In Puerto Rico, Unearthing Family Ties I Thought Were Lost

Jessica Chapel
·9 min read

Alex Green

To this day, few things help me slip into sleep. When I was younger, though, my father came to the rescue every night. With the right words strung seamlessly together, his sentences became visions that danced overhead, lulling me into another world.

“On a not-so-faraway island,” he’d begin, “there’s magic in the sand, and the sea, and the music….” He would tell me of towns painted in colors I didn’t know existed, of a cliff that he called “the edge of the world.” He'd walk me through lush green rainforests, and under orange and pink evening skies that illuminated the coastline. His face lit up as he described the rich flavors of mango and coconut ice cream, or a spicy-hot pork mofongo with mouthwatering meat that fell right off the bone. As I grew older, it became obvious: My bedtime stories were my dad's vivid recollections of Puerto Rico—and his way of returning to the island he’d left before I was born.

My dad was raised across western Puerto Rico: Rincón, Aguadilla, and Mayagüez, a mountainous coastal city. He spent much of his life in the latter, at his father’s beach house. He loved it, with its coat of white paint, wicker furniture, and position on stilts along a rocky cliff. Wooden stairs from the back door extended to kiss the sand, and bright green iguanas would regularly sneak in (eventually terrifying my mother). In the early ’80s, my grandfather left Puerto Rico and opened a sweater factory in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where I currently live. Bringing my father with him, it became their home away from home. They were not alone—that building on Graham Avenue was part of the neighborhood’s growing Puerto Rican community in the ’90s.

“On a not-so-faraway island,” he’d begin, “there’s magic in the sand, and the sea, and the music….” He would tell me of towns painted in colors I didn’t know existed, of a cliff that he called “the edge of the world.”

For the first decade of my life, I heard so much about the island, and that white house, but had seen neither for myself. So, in June 2010, my father finally booked flights for the two of us to visit. Our plan was to drive through the island from east to west. My father would get visibly giddy explaining this feeling he knew he'd have when the highway turned narrow, and the road veered toward the coast; his stomach would flip. “That view,” he'd tell me, “it’s even more beautiful than a painting.” At only 10 years old, I couldn't fathom it: What could be more beautiful than a painting?

In anticipation, I doodled palm trees in my journals, daydreamed about the sea, and even styled my beach outfits. Then, just a few weeks after booking the trip, my father experienced sudden cardiac arrest, passing away in my childhood home. In a cloud of grief, my mother and I swiftly moved away. Our plane tickets, four months from then, were forgotten about—two empty seats on the plane where we should have sat.

***

My grandfather, who had moved back to Mayagüez in 2018, became my only remaining tie between Puerto Rico and New York. Without my dad, I fell out of communication with the rest of our family on the island, but every so often my grandfather would call and request a visit. When the world emerged from the fog of the pandemic, it struck me that a decade had gone by since my father’s passing and I still hadn’t made it to Puerto Rico.

Rebooking the trip became inevitable, and I finally arrived in San Juan in early July 2021. I swiftly dropped my bags and walked through the streets of Miramar, colored by bright yellow houses with blue awnings and rosy flowers blowing from the trees with every gust from the ocean. I could hear my father in my ears: “You’ll always feel the ocean is close.”

He was right. I ended up at one of San Juan’s largest beaches, Playa Ocean Park, and walked into the shallows—it was, just as my dad described, “always the perfect temperature.” A woman with a cart rolled by, and sold me the best mango rum-infused shaved ice of my life. Another memory flooded in: my dad had talked about his Bacardi served in a half-pineapple from a local chica with a cooler on wheels. I stared at the horizon, realizing it was the same view my parents would have seen in 1996, when my dad proposed to my mom on a balcony of an ocean-view hotel room in Condado.

Over the coming days I allowed myself to slow down—for the first time, perhaps, since his death. I breathed to the sounds of the breaking waves. On Playa del Pueblo, I strolled barefoot on the water's edge, and finally let out a well-overdue cry. I could no longer escape the gut-wrenching loss of my dad. I dropped everything and dove into the water, where my tears blended into the sea; I pictured them traveling through the depths to some intangible place, reaching him somewhere unknown. I felt closer to my father than I had in a decade.

But the grief, the trip, was not just my own—and the real journey lay in traveling east, to finally see my family. A friend drove me to my grandfather’s place in Mayagüez. I recall being overcome by nerves throughout the journey, even as I looked out of the window and admired the sweet roadside lemonade stands and mango trees. I realized I’d never spent much alone time with my grandfather. We had so much to talk about, but where would we begin? My spiral was interrupted when we reached Terranova. The trees began to disperse, and the ocean appeared to merge into the sky as the cliffside road became increasingly narrow. There was no doubt: This was the view that had made my father’s stomach flip.

When I arrived at my grandfather’s baby-blue apartment building, I was happy to see his sister, my aunt Aurea, who I'd always gotten along with, waving at me from the balcony. Joy, and mostly relief, washed over me—and I rushed through the unlocked front door. As we all embraced, a telenovela blasting in the background, I told them how lucky I felt to have made it there. They both agreed it was “about time.” As my grandfather freshened up, my aunt and I went to the balcony, where she pointed at the view: “This is where the mountaintops kiss the clouds.” My father wasn't the only one who could turn Puerto Rico's landscapes into poetry.

We drove to Pa’l 22, an unassuming local joint, for lunch. My heart sank again when I stepped onto the back patio, and my grandfather pointed at his old beach house. I suddenly understood my father’s idea of the edge of the world. I was standing on it.

Throughout the day they told me stories of my dad, pointing out his favorite places as we drove around. Balneario de Rincón—that was where he'd spend countless hours surfing and swimming. “He would walk around the neighborhood, barefoot from the beach, with bananas on his head,” my aunt described. “Sometimes he brought back coconuts,” my grandfather added. They both agreed that he was a complete kook—his itch for freedom and adventure, his love for the ocean and genuine connection with people, all came alive when he was in Puerto Rico.

In the small coastal region of Añasco, I stepped into a single-story Art Deco home filled with six more relatives—we hugged without hesitation, meeting for the first time. My cousins were shocked by the physical resemblance between me and my father, and I fought the lump rising in my throat in response. Though only two or three of my cousins spoke English, I had never felt so welcome, so bonded to people I could share so few words with. I promised I would return, with stronger Spanish next time. After hours spent batting two languages around, we agreed that no matter the future, we were grateful to have met one another.

My grandfather insisted on buying me a “Puerto Rican Pride” T-shirt at a roadside plaza before I left. It was something I “must wear back in Williamsburg,” he said, beaming with pride over the fact that I lived on the south side, his “old stomping grounds”—especially when I showed him photos of the view from my apartment, with gigantic Puerto Rican flags hanging from my neighbor’s fire escape. Many of his friends were bought out of the neighborhood in the early 2000s, thanks to the waterfront residential developments and inevitable gentrification. He was glad the pride had persisted.

I flew home rocking my new T-shirt, Bad Bunny’s latest album blasting through my headphones. I thought about that lost trip with my father—I was always so hung up on the fact that it had never happened. However, once I stepped off the plane in New York and the taxi weaved through traffic to Williamsburg's Los Sures, I fell victim to the ooey-gooey realization that, maybe, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. The “not-so-faraway island” felt, for the first time, not so far away. My trip to Puerto Rico solidified connections with my culture, my family, that I hadn't quite grabbed onto before—it woke up my inner Boricua, long overlooked. This community wasn't just that of my father or grandfather. It was mine, too.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

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