Author: jojothatfloridagirlnow

It has taken me a while to post this.  First off, I am totally technologically impaired.  Second, I was still coming to terms with my visit home two weeks ago.  I sat at the Southwest Terminal of the Tampa International Airport and it was in ways, bittersweet.  To be honest, the week prior had me feeling some type of way. Maybe it was the overwhelming feeling of always being behind with my projects at work, not working hard “enough” at the gym, or not being where I think I should be in life.  In part, it is all of the above. But it is also the fact that I was headed home.  Home to me is, and always will be, Puerto Rico. “La Isla del Encanto”. “The Island of Enchantment”.  As I sat at the gate, I could pinpoint who would be on the two hour and thirty-minute flight with me. Puerto Ricans look different from each other to the naked eye of society.  The mold was broken by us! A mix of Spaniard, Taino, and African; our café con leche skin tone runs many different shades. Regardless, we all share one thing in common. Our sense of pride.  Puerto Rican pride. We bleed that lone star in a sea of blue, that white and red. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States and has been since the end of the Spanish American War in 1898. The Jones Act of 1917 grants me, as well as other Puerto Ricans born on the island, American citizenship.  By birth, I am American; my birth certificate and passport say so. In my heart, I am Puerto Rican. We are always in conflict, torn between being American but the want to set ourselves apart and identify as Puerto Rican as well.

For the last nine months, since Hurricane Maria struck the island as a category 5 storm, Puerto Rico has been everything but enchanting.  Watching “my island” be torn into pieces from my little bubble in the suburbs of the Tampa Bay area was one of the hardest things I have done as of late.  I say “my island” (mi isla) because, yes, it is mine; my heart owns a piece of that 100 by 35 miles rock that is the gate to the Caribbean and the United States.  In the time frame that Maria struck, I had recently gone through a breakup, survived my first hurricane (#Irmageddon), attended my best friend’s wedding on the west coast, and was mentally preparing myself for surgery to remove a 2.1×2.1×2.1cm gallstone that was causing me excruciating pain whenever I ate anything but peanut butter and grilled cheese sandwiches (not in the same sandwich, no pregnancy cravings here ☺).  Needless to say, I was physically, mentally and emotionally drained.  In the days leading up to Maria, I was in constant communication with my family on the island.  They were prepared, or so they thought. Irma barely grazed them. Jose brought them more wind and rains.  They were on guard. Little did they know of what was to come. On Tuesday of that week, everybody was hunkering down.  The airports in Aguadilla and San Juan had been evacuated. All major carriers got the last of their planes of the island earlier that day.  The power and telephone companies purposely shut down their grids to limit the number of outages and to better assess the damage after the fact.  The winds, as the outer bands of the hurricane approached, started to pick up. That Tuesday night was the last communication we had with our family for fifteen days after Hurricane Maria made landfall in the eastern town of Fajardo as a category 5 storm.  For 24hrs, this monstrous storm beat the island to a pulp; leaving behind bridges collapsed, dams and levees on the verge of giving way, the power grid destroyed, communities cut off from the rest of the island, and El Yunque bare.

There was little to no media coverage.  Then, CBS and David Begnaud brought to light what was really going on.  It was emotionally, painstakingly rough. I was thankful for being in a city where I could watch WAPA TV, but I was horrified by what I was seeing.  The true damage was yet to be noticed. Family in the metro area (San Juan, Catano, Guaynabo) were ok. We were able to communicate with them almost immediately.  They told of the winds, which they described as constant trains passing by their windows. They elaborated on the power outages and the fact that gasoline and diesel were being rationed until the Coast Guard could assess the damage to all of the ports allowing for tankers to dock.  The Roads division (Carreteras) of the Department of Transportation needed to assess road damages and start the clean-up efforts. All government employees, my uncle (who is part of the governor’s staff) and cousin’s husband (an inspector for Carreteras) were on emergency management duties.  It took fifteen days to find out where my grandfather had spent his days. Fifteen days to know how my older cousin and her family were handling things. Fifteen days of momma and I texting back and forth during the work day. Fifteen days of crying at my desk and then immediately calling momma as I got in my car at 5pm, only to cry some more.  On the 10th day, momma and I are on the phone and she says “I spoke with your uncle, he says water got onto the property by three feet”, I answer back “Is that so? Hmmm there is information missing Ma”.  Being that I live and breathe the engineering and construction world, that phrase “water got onto the property” was misleading. My uncle knew I would catch it. I got off the phone and immediately call my uncle.  I ask how he and his partner have been holding up and then jump right to business. “Tell me the truth because what you told mom doesn’t make sense”. Exactly like that, English and all. He chuckles, “you caught that?”.  “Yes, of course. You knew I would.” My uncle, when he is not on the governor’s staff, is an architect by trade. He lives and breathes the same industry. It is then that he tells me what he could not bring himself to tell my momma.  The house had flooded. At one point during the storm, it had three feet of standing water and he had pictures depicting the watermark as proof. I held back the tears as I told him that I would relay the news to my mom, but that I could not bring myself to show her the pictures.  I would call in reinforcements for that, my father would have to show them to her. The next day she receives a drone picture of the neighborhood under water. The Mayor, Carlos Mendez, had a drone fly over Aguadilla. She sends my dad, brothers and I the picture in a group text “can you find the house?”  My coworkers were very sympathetic. Scratch that, they showed me immense amounts empathy. They knew I was hurting. Immediately after finding out that our neighborhood had flooded, and the house needed to be cleaned, the environmental engineers told me that they warehouse was open to my disposal. Whatever I needed, it was mine.  If they did not have it, they would order it. Now that we knew what needed to be done, the next hurdle was to figure out how we would get there.

Fifteen days after Maria:  It is nearly 6pm, I am standing in my kitchen trying to figure out what dinner will be since my gallbladder secretly had a vendetta against me.  Sitting on the counter was my phone, momma and I had already had our daily cry fest. In comes a text message from her. I open it and immediately curl over the counter, crying again.  We had finally received proof that my grandfather was safe. My uncle finally catches my grandfather at the house and manages to send my mom a video message. Minutes later, my phone starts to ring.  Now, I typically do not make a habit of answering unknown calls but we had decided that if we received calls from a Puerto Rico area code, we would answer and pass along messages to family members stateside.  The phone lines were severely damaged after the storm. Claro, a local provider, was the only one with functioning communication towers. I answer and hesitantly say hello. To my surprise, I hear a familiar voice.  It was my older cousin. In between laughter and tears, she managed to tell me that she was happy to hear my voice. That she had been worried about me. Confused, I asked why but then realized she had just gone through the worst hurricane the island had seen in over 85 years and had been cut off from the rest of the world.  She didn’t know that Maria did not affect Florida.