1974-1979: A Time of Heavy Accretion
In which Teófilo reflects about how much he changed after his First Communion, for good and for not-so-good.
Holy Communion as the Lighthouse of my Life
Receiving my First Communion didn't make me an instant saint, but that wasn’t Jesus’ fault. It was mine - and still is. Let me disabuse you from the notion that children cannot do anything to jeopardize their eternal destiny. Yes, they can, and they do.
Now, what my First Communion did for me was to become a lighthouse. Reception of the Eucharist as a lighthouse told me how far or close my heart was to the Lord at any given time. Throughout my life I've seen this lighthouse dip down into my horizon, but I'd never strayed so far out that I lost the grace of seeing its beams. Later, I came ashore to walk at the foot of the lighthouse. Now I am on the catwalk right outside the lantern. With great patience I await to enter the lantern room is my goal and bask forever in His light.
Without knowing it at that time, I'd entered a period of heavy accretion. It was a period in which I was attracting to me the elements that would form my character and personality. I was like some protostar or protoplanet in a baby solar system, bombarded by would-be traits. My love for meaningful music, reading, and science developed during this time.
Before I continue, I reassure you that my story will not become overly pious. Yes, my Catholic Christian faith was central to who I was then and and I am now, but my faith’s centrality had expanded and contracted at various stages in my life. I want to record those stages and examine why these “expansions” and “contractions” took place. I assure you I am not writing my own hagiography. That would be “tooting my own horn,” that is, unsatisfactory, not good, hubristic.
Asking for your tolerance and understanding, let’s thus continue…
Personality fragments crash and coalesce into me, sort of.
Back then there were a shower of disparate personality traits crashing unto me to make and for me. These consisted of dominant and recessive passions, temperaments, aesthetic preferences, biases, and preoccupation for external appearance. I felt insecure, but I buried my insecurities under a veneer of haughty bravado. I wasn’t psychotic, but I felt torn and fragmented and unable to either express or describe how I felt at the time.
All these traits and more cemented unevenly within me. Dad wasn't there to cement my personality as fathers are wont to do. It would take decades for me to achieve personal integration. It would be fair to say that my character at the time was an amalgam of contradictory pulls, kept together by a very fragile ego. I became hypersensitive, fight-prone, haughty. In many ways I was reflecting Mom’s own attitudes and traits toward people and life in general. I still had friends, but they seldom sought me out to play or party. It didn’t help either that I was sports-impaired.
Once puberty arrived sometime in 1977, I felt ugly. I'll spare you the pictures, but I became a thin, gangly kid, with a face rich with acne. Then I grew this Travolta-like mane of hair I groomed all the time that became the mask I wanted to project to others. It became obvious I needed braces for my teeth. What up to then had been an endearing physical feature became an embarrassment and a target for peer mockery. I’d become the prototypical nerd outside.
Such were the state of affairs until 1979 when the Lord pulled me even closer to Him. The year 1979 was when the Lord took upon himself the ongoing task of making me whole. It was Him who started me on the road to affective maturity and integration.
We’ll get to the story later.
And the Music Never Ends…
I began to like any music that allowed me to express my feelings inside, regardless of genre. Music for me was about the need for love, whether expressed in English or Spanish. Many of the groups or soloists I liked were anathema to my peers. For example, I began to follow the Spanish youth group La Pandilla. Many of their songs spoke to and for my deeper self. I even attended the concert they held in my home city. Also, male and female adult balladists became part of my music taste.
In Spanish I began to like Panamanian singer Rubén Blades, and Puerto Rican performer Willie Colón. These were salsa players. Blades' music being more socially conscious while Colón's was more lyrical. I also liked Bobby Valentín's band when fronted by "El Cano" Estremera. El Cano was a cousin of mine, but we never met, and he has since passed away.
Though I couldn't dance salsa even to save my soul, I did twirl with merengue. Merengue was, and remains, the Dominican Republic's national pop dance. The music of Johnny Ventura, Wilfrido Vargas, and Conjunto Quisqueya also filled my airwaves. When I got the chance to dance merengue, I gave it a whirl.
I had fun twirling, but I was graceless on the dance floor.
My music taste ran the gamut of English performers in the decade. Groups like CCR, America, Cosby, Stills, and Nash, Bread, and The Carpenters provided me with a background music all the time. I played them all in a stereo Dad had gifted me which included an 8-track player and recorder.
When the disco fever hit I, already in the throes of puberty, embraced it with my whole heart. I even changed my hairdo as I said before, to emulate John Travolta's in Saturday Night Fever. I swore disco music would never end, but didn't care much when it did at the end of the 70's. Besides, I play it even now while driving. In this sense, disco never did die for me. Also, Captain and Tenille, Samantha Sang, Barry Manilow, so many others I now forget.
I’m fortunate and blessed because I appreciated the music around me. It gave me avenues for expression I otherwise lacked. I’ve vented a lot through music. I thank God for it.
Bonus - Sample of My 1975-79 Favorite Music
My YouTube list of favorites La Pandilla hits.
My YouTube, too short, non-exhaustive list of 1975-79 favorites hits.