My mother the Coronela

Mom and Dad Hand Colored 1953

I grew up in a household equivalent (at least in my mind) to Tara in Gone With the Wind. We didn’t have all the land they had, just three big lots, but, we were in the countryside where our neighbors were best friends and it always seemed like it was the same land that kept going. Their houses were far away, not right next to ours. We kids didn’t know where one lot stopped and another one began, because it didn’t matter. It was our neighborhood.

My mother, on the other hand, grew up in nun schools. Most of her life she was interned. I can’t imagine what she was able to do there. It couldn’t have been pleasant she never talked much about it. She mentioned her friends there, but the nuns were always mentioned as that “The Nuns”. She said she never had to go to mass again because the Nuns made her go every morning and she paid her dues for the rest of her life. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for someone like her. And then, she was in a household where she had to take care of everything. At least she had gotten 2 years of New York before this where her brain must have exploded with new experiences and culture. She learned everything she possibly could at the Gardner School in New York from typing and taking dictation, going to the opera and dressing for it, to playing tennis, horseback riding in the parks, and snow skiing in the Poconos. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for this girls going from Nun school in Santiago to that.

My parents created their haven in a three lot land in Arroyo Hondo which was the countryside of Santo Domingo at the time. There they made their home which started out as a modest two-bedroom house, a library which acted as a guest bedroom when needed, hallways, living room, dining room, porch, laundry room and my father’s office, maids’ quarters downstairs. The house was later enlarged to fit the needs of a larger family, since, after a while, there were 5 kids and my father and mother. It took 3 maids, a chauffeur, two gardeners and a little kid who ran errands and did odds and ends mostly in exchange for food, to maintain this household. The upper story had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, the formal living room, the formal dining room, the porch, the library (which later became my studio), the kitchen, the laundry room, and the pantry (my dad’s old office). Downstairs there was a huge basement with ping-pong table, games, etc. The two car garage was never used for cars because it was my father’s wood shop and warehouse of junk. My mother could never get him to go through all the stuff and after a few years she just gave up, which was OK because it became the place were us kids that were interested, Pico, Ivan and I, learned how to use all the saws and equipment in that building, unsupervised, I must say. I can’t even imagine how we didn’t hurt ourselves. I guess we were very gifted with our hands growing up in the environment we did. But, we cut everything, painted everything, ran everything and we didn’t get hurt. And Pico, Ivan and I could use all the machines. By the time I got to Tyler School of Art, I could be the sculpture shop monitor. I knew how to use and take care of the equipment. Ivan and Pico could build just about anything. Ivan went on to have the best of our hands though, creating jewelry and even fasting jewels later on. He would send me a photo of a huge diamond that he had just faceted. I will try to add those to the story photos.

There was a separate building which was the maid’s quarters. This building had three large bedrooms and a bathroom. Then there were three big dog kennels each with a little house where the dogs could get out of the sun and heat. Most of the time there were about 2-4 big guard dogs which were let loose at 6 every night, specially after Ivan’s attempted kidnapping. It was my brother Pico’s and my responsibility to feed the dogs, lock the front gates, turn on the lights in the yard, and let the dogs out every afternoon at 6PM. It took a while to do the lights. We had to go around the whole yard to do this and we played and played. Sometimes my mother would notice the dogs weren’t out yet and come out to see what the heck we were doing. We always did those kinds of things. Turn it into a game. Like, my father’s cigarettes. He wouldn’t keep a pack in his pocket, like most men. No, he left them in his bedroom. I guess he thought he would smoke less. So, he would send Pico and I to the room to get him one cigarette. We we’re scared to death to go back to the bedroom by ourselves at night. So, what we did was go the first time and get the pack and hide it in the la cosa de piedra (a beautiful structure finished in rock that had book shelves and kept all our silver in it. It gave the living room a little more privacy and it was beautiful) in the living room. Any how, any time he asked for a cigarette, the rest of the night, we went to the cosa de piedra and started poking each other and laughing making time so it seemed like we walked all the way to the bedroom.

To keep this ship running, my mother became the best house administrator in the world. And I would never call her a housekeeper. She was way more than that. When I was a kid my father would have to take the Moineau Yacht to Cannes, France, for 5-6 months for the owner’s wife to get her 6 months of the yacht. When he was back from there, he would have to take ships to Puerto Rico (I wrote about how Trujillo and Benitez had a scam smuggling cement into San Juan, PR.) My mom was left with the Dominican Republic, the kids, the house, the garden, the neighborhood, the bills, the maids, the schools and everything else you can think of that she had to deal with. In those days you had to go to each office to pay each bill for water, electric and garbage. Then she had to pay the school, the grocery store (in those days you could get credit there and pay it at the end of the month), pay the maids, the gardeners, and anything else that had to be done to the house like painting the outside. I must mention that people called my mother the Coronela (lady coronel). My dad was only the captain.

My mother had to run a country estate with three sections. The one where the house was was very big. The yard had large trees, many of them fruit and avocados and yet, it wasn’t crowded. The left lot was mostly full of fruit trees, and a beautiful little hill with rock formations and a little cave. One of our gardeners Andres Gonzalez and his family lived on that lot. Well, to call Andres a gardener is not fair, he was everything: gardener, baby sitter, guard, anything my parents needed him to be he was, and all that missing an eye. I can’t imagine growing up without the group we had. They were there most of my life. The other gardener was Abreu. Abreu lived on the same road as us with his wife and kids. Our best friend was his son Negro. (OK, Negro was black while the rest of the family was quite a bit lighter, so that was his family nickname. In those days, we didn’t even know there was something wrong with that. Heck, he didn’t either until way much later in the 1960s. It was who he was and Pico and I loved him.) We played with him almost every day. He went on to become an amazing baseball player in the DR.

Going back to the land, the other lot on the east side was planted with vegetables, many coconut trees, and many fruit trees. When I was little there were two cows there and a small building that held all the things for them, and yes, big tanks of molasses for them that Pico and I would get into all the time. This lot was the home of our favorite guava tree since we were little. We kids had access to all of this land to run around, climb fruit trees all day and just be us. My mother would check to see where we were, every once in a while, but, for the most part we were country kids running around. There was a pig farm a few properties up that also had the most amazing huge bamboo trees. They always had snakes in them, so we checked them all the time. We got to play with the baby pigs too.

Every week day the milk farm would deliver a huge milk can which was still warm from the cows. The days when I was home I got to be the one to scoop all the cream from the top and put it in a container in the fridge. This was later used to make butter or for desserts. I was always in the kitchen bothering someone. All I wanted to do was learn how to cook like my mother at that time. (Later on I learned everything I could from Julia and Ramona also.) So, I was there every day helping my mother make the dessert of the day for my father (when he was in town) and bother her on everything I could in that kitchen.

The bakery would deliver the just baked pan de agua bread every week morning. This is a Dominican legacy, and I don’t know if anyone is still making it the way they did then. I hope so. There was no artificial stuff, it was always good. You really didn’t need to put much on it. A dab of butter or olive oil and off you went. Sandwiches with it were absolutely the best. I just found out recently that my cousins, who lived next door later, used to steal some of it while they were waiting for the school bus. My mother always thought someone was stealing it, but didn’t know who.

Although Julia came in when Jackie was born, she then spent the rest of her life with my mother. She became the chef extraordinaire. And I can’t imagine our household without Julia and Ramona together. Before Jackie was born, the most important person working in the house was Ramona. My mother said I started calling her mom when I was little. She started out as my nanny, then became part of the family. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I adored her my whole life. It is sad that I left the country and didn’t keep up with where she went after she left us. But we left for the States after the hurricane and didn’t come back for years after. After my daughter Avaryl was born, I had gotten her to come and help me take care of her, but one of her daughters got married and she felt Ramona was too old to keep working now that she could support her, so she went to live with her in Santiago. Her family had always also had all this land and they started selling it around this time, so she got on to a little bit of her own money also. In any case, Ramona was this woman who came into our lives to make it better forever. When we had to hide she went with us. When we moved to my uncle’s house, she went with us. When we went to the apartment, she went with us. Heck, if there had been a way to take her to Puerto Rico I am sure my mother would have tried. Ramona was so sweet, and had gone through elementary school which made her part of a small percentage in those days with an education. She also could sew, cook, and do most of the things that needed to be done. Always with a sweet disposition and a smile. And would have gone after anyone that wanted to hurt us too. (Not like Julia though who picked up a rolling pin to chase one of Jackie’s boyfriends out of the house after he said he was going to hit her. She would have killed him if he had.)

In any case, the house would keep going no matter what happened. The whole time, my mother was celebrating birthdays. When I say celebrating birthdays, the word doesn’t encompass the production that this entailed. I remember that for my brother Ivan’s first birthday, my mother spent a whole month cutting and assembling covered wagons from the Wild West. She must have drawn, cut and assembled 50 of them. Then painted them and filled them with candy and placed on the table around the cake which she also made in the shape of a blue horseshoe. Everything was a production. Unfortunately, we had to have it just ourselves at home because my dad’s mom died right before the birthday. So, there was no real party. Of course, us kids had a blast with all the carts, the candy and the cake. I still remember the production, though.

If you look at all our birthday cake photos, most were made and decorated by mom. (It had to be something big like Ivan and my baptisms for it to be done outside because it was a huge cake. And even then, she might design it and have a cake shop make it for her.) But she baked some amazing ones. Even the one from when I turned 4 which was a boot with a roof made out of gold chocolate coins. The ones for my sister in Miami were all made by her. The amount of dedication to the art always amazed me. If she had not gotten married and had kids, my mother could have gone in many directions. She was already signed up by a modeling school in NY when she met my father. She could also draw and do beautiful paintings. She could make anything. When we came back from Puerto Rico and had no money, she and I painted the entire house inside. She would fix lamps. She could rewire them. Actually she could make a lamp out of anything she wanted. Then later on we moved to Miami and I got to Judith Vadas’ house. That is when it all hit me. Mrs Vadas had made almost all her furniture, sewed her curtains, bedspreads, everything in the house had her touch. I can just imagine the conversations these women had early on when Mr. Vadas had to go to the DR and my mother and her would hang. The, oh, I make my own moments. And my mother taking notes. (Mr. Vadas was one my father’s best friends. He worked for RCA Marine and installed and maintained all the radio equipment for the Dominican Navy and Trujillo’s private boats. Mrs Vadas was his wife and an incredible person. They were both Hungarian. At some point I will write about her. Her presence in my life was also very important. Her step father in Hungary was the third in line below the King before the Nazis came in. They sent her to Cuba to marry Alex Vadas and to save her life. The NAZIs killed everyone in her family and burned their properties and library to the ground. Apparently the library was one of the best in Europe. Mr Vadas wasn’t rich. His job was enough for a middle class family, but they weren’t rich. He had also left Hungary running away from what was an eminent NAZI invasion. Eventually he started his own radio marine company and then they had a nicer nest egg coming in. Together they built an amazing family and developed a gorgeous home in Miami with an incredible garden. She and Mr. Vadas always seemed to know what to do about things. I know my mom was always grateful.)

I have always thought these were the kinds of things that made me into a good designer. A designer can create just about anything. You just have to design it and figure out a way to develop it. That was my mom. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation with her. Yes, we can do this.

I remember when we came back from Miami and went to the Cayetano Rodriguez house that belonged to my aunt’s husband’s family. They had stolen a lot of our furniture at the port and my father had sold the rest to start his fishing company. So, we needed a dining table. She found out, from our neighbor, that the electric or phone company had these spools, huge and little ones. So, she got them to give them to her. Then she took them and painted them all crazy colors. There was the big spool “table” and the little spools with pillows were the seats around it. Absolutely as hip as you could get in those days. Then we were in a two bedroom house with four kids (Pico was still at the academy), and my father and mother. So, they set up one bedroom for themselves. The next one for Jackie and me. Then there were two beds in the living room that acted as couches during the day and became beds at night for Ivan and Alex. My mother made all the curtains, bed spreads, etc. She could sew, embroider, crochet, knit, do needle point, and more, on top of everything else. I don’t know if that came from the nun schools of if she just picked it all up on her own. I never asked her. I still have a needle point she made when she was pregnant with Ivan.

Unfortunately, it was right after the Civil War and there was no water. We collected water from the roof and had to boil it and filter it to drink it. The rest was used to clean, etc. Had to have someone come in to do the wash because it was done by hand and hung in the back. I learned to take a bath and wash my long hair with a can of water. It was all I could get. Eventually I cut my hair to make it easier. Then my mother became really good friends with our neighbor, Doña Nancy. She worked with President Balaguer and had access to a weekly truck of water. When they delivered it she would call my mother to bring anything she could put water in. And that’s how it was done. The day the water came back a lot of the pipes broke. But that is another story. Living in that house was not fun, since we were living in the city, and I couldn’t wait until we were back in the Arroyo Hondo house, our heaven. It took a little while to get there but we went back. There was always water there because we were one of the first houses built out there and the water lines came directly from the big gate tank down the road, not the city water. When our neighbors had no water, we would have hoses going over the walls to their houses. They were all grateful.

I have to add Mamá Lupe Anglada to this story because without her it would be a different story. I have mentioned her in several stories and have one dedicated just to her. To say this was a super human would still not be covering who she was. Getting my mother and her together was a stroke of luck or a genius move by one of the Gods. They became family and spent the rest of their lives as that. Mamá Lupe was from San Pedro de Macorís. Her family moved here from Cuba. I don’t remember if she was born there, or if she was born in San Pedro. When my mother met her she was a nurse in San Pedro. I have told the story that they couldn’t find a milk that I would drink after my mother dried up because of a fight she and my father had about my name. Until Mamá Lupe came into the picture and figured it out. I don’t know if she was already moving to the city or if she did after she met my mother. Most of my life she lived in the city close to the Alcazar in Santo Domingo with her twin sister, her sister’s kid, and her son, Miguel Antonio. The fact is, that most of my life, Lupe was in our house for something and we loved it. Whether it was that one of us was in a play and we needed to figure out the costume, she was there to help. If there was a birthday, she was there. She is in most of our birthday photos. If one of us got sick, she was the first person my mother called. She was the nurse extraordinaire, after all. Or if my mother was depressed, Mamá Lupe was the first to arrive and start telling her jokes and stories. There are many stories and many moments that wouldn’t have been the same without her so I have to more than mention her.While my father was in Puerto Rico these two were always in the room listening to Castro (until they figured out he was a communist) and writing subversive material and distributing it.

Another thing my mother was great at was gardening. She spent a lot of her time in the garden. After the work was done in the house she would grab a towel to sit on and go to the garden. I usually followed because I loved it and it was also a time to talk. Although I remember Andres Gonzalez asking if she could send me back in the house because I was talking too much. As usual, I wanted to know: what plant is that? And how big does it get? And all that… But, in each of the places that we lived in we sat in the garden, my mother and I weeding or planting, of clipping, etc. This is how I learned to garden. I guess it is a thing she inherited from her mother and then from my Mom it came to me. I have always been able to grow things.

Now back to cooking. My mother would get Good Housekeeping and McCall’s and cut out the recipes. She was always testing a new recipe she found. So, I grew up eating gourmet dishes that I didn’t even know were gourmet. There was always something new we were trying out. Of course, there was always rice and beans and veggies, but there was always a dish she was trying out. If we liked it, it would be added to the lunch or dinner menu. Yes, my mom would put together a monthly menu for the meals, this way the maids didn’t have to ask what they were cooking today. If it was Monday and it’s on the menu and everything to make it had been purchased and in the laundry room. There were big closets in there for the groceries. Later on my dad’s office was taken over and made into a big food storage room. By then she needed all the room she could get. They had to fit a new washer and dryer in the laundry room and the grocery closets had to go.

In any case, when she met Tommy’s Dad, Buz, he had a collection of cookbooks. Buz didn’t cook, but found that other people did and if you kept these books around they might try cooking something for you. And my mother did. Of course he had the Betty Crockers and Better Homes, so did my mom, but then you got into Italian Regional Cooking, a masterpiece, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or Vincent Price’s cook book a Treasury of Great Recipes, and the likes. My mother couldn’t get enough. I couldn’t either and still have some of these books in my kitchen. She made quite a bit from the Regional Italian book. She seemed to love those recipes the best. And the Julia Child, of course. But that was more upscale cooking with a lot of ingredients that were hard to find in the DR in those days. Julia was all about creams and butter. And you couldn’t even buy cream at the store and by then the milk didn’t come from the farm it was Leche Rica from the supermarket. In any case, if she had been an amazing cook before, now she was extraordinaire. We couldn’t get enough of the special dishes. I remember one she started making that was arabesque with anchovies and I think mushrooms. That thing was wild and every time she made it there was none left. Then there were the desserts. She still made them for my father every day of the week. And now they were even more exotic. We couldn’t wait to try the next one.

Interesting, when she got older she decided to never cook again. It just wasn’t going to be her thing. When she stayed with me in the USA, she would call me at work to think about what to make for dinner and stop at the store if we needed anything. Like I had all this energy left after dealing with arrogant magazine editors all day. But, she just wouldn’t. The only thing she didn’t stop making until pretty late was rice pudding. She knew Avaryl loved it and she would make it for her every time she visited. I am grateful for it too. But, I would say she didn’t cook the last 20 years of her life.

Oh, I didn’t mention that my mother never took her poodle Dina to the groomer. That she was the one that trimmed it and it was always perfect. She even painted her claws. It was the most amazing thing. She learned how to use those machines early on because she did my brother’s hair. They never went to hair dressers. It was my mother that always cut their hair until they decided later on in the 1960s to let it grow long.

If I think of anything else to add too this story I will. It is a work in progress, I guess, as I remember things.