without a great deal of trouble. Once or twice we were able to talk using a shortwave service called MARS (Military Auxiliary Radio System). The way it worked is that each base had a shortwave radio station manned by servicemen who had their ham radio license. They would connect with hams stateside who would call us on the telephone and set up a phone patch so we could talk to dad for a few precious minutes – minutes that were far too precious to waste on things like flat tires or broken air conditioners. Those Mom had to take care of herself.  

Sometimes Dad had a chance to write home, and he always included a separate letter for each of us kids, carefully folded in a very cool way to make a little packet that looked like an envelope.  He would start from one corner and fold diagonally several times towards the opposite corner.  Then, the two protruding edges tucked into each other to “seal” the letter.  Finally, our names were written on the outside of the letter in Dad’s own handwriting, so they became our personal treasure, and treasure them I did.  They made it much easier to handle the times of separation.  I wish I still had them.

Once when Dad was in Thailand, he sent me a silver child’s bracelet and it fit me all my life because my wrists were small. He sent Mom some Thai silk. Eventually, that became mine too, because apparently Mom didn’t know what to do with it, and I finally turned it into a long dress for me and a matching Hawaiian shirt (white with a silk collar and cuffs) for my husband.  (We outgrew both of them.)

But as you might expect, there were some problems with those times of separation.  One was that Mom made frozen strawberry daiquiris on Saturdays with some other military wife friends.  We kids thought the drinks looked delicious, and we wanted some too, so Mom made us some without the rum. But it wasn’t ideal that Mom was drinking during my dad’s absence.

The other is while Mom was making daiquiris, Dad was making friends.  When he was in the Philippines for six months lining up housing for all of us, his idea was to take dance lessons so that when he and Mom were together again, they could dance at the Silver Wings Service Club on base.  But Mom didn’t like it that Dad had been dancing with the instructor in close proximity.  Though I didn’t really know about any of this while it was happening, it was probably the first time she accused Dad of infidelity.  And things didn’t really get better.  Dad also suspected Mom of some extracurricular relationships during his absences.

Was it accidental (coincidental) or predictable that these two problems seemed to be carryovers from my mother’s childhood? Why would Mom drink, when she had been brought up in a family that suffered from their parents’ alcoholism? Did she project infidelity into her own marriage because that’s the kind of life she had always known? What happened to the fresh start, the new and happy life? Some call such behavior a “generational curse.” Are we doomed to repeat our past? Or do most people only fall into such patterns because the familiar is more comfortable to them?

I have much to say about this subject, so stay tuned for that.  For now, I will just say I am glad my parents were able to get together.  Else, where would I be?  God allowed some strange circumstances in the lives of my parents, and they ended up with a daughter.  

And human nature (sin) being what it is, my parents were far from perfect.  But unlike the disaffected youth of 2020, I will not disown my imperfect parents, because the Lord in His wisdom has taught me to honor my father and my mother, to forgive the faults of others, and ...

“Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” ~I Corinthians 10:12

Rediscovering Dad on Father's Day

I visited with my dad yesterday after church, for Father's Day, while some of our adult kids and some of the grandkids were home with my husband. My dad lives on a mountain in Southern Indiana and since his wife died in January, he's stayed busy helping her grandson. I hadn't seen him in person since the funeral.

So I had my dad all to myself yesterday, and that was SO pleasant. We talked about everything and got caught up, we laughed hysterically over silly things, we went out to eat and fought over the bill, and we swung together on the front porch, kicking over a bench in the process, just because we felt like it. I hadn't done those kinds of things with my dad since I was really young. (Well, back then I didn't fight over the bill.)  The silliest thing we laughed at?  He accidentally said "hale of bay" instead of "bale of hay," and we laughed until we both had achy abdomens.

My best memories of my dad when I was little were those piggyback rides; the standing-up rides on the front of his scooter when I felt like I was flying and I was yelling "ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM!" at the top of my lungs because I was sure you had to do that; and the go-cart he constructed so we kids could ride around on the pavement of an old, unused flight line.  We didn't have much, but my dad could figure it out.  He found an old axle and was able to use that to build us a vacation trailer that the five of us could take on camping trips, pulled behind our shiny big black Cadillac.

We are similar, Dad and I.  We can have fun the same way, but I also get my practical nature from him, the desire to have my life organized, and to do things right.  Neither of us are decorators, but we want to know where our tools are.  My tools are paperclips, pens, pans, and spices.  His are large and motorized.  The "A," "the "L" and the "N" on my keyboard are missing the paint, but my flying fingers know where to find those keys.  And I should be able to find my green food coloring if it was put back after the last kid-or-grandkid's baking project. I dot my i's and cross my t's.

We are similar, and we have some similar interests, but Dad and I speak different first languages. I speak computer and office-y things.  My dad speaks machinery things. Yesterday, Dad took me on a tour of his workshop, and that was a big deal. It's a huge metal building on his property that houses his RV and his vast tool collection, from antique tools he picked up in the 70's to cool 21st Century laser tools. Want 6 chain saw blades and the tool to break one and fix it? He's got 'em! Want a big tractor with a winch to pull a car out of the ditch and be a hero? He's got it! Want a hundred duplicate keys made? Yep, he can do that too! His next big project: a saw mill to cut boards for building a house! Did I tell you my dad's in his mid-80s?

I entered his world yesterday, and he taught me some of his language, in the same way someone might learn Hebrew -- You know what this is? It's a band saw. You know what this is? It's a winch. (I read that on the side!) You know what this is? (I jump!) It's a socket wrench. It won't hurt you! That up there? It's an antique blow torch! It was all new to me. It's a little scary to the uninitiated. But I found it fascinating. This is who my dad is, in his own environment, not visiting us in ours.

I don't know how many nouns I will retain from that experience, but my dad was inviting me into his world, and I'm thinking there should be a project for us -- something we can build together or fix together, something he can teach me before one of us dies or the world comes to an end. I need to see him more regularly and more often, and not just so I can "keep an eye on him because he's getting old."  It's for me!  Even making a pizza with power tools would be fun, if I did it with my dad. I know to me, the prospect seems somewhat scary, way out of my comfort zone. I don't even mow our grass! But I would like to try, to be more comfortable in his world and learn to speak his language, and to show my dad that I treasure him.

When we parted, there were big hugs, the kind that meant something, not the obligatory kind.  Under the circumstances, social distancing was just not possible. He had also figured out how my phone charger worked, told me my car sounded like it needed a muffler, and gifted me a half-bottle of something he uses for charley-horses, since we both suffer from those.  

Daddy!  I love you so much!  I'll be back!