Luz Eileen is not a common name and that’s what her parents loved about it: the contrast between english and spanish. Her father, John Edwin González, was 18 and her mother, Luz Delia Melendez, was 16 when they found out they were going to be parents. She was born on September 11th of the 1969 at Río Piedras. A little after she was born, her parents got separated so she didn’t have any other siblings. During her early years of life, her grandmother, Ada Vilches, raised her. She had a fun childhood living in the mountains. She rode the bus to school with her best friends every day and loved her little town. School was a lot different from how it is nowadays but she loved it back then more than how it is now. She didn’t get married until she was 23 years old at a catholic church to a man called Anthony Rullán but got divorced at 28. She has struggled with different types of allergies throughout the years of her lives. It is very probable that those allergies are hereditary.
Luz’s grand parents had a completely different education than hers. They used to tell her stories about how many times they had to go to school without shoes. They usually didn’t have more than 3 notebooks or free lunch. They actually had to go to the forest to look for fruits to have for lunch. She only met one of her grand grandmothers, her name was Justina Rivera whom dedicated her life to her children and became a housekeeper. Other than that, her grandfather was a marine, and he was always sailing across the sea.
I personally think that my generation is very lucky. Luz was talking to me about how they didn’t have computers, or cellphones. She says that life was a lot more easier back then than now. She thinks that it is like that because things were a certain way, and now we have so many opportunities and chances to live a “successful” life, that we usually get satisfied with whatever we get, instead of fighting for our dreams for real. She says that the biggest problem that has happened to the society is the invention of cellphones. Even though they make things easier, they are addictive. People co-depend on their cellphones, so much that they have a better internet life than their real one.
A memory that impressed her about her son, Giuliano when he was 3 years old, he escaped to the forest and got lost. Also, something that impressed her about Alana at 5 years old was when she told her that she was going to sing at a singing festival. Something unusual about Giuliano was how he couldn’t fall asleep without holding somebody’s ear. Luz lived in different places throughout her life. She grew up in Palomas, Comerío. When she turned 18 she moved to a hostel with a few roommates in Río Piedras to study at UPR. At 20, she moved to Levittown with her biological mother. At 23 moved to an apartment with her husband and at 28 got divorced. She went to live in her uncles, Omar, house. At 29, she found out she was pregnant so she moved back to the place where she was raised with our father, José Gómez, because she thought there was no better place to be raised at.
As a kid she wanted to be a teacher. Her first job was at JCPenney, selling perfumes. She studied theatre and education and became a theatre teacher. She has traveled a big amount of times to USA, and a few times to the Antilles and Dominican Republic. Her favorite trip was one where both of her children and our father went to New York, rented a car and drove all the way down to Florida.
The person who has influenced her the most is her grandmother, Ada, because she was an independent woman. The two people in her life who changed her to be a better version of herself were her daughter and son because they inspired her to be the best mother she could be. An advice that stuck with her and will always be her guide was an advice her biological mother told her. She said that people were expecting her to end up having a crazy life like her father’s, and that she should never settle for anything less than being the best version of herself.
Luz Eileen González is a role model not only to me, but to any person that gets to meet her. I have friends that admire my relationship with her and the way she thinks. A lot of people look out of her because she is a very open minded, independent, strong, happy, beautiful mother and woman. She has learned a lot from being a mother and a teacher. She raised my brother and I pretty much alone. Trust me, being a single mother can be hard, but she makes it looks so easy with her optimistic mind. I aspire to be like her.
