This work is dedicated to my loving mother and grandmother who went over and beyond what most people could do with limited resources. Their arms became their wings which they individually spread bringing and teaching me skills that were necessary to deal with the myriad of adversities with which I was faced. No matter the environment, they taught me the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It was simple and rewarding to be kind and compassionate to others. I learned that God created this earth (the ground we walk on) and we planted seeds to create beautiful flowers for all to enjoy and also foodstuffs so we could survive. They showed me that he is a giving God whom we can love while trusting and believing in him. They gave me many examples of his wonderful works.

My name is Lucy and I never thought I'd have a chance to tell you my story. I was born on the beautiful Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico. My parents had very little in material things. When I occasionally visited what few neighbors I had, none of these families could brag about having any prized possessions. In fact, what few pieces of clothing I owned, my mother had sewed for me out of empty white cotton rice bags. At this time in my life and throughout the year, the weather was constantly warm. I overheard my parents on many days having discussions about putting food on our table. It was obvious that I was living in a struggling family.

I'm now eight years old. My family - mother, father, three brothers (two older, one younger), an older sister and I, live in the countryside. We're fortunate to have a two bedroom wood-frame house. It was painted red and had a tin roof. We had doorways (no doors), openings for windows (no glass or screens but wooden shutters), no electricity, no plumbing or running water. My mother would cook on a wood burning stove from which she would remove the embers and place them in a small iron. She then ironed father's shirts which she had starched (made from yucca roots). My older sister and I slept together on a small cot. My second oldest and youngest brother slept on another cot. My oldest brother slept in a hammock in another part of the house.

Every morning when we woke up we would call out to our mother. She would come into our room carrying a broom and searched under our beds (cots) to make sure no snakes were hiding there. Since our house had no doors, it was not uncommon for snakes to crawl into our house and hide under our beds.

Receiving an "All Clear," I would jump out of bed and dress myself in one of the small white cotton dresses that mother made for me. I had no shoes. Then, I would sit on a step which led to our kitchen and for breakfast my mother would give me a piece of plain bread and some weak coffee in a tin can. Following breakfast, I grabbed an empty five pound rice bag and walked down to the river banks not far from our house. This was my daily routine. I would lift up rocks and enjoy catching small crabs and crawfish hiding there and place them in my bag. When my bag was full, I'd run home, and it gave me personal satisfaction to show mother what I had foraged.

My mother would cook the crabs and crawfish in a tomato sauce with tomatoes and cilantro that she grew in her garden after which she'd serve them to us over rice. They were delicious. One day when I got home from foraging, my father was home. I heard him tell my mother she should be keeping me home. . .teaching me to cook, sew and clean so they could find me a husband. My mother could hardly believe her ears and she reminded him I was only eight years old and there was plenty of time for her development! Adding further, "Right now she's helping to put food on our table." Then in his typical mean tempered fashion, my father began to beat my mother unmercifully. He screamed at her, "You need to do what you're told, woman, and don't you ever talk back to me." That time, as my father was beating my mother, I jumped on his back and grabbed hold of his hair pulling with both hands and somehow managed to bite his shoulder. My father got me off his back, grabbed me, threw me against a wall and left home.

My mother gathered me up like a broken bag of bones, examined me closely and told me, "I love you, Luz, and sure thank you for coming to my rescue. But no matter what your father does to me, don't you ever lift a hand against him again. Children never lift a hand against their parents," I told her, "I don't care mother, I will always protect you." I then went up to my second oldest brother who was just standing there like a scarecrow and told him he should be protecting our mother. My brother began crying from shame. He feared our father. On several occasions when he wet the bed, my father would beat him after which he'd take the urine soaked sheet, tie it around his head, take him outside and make him kneel in the sun. Shortly, my mother's tolerance level was destroyed and she ran out and removed the sheet from my brother. She was followed by my father who again began to beat her. I ran to my mother's side and began to kick and bite my father while telling my brother to run away.

Despite the abusive treatment my brother endured at the hands of our father, it failed to break his fun loving spirit! We were buddies and he took me with him to the river to swim. I watched him climb up on a high cliff and do many beautiful swan dives into the river. I enjoyed watching him and was amazed at the grace and ability he displayed. One day, he took me to a higher cliff and told me to be very quiet. He took me to the edge of the cliff and whispered to me, "Look down." There on a ledge below us was a young couple making out like crazy. My brother accidentally started a small rock avalanche which descended on the unsuspecting couple. The girl screamed and ran away. The guy cursed and shook his fists at us and we ran home laughing all the way.

My father owned a small grocery store at the bottom of the hill next to the street on which we lived. His presence was really appreciated in our community. He would frequently give groceries out on credit but never bothered to write things down. However, as you can see, my brother and I truly dreaded his presence at home. We would never know if he had a bad day and we were going to catch his wrath. We tried to avoid him. Also, putting food on our table was a struggle and not his priority. He brought home rice and beans for us to eat but nothing else. Sometimes I would go to bed crying having watched how abusive he was to my mother and brother.

Another parental misstep during our early growth was their failure to send any of us kids to school in Puerto Rico. No one monitored school attendance and we didn't miss it. We grew up on a farm and our days were filled with feeding and caring for animals. It was about a quarter mile trek to fetch water from a well. Pulling weeds from our vegetable garden was a never ending task like picking worms off the coffee plants we grew. There was so much exhausting work. Mother literally had her hands full completing the necessary cooking, cleaning and sewing clothes for us as we grew. Most demanding was keeping my father happy so he would not beat her!

One event my 2nd brother did annually on Halloween, to break the monotony, would be to take out one of our mother's cooking pots and take some black soot from it. He'd then rub it on his face and arms and finish his costume with a ragged shirt and pants. At the right time, he'd go to the neighbor's house where a party was underway and danced with all the women. My brother was a great dancer! While at the party, he stuffed his pockets with treats being served and brought them home for me and our siblings to eat. We thoroughly enjoyed them. I loved my brother. On his way home after the dance with his spirits high, he decided to hide by people's outhouses. When the women would come out to use these facilities, he would jump out and scare them half to death! They would run away screaming. Finally, returning home and feeling gleeful, he bathed himself in a barrel of water outside our house. He came to bed and I would hear him giggling. Wanting to know what was so funny, he laughingly told me what he had done and we giggled for hours.

Most years were uneventful but learning one year that a hurricane was about to hit our island, I helped my mother gather all our belongings - everything we had fit in a large plastic bag. Years before, my father had built a small, low stone storm shelter and we squeezed in there. It was too low to allow my parents and brothers to stand up in. We all weathered the storm after which we left the shelter to assess the damage. Fortunately, thank God, our house had sustained very little damage. We found our milk cow and most of our chickens had been killed. The storm had washed away my mother's garden which brought her to tears and she exclaimed, "What are we going to eat?"

At that time, I ran to the river banks where many things ended up. There were so many people there . . . collecting vegetables, so I was not able to gather much. From there, I dashed to a wooded area not far from our house. Here, there were many chestnut trees growing. I gathered as many football shaped pods that had fallen off the trees as I could carry. They were loaded with chestnuts and I also found a few chicken eggs — fully intact. I almost burst with joy taking home these things I had foraged hoping to ease my mother's grief.

A few days later, a neighbor stopped by our house. He was a widower and brought us some much needed food items. My mother thanked and hugged him. When he left, my father exploded, accusing her of having an affair with this man and began to beat my mother. Without any provocation, he grabbed a kitchen knife and started cutting off my mother's long beautiful braid. Attempting to protect her braid, my mother put her hand on it to no avail. My father viciously severed her braid and badly cut her hand in the process. My brother immediately ran to fetch our grandmother who came over and dressed the wound while closing it with eight stitches using no anesthesia.

My grandmother lived alone in a house not much bigger than the one where I lived. Surprisingly, she gave birth to and raised ten children in that house. She was a brave and spiritual woman. In our community, she was a midwife and a healer. She also grew plants in her garden that were used in the remedies she created for treating colds, healing wounds and killing tapeworms. Visiting her with my mother one day, she mentioned that some of the tapeworms passed from children she treated were 12 to 18 inches long. Fortunately, my siblings and I never suffered from tapeworms thanks to my grandmother's preventive remedies. Some of her children married and moved away while some ventured into opportunities on the mainland (USA).

When my grandfather was sixty-years-old, he eloped with an eighteen-year-old girl — her name was Maria Teresa. Unexpectedly, after an extended period of time, my grandfather came to get my grandmother because Maria Teresa was in labor. Without emotion, my grandmother went to help deliver the couple's daughter. Afterwards, Maria Teresa told my grandmother she was sorry for taking her husband. My grandmother told her that it wasn't she who needed to apologize but my grandfather — he never did. Because of her character, grandmother stayed at the eloped couple's house for several weeks and taught Maria Teresa how to nurse and care for their baby. She told this new mother the only payment she wanted was for Maria Teresa to teach her daughter about God.

Many early evenings for me would be spent at my grandmother's house where she would teach me the names of all the plants she grew (going over and over again). Then I'd learn about the remedies in which they were used. This focus created in me my love of plants and gardening.

Having never traveled or lived beyond the boundaries of San Lorenzo, I didn't know what would be necessary to address the effects of a large medical problem. Then tuberculosis broke out and members of our community got together. In a relatively short period of time, they constructed a small shed in which they could isolate the infected souls and hopefully limit/prevent the spread of this disorder. It had a small window and an opening at the bottom of the door where plates of food and water could be slid to the infected loved ones. They were also provided with a bucket to use as a toilet.

My grandmother would visit these infected souls almost daily bringing them fresh fruit that she had grown for them to eat. Without asking for help, she washed their bedding, emptied their buckets and bathed them. Of greatest importance was the prayer time she devoted to each needy patient.

Several times during this epidemic, I recall my mother begging my grandmother not to tend to people who were infected with tuberculosis. My grandmother stated over and over again that she was doing God's work and he would protect her. That's how it was. My grandmother died a year later. She had diabetes which had gone undiagnosed. People were so impoverished they could not go to the city and seek medical care.

One day after the TB problem while she was gardening and without realizing it, my grandmother stepped on a rose thorn which lodged in her right foot. She had shoes but she only wore them to church on Sunday. That area where the thorn invaded her body became infected, she developed gangrene and her right leg had to be amputated. She could no longer tend to her garden or the people who needed her help. Not too much later, grandmother died in my mother's arms. I was there. I held her small calloused hands when she smiled at me and said lovingly, "Carry On."

For weeks I cried. I was inconsolable. My mother finally told me that Jesus had decided my grandmother had suffered enough and he prepared a little house in Heaven for her with a beautiful little garden. She was even given her leg back so she could work in the garden. I finally stopped crying.

After my father cut my mother's hair and hand, he did not come home for three days. Somewhat concerned, my mother sent my brothers to look for him. They finally found him in our hurricane shelter. He had hung himself. Sometime after that discovery, I overheard my mother and older brother talking about my father's death. My brother was telling her the word around town was that our father had help hanging himself; especially since the shelter was not high enough for him to do it alone. Talk among people in our town indicated my mother's brother had a hand in his demise. This brought my mother to tears. God forgive me — I didn't care, he was no longer around to beat my beautiful mother. Shortly after my father died, my mother's siblings who had moved to the mainland (USA) sent her a plane ticket to Chicago. They wrote her of the many opportunities in the United States and telling her she could get a job, save some money and send for her children. Hoping to better her life and make some money, she placed us in temporary homes and flew to America where she stayed with one of her cousins. My mother was 35 years old when my father died. She was 5'2" tall and weighed 125 pounds. She was beautiful but never dated or remarried. Although my mother only had a third grade education and did not speak English, she managed to find a job.

The people my mother left me with in Puerto Rico were not very kind. The woman would fitfully question me for hours because she suspected her husband had cheated on her with my mother! When I would repeatedly tell her I knew of no such thing, she would slap me and accuse of lying. While there, her husband repeatedly tried to fondle me! I went to bed hungry many nights. Things got so bad I decided to run away. For weeks, I lived in the countryside surviving on fruits I'd find on the trees while sleeping in our old hurricane shelter where my father had hung himself.

One day foraging for food on an old familiar peanut mound where I had dug before to help feed my family, the property owner caught me and took me home to his wife. She bathed me in a barrel of cold water, changed my clothes and fed me. She then contacted my older brother who was living with a wonderful family and going to school. He almost immediately came and got me to join him and contacted my mother. She had managed to save enough money and sent for me to join her. When I arrived in the United States, I was ten years old and had never attended school. I was immediately enrolled in the first grade.

I lived with my mother in a small apartment. All went well until the landlord raised our rent, my mother couldn't afford it and we were told to leave. We walked for hours looking for RENT signs. When the landlords realized we were Puerto Rican, we were told the unit was already rented. We walked many miles and finally found a vacancy in a somewhat undesirable neighborhood with mice and roaches.

One day when my mother was off work, I was at the park playing stickball with some of the neighborhood kids. A boy ran up to me and told me my mother was hanging out the window screaming my name. I immediately ran home and as told found my mother was hysterically hanging out the window calling for me. I ran up three flights of stairs to our apartment and found a man trying to crawl through our transom to get to my mother. This invader had managed to fit his upper body through the transom window. I still had the stickball stick in my hands which was the handle taken out of our old broom. I couldn't have been madder and began to beat his legs as hard as I could with the broom handle. He got down and limped away. A few months later I saw this man on the street... he was still limping.

After that day when work was over, I always met my mother at the Subway station to walk home with her. I also stayed home with her on her day off. The world was not a safe place for my mother.

I had a bad day at school when the teacher was filling out some form. She called me to her desk and asked me when was I born . . . my birthday? I told her I didn't know. She then shamed me in front of the rest of the class saying: "How could you not know when your birthday is?" I knew I was ten years old. She told me to go home and ask my mother what day was my birthday. When my mother got home from work, I asked her when I was born . . . my birthday? She began to cry — she could not remember my birthday nor could she remember the birthdays of my siblings.

I could not fault my mother. She was a battered woman who suffered from anxiety and panic attacks.

Thankfully, I had made friends with an elderly lady who lived in our apartment building. She was a widow whose name was Mrs. Wilson. Every day after school I went to her apartment and enjoyed combing her gray hair and putting pink rollers in it. She served me my very first bologna sandwich and gave me my first piece of cantaloupe. They were so delicious.

I told Mrs. Wilson what had happened in school . . . the teacher wanted to know my birthday but my mother couldn't remember. The next day, Mrs. Wilson took me on the bus to the Puerto Rican consulate. There, she asked them to send me my birth certificate and she paid the fee. Two weeks later, I received my birth certificate. I finally had a name and birthday on paper.

Mrs. Wilson took me back to school . . . birth certificate in hand. She requested to see the Principal and told him what was going on. The Principal called the teacher into his office. The teacher apologized to Mrs. Wilson who told her she needed to apologize to me for shaming me in front of the class and blaming me for something outside of my responsibility. The teacher did apologize to me. Needless to say, I was never her pet. I didn't care. No one had ever stood up for me like Mrs. Wilson did.

Throughout my life, people frequently asked me how I survived such a horrendous childhood? I never doubted that God's love and guidance coupled with numerous experiences and events created in me a tenacity and fearlessness that brought me through.

One day after school, I went over to Mrs. Wilson's apartment. I knocked and knocked but she did not answer or respond. This was unusual! I ran to get the landlord and he let himself in with a master key. He found my Mrs. Wilson. She had passed away. I begged him to let me see her. I needed to comb her hair but he would not let me.

I mourned the passing of my beloved Mrs. Wilson. She had taught me so much . . . especially to stand up for my rights and be proud of who I was — nationality be darned. She taught me that people who did not like or rejected me because of my nationality were people who didn't truly believe in God; that God made us all. We were all his children. If we loved his children, we also loved him.

I managed to graduate from high school. No visitors came to my graduation. My mother had to work and she was always afraid to ask for a day off. I also did not attend my prom which necessitated having a boyfriend plus the money to buy a beautiful dress. I didn't have either.

After graduation, I got a job at Woolworths. I was able to save enough money to go to night school and learn stenography. I then got a job at an insurance company, Secretary to the Assistant Director of Data Processing. This is where I met my husband. He was a successful and kind man. We were married and now after several years have two children, a boy and a girl.

When my mother was eighty-five years old, she came to live with us. We lived together in a big beautiful house with a garden apartment that my mother enjoyed. Together, we would garden and clean house. She was always at my side and we would go to church every Sunday. She died in her sleep at the age of 104. She died happy knowing she was loved. I wrote her birthday and the day she died on her tombstone and that she loved God best! I truly miss my mother.

As my children were growing up, I would spend many hours with them teaching them from activity books that contained reading, writing and simple arithmetic. These sessions included reading the Bible and teaching them what those words meant. When they got older and could understand what setting and reaching goals included, we discussed what it would mean to graduate Summa Cum Laude from college.

My son was a bit of a rebel and being his own man he married a beautiful girl who has supported all his endeavors. Today, he is a successful IT Technician.

My daughter, on the other hand, graduated Summa Cum Laude from college and went on to attend The Culinary Institute of America in New York. She became a successful, respected chef and married a wonderful man who is also a chef. They have two beautiful girls — one is six-months-old and one is five-years-old.

I frequently find myself at my daughter's house where I'm holding my five-year-old granddaughter and telling her she is smart and beautiful. My daughter chimes in and tells her she is smart and beautiful but the most important thing to remember is to be kind. Thinking about life, what do you think?

Looking back and reflecting on all the roadblocks I encountered, I'm thankful for God's helping hand. I mentioned a couple of traits I've developed - tenacity and fearlessness. I've also found an inner drive and perseverance that have certainly helped. I too learned to stand up against bullies. I found it rewarding to come to the aide of those people who are weaker. Most importantly, I teach my children and grandchildren to be kind to others and encourage others to do the same.