Where did my journey start? In the small town of Bridgeport, Connecticut thirty-odd years ago. My parents had emigrated from Cuba, trading in palm trees for snow. Lucky me, because New England was a great place for a kid to grow up. Especially with my Dad. An older sister had preceded me, and the two of us were the shiny apples of Dad's eye.
It didn't take long for Pop to assimilate into his new culture. I remember him looking like a lumberjack, his not-too-large frame enhanced by a heavy wool plaid shirt. No ax for Dad, though, as he was far more often shoveling snow. Those were snowy winters in my youth, and one of my fondest childhood memories is of Dad taking out our Flexible Flyer sled on a sun-kissed Sunday morn, the ground covered in a blanket of fresh snow. We'd find the biggest drifts, and Dad would pull my sister and I up and over the top, whooshing down the other side, flecks of ice stinging our faces. What fun! Dad could always be counted on for fun, and I loved him dearly for it. Mom, on the other hand, was the anchor of the family, holding down the fort inside. The wonderful aromas wafting from the kitchen were always hers. She saw to it that we were well-dressed and well-fed, whereas Dad helped us develop our minds and personalities. They were a good team.
I remember the Sunday nights of my youth particularly well. "The Ed Sullivan Show" at eight, followed by "Bonanza" at nine. My sister and I were in love with Little Joe Cartwright, an affair of the heart that was nearly eclipsed by the Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan in 1964. We didn't watch much TV, though, since Dad preferred we do our homework at night. The reward for a job well done was a visit to the Beechmont Dairy, where we could enjoy the best ice cream cone in the world. The flavor selection was chocolate or vanilla, but for me there was only one choice, chocolate. Our single scoop was creamy goodness in a not-too-chocolatey way. To this day, I haven't found a better scoop, and boy, I've tried.
My sister and I had a ritual of sorts with Dad on Saturday mornings in that he'd let us go run errands with him. Dad had a penchant for buying everything fresh, so we'd usually go to a butcher with live chickens. Once dad picked a clucker, the butcher would unceremoniously whack its head off. Whaaack! My sister and I would wince, whereas Dad seemed amused by our sensitivity. Errands completed, we'd make our way to the record store, where Dad would let us add a few 45s to our collection. The Beatles were always at the top of our list, along with the Motown stars and whoever else was hot that week. Then we'd toodle home in Dad's Chevy sedan with the vanity plates that said "SOSA." Dad had vanity plates long before they were fashionable, but I think to him they were plates of pride. You could say he had made it in his new land -- a wife, two daughters, a good job, a comfortable home and a sturdy American car. Was there much more to life in the mid-sixties? Not at our house.
Mom spirited us down to Florida after dad died, in 1967. She didn't offer much of an explanation, just that we had a lot of relatives down south and things would be easier for us there. Like good soldiers, my sister and I followed in lock step. Here I was, trading in snow for palm trees. And bugs. I was smack in the middle of a brave new world which was foreign to me. As if that wasn't enough, the pain I felt over losing my father was nearly overwhelming. I had no idea how I could live without my hero.
In Florida, we went to public school as opposed to the Catholic school we'd known up north. I remember hearing "The Star Spangled Banner" on my first day of school in Miami and not knowing what it was. The nuns had never made us sing this song! I guess we were too busy saying Hail Marys to salute the red, white and blue. After this initial shock, I seemed to find my way in my new school. It was much larger, but at least we no longer had to wear uniforms. The kids were nice, too, so it was okay. Mom, however, couldn't seem to rally. She spent most of the next decade in bed, suffering from one malady or another. As a result, my sister and I became very familiar with Campbell's soup. We also did our homework without help and tiptoed around the house so as not to disturb Mom. Our mother's "absence" was difficult, but an even scarier prospect was what my sister and I would do if she was gone altogether. Yes, laughter at home was a thing of the past. In its place we inserted fun and frivolity with our schoolyard pals.
High school was a much more rebellious time, at least for me. While my sister seemed to toe the line, I had to experiment with everything. Cigarettes. Pot. Boys. And the pill. At various times, Mom found most of these in my purse, something which would lead to a huge screaming match between us, with me denying any knowledge of the offending de-vices. I also spent countless hours on the phone with my friend Bebe, talking about the boys we knew in great detail. Mom thought we were nuts. What she didn't seem to realize was that we were teenagers. As President of my school service club and co-editor of the yearbook, I was pretty involved in the after-school scene, which I loved. I think I found my calling as a Great Communicator in the tenth grade. I also found boys, or they found me. My first kiss still lingered, a tender smooch with Augie Fuentes at the age of twelve. Now, though, the boys wanted to do a whole lot more.
The battles with Mom raged on after high school, to the point where the state of Florida, actually the whole East Coast, became too small for the two of us. I let Mom keep the East, while I headed West, to California. My friend Karen and I had taken a trip to San Francisco in the summer of 1979 and fallen in love with the place. Three months later, we packed up her car and headed to the city by the Bay, a journey which would redefine my life.
My early years in San Francisco were spent in the securities industry. As a research assistant, I got to learn the ins and outs of stocks and bonds and how smooth operators did their thing. Women were still a minority in the securities industry at that time, which meant that we had to work twice as hard for half the credit. We also had our butts pinched a lot, and no one ever said the words "sexual harassment." Work lessons, life lessons, many lessons: I grew up fast and lay waste in the process, a succession of lovers too numerous to name. As the years went by I became more selective, good timing on my part as the eighties were to become the age of AIDS.
Big Joe was a big part of my life in the early 80s. I met him at a lunch, seated as he was to my right. We both joked for years that I should have looked to my left, in which case I might have wound up with a more stable fellow. What Joe lacked in stability he more than made up for in fun. He made me laugh, constantly. He called me "Elenita de Cuba," even though I'd never even been to Cuba. We went fishing in Cabo and skiing in Utah and spent romantic weekends in Mendocino. Through it all Joe loved me and I loved him. The only problem was that Joe loved countless other women in the process. Okay, so maybe he didn't love them as much as he loved me, but the playing field got pretty crowded. Then one of his other lovers said she would die without him. Not wanting blood on my hands, I exited stage left, taking with me a pocketful of memories I treasure to this day.
Bill picked me up as I was reeling from Joe. I didn't see myself as on the rebound, since I always assumed that kind of behavior was for other, weaker people. Bill and I worked together at Dean Witter, in the same office, no less. I dubbed him "Clever Bill" while he called me "Slim." We embarked on the kind of not-so-obvious-that-it's-obvious office romance that had our colleagues atwitter. Separated from his wife, Bill was probably in the same emotional space that I was. Even so, we managed to have a great time. Many of these times were at his Tahoe-area cabin, a magical house on cozy Fallen Leaf Lake where we spent the sweetest moments of our romance. We'd drive up late on a Friday night, the two of us close together on the bench seat of his beat-up Chevy pick-up truck. Arriving at the cabin after midnight, we'd bake a batch of brownies and devour them while we sat out on the deck looking at the stars. It was Bill who taught me how to water ski. Nervous as I am around water, he had just the calming touch and belief in me to get me upright on those skis. Bill also sent me the most beautiful bouquet of roses I have ever received, twenty-seven stems of varying hues to celebrate every year of my life. Work was play for us, too, as Bill and I teamed up for some fast-paced commodities and futures trading which was lucrative as well. In the end, though, I wasn't good enough for Bill's Mom, who might have liked me more if I'd sported a blond bob and the genes that came with it. Bill and I parted, each knowing that we had shared the best summer of our lives.
I left Dean Witter for Lehman Brothers with my pal Jane in the summer of `87. Lehman Brothers was where the game was really played, and we wanted a taste of that action. Whereas Dean Witter was collegial, Lehman was intense. You went twelve rounds every day, with your coworkers and your clients. Whoever was left standing pocketed some pretty good change. The Crash of `87 took place during my Lehman stay, and nothing was the same after that, at least not immediately afterward. We were all stunned, not sure if we had any business left or what to do with what we had. I got so worn out from the grind that it became impossible for me to shake a lingering case of bronchitis. In the spring of 1988, after spending two weeks in bed, I decided to make a change: Mexico. Not to work, but to rest.
Jane and I headed for Mexico in April of 1988, ostensibly for the summer. I got a good bit of rest early on, and licked my bronchitis much sooner than I expected. We had taken a two-bedroom condo in Puerto Vallarta as our summer pied. The cool stone floors, flower-laden deck and ocean vistas were simply magical. I'd get up every morning and walk down the hill for an orange juice fix, courtesy of some neighborhood kids who would squeeze oranges into baggies and tie them up with a straw. Juice to go! I'd continue on down to the main boulevard and head toward the big beach hotels. One of my first objectives in Puerto Vallarta was to become friendly with the pool boys at the top hotels. That way, I figured I'd have access to the best spots in town. And it worked. That, and the occasional token of my affection (Swatch watches were very popular among my new best friends), enabled me to come and go as a "guest." Some of the best friends I made that summer were around hotel pools, gals like Lucy and Mireya from Mexico City. I'd fly into Mexico City every couple of weeks and party like mad with this dynamic duo. We also took road trips to neighboring towns, visiting the likes of Puebla and Cuernavaca and San Miguel de Allende. My Mexican education was in good hands with Lucy and Mireya.
Back in Puerto Vallarta, I had a succession of visitors from back home, all of them eager to dance till dawn. I didn't need much convincing, so my nights in P.V. were a succession of tequila-laden fiestas, many of them ending up with a handsome hombre named Pepe or Juan. At the end of the summer, I returned home to give myself a Mexi-themed thirtieth birthday party and to weigh my options. After several months, I realized I needed to do more "work" in Mexico, so I returned, this time with my own Chevy pick-up truck, the one which had belonged to Bill. I spent several months driving the length and breadth of our southern neighbor, focusing my thoughts and collecting experiences. And asking myself the tough questions: what would I do when I returned? would it be a true realization of self? I was getting closer to realizing my dream, but I wasn't there yet.
The fall of 1991 took me to Boston. For many reasons, I had started to feel restless in San Francisco and felt a change of scenery would do me good. I paired up with some former colleagues and started working in the mortgage banking industry, not quite as fast-paced as the securities business but still a go-go world. My Mexican lessons -- take it easy and remember to enjoy a good meal, conversation, friends -- were fading into the background. I thought I would find something akin to my youth in this New England city, but times had changed. What I found was that the blacks hated the Italians, the Italians hated the Irish and the Irish hated the blacks. No one pulled any punches about it, either. Not being from one of the three main food groups, I never seemed to fit in. Even my soon-to-be-boyfriend greeted the news of my being from San Francisco with "San Francisco? That's so weird." I stayed three years, made a lot of money and returned to San Francisco, determined to make the life for myself that I knew I wanted.
I was back in San Francisco by the fall of 1994. Oddly enough, I found an apartment in my former building. My first order of business was to find a roommate to help with the rent. The first person who answered my ad was Finn. When he'd called, I'd pegged his name and accent for someone from India. Turned out he was Norwegian, tall and dark-haired and full of life. It was love at first sight. He moved in the day after I met him, and we spent every night that first week talking about everything. By the end of the week we were lovers, connected physically, mentally and emotionally like two long-lost and now-found souls. Finn was working for the Norwegian consulate, while I was intent on launching a career as a writer. I started my writing career by starting a business, Javawalk, to help pay the bills. No software for me, though -- my Javawalk was about coffee, a coffee-walking tour in the heart of San Francisco. That done, it was time to get on with the business of writing. Finn encouraged me to write about what I loved, and he thought I should start with coffee. Consequently, I spent countless afternoons in coffeehouses, observing the goings-on and spinning tales about what I saw. One of these stories became my first published piece, a tale entitled "Javacrawl" for the Traveler's Tales guidebook series. Finn kept pushing me, although he preferred to call it "support." Whatever it was, I'm glad he did it, because it kept me writing. I'm not sure I could have done it alone, since I was alternately terrified of making the leap as a writer and failing at my lifelong dream. I proceeded from coffee to food and travel, and found in Sally Bernstein, the editor of Sally's Place on the web, a mentor who encouraged my funny, often quirky restaurant reviews and rambling, roving travel pieces. Thanks to Sally, I was able to grow and find my voice as a writer.
Finn returned to Norway in the summer of `95, but we stayed connected through the beauty of the Internet. Our physical longing was assuaged by the power of words. We wrote pages and pages to each other every night, getting to know each other as intimately as two people can. Some days it was very difficult having him so far, so we tried to connect whenever and wherever we could. We met in London once, and I spent the winter of `96 at his home in Norway. Finn's teenage kids were around much of the time, something which helped me keep my sanity in this cold and faraway land. I considered his youngest, Ragnhild, to be the little sister I'd never had. Finn himself alternated between the joy of having me around and the despair of having to rebuild his life after a turbulent divorce a few years earlier. Despite it all, it was a wonderful experience for me. I ate the freshest fish, got to know Oslo like the back of my hand and even learned how to cross-country ski, trekking to an idyllic place called Skjennungstua. That kind of material is a Godsend for a writer.
My heart let go of Finn in the fall of `96, something which was difficult for both of us but needed to be done. On my own again, I got to work with a vengeance. I continued to write about food and travel, expanding my outlets from webzines to print. The assignments I got took me all over the lower 48 plus Europe and Mexico. I wrote about food in New Orleans and Seattle, spas in the Southwest, wandering in Mexico and even spent a weekend in Las Vegas with my old chum Lucia, who is still the funniest gal I know. I also became more involved in the web community, volunteering my time with the San Francisco chapter of Webgrrls and San Francisco Women on the Web. Now when I tell people I'm a writer, I can say it with the conviction of one who has worked at her craft and earned her stripes. Yes, I'm a member of the club.
What's next? A softening of the edges, and a sharpening of the vision. My new love Fen is helping me put my guard down, reminding me gently that I don't need to be that good soldier any longer, that the real me is good enough. I also realize that now is the time to fulfill my truest destiny, that of a road sage, one who travels the highways and byways looking for the real story in people and places. Finding the real me is a start. Living up to one of my heroes, the writer and correspondent Charles Kuralt, is another. I think I've only had two heroes in my life, my Dad and Charles Kuralt. Sadly, they're both gone, but they are with me in spirit. I'd like to think I honor my Dad every day by being a good person. I hope I can honor Charles Kuralt by doing good work, something similar to what he did but in my own style. My heroes were kind people, simple folk who wanted to reach out to others, learn about their world and create magic from what they saw.
I plan to hit the road soon and do the same. Stay tuned.
Elaine Sosa October, 1998