On the Subject of Strength: Daniel Eladio Reyes (May 20, 1941 - January 1, 2021)

 

"Eladio" (pen and pencil, from a photo)

     

Notions of weakness and strength.  I'm not certain why strength and weakness have been on my mind lately, but I have a feeling there are a number of factors making my thoughts trend in this direction.

My father-in-law, Daniel Eladio Reyes de Leon, was a strong man, in more than one sense of that word.  A hard worker, he went at manual tasks -- whether painting a wall, building a table, chopping down weeds and dead trees, or even carving that dead wood into baseball bats for his grandsons -- with a laser-focused persistence until that job was done.  Then, after his wife or daughter reminded him to eat and drink water, he would refuel and find a new physical task to attack.  Those labors gave him, I believe, great pleasure, and, like Hercules and his twelve labors, increased strength.  Eladio was not weakened by all that hard work; on the contrary, what made him feel weak was inactivity.  Don't get me wrong:  He was very content to sit in his chair watching his Yankees.  But that contented tiredness -- which often led to him being "asleep at the wheel," as my brother calls it, remote in hand -- was not weariness.  It was pure satisfaction.

"The TV's watching him at this point," his wife, Sita, would say in these moments.

One evening, sitting in the airy openness of the sala in their Santo Domingo home, Eladio wanted to make a point to me about politics.  In my fading memory, the topic was Donald Trump, though it may have been his complaints about the weakness of Leonel Fernandez, former president of the Dominican Republic.  

"Mira," he said, taking hold of my forearm in his strong grip.  He didn't drink much in his later years, but I think we may have had one or two glasses of Brugal at that point.  "Intenta soltarte."  

"Ummm," I said, not wanting , as he said, to try to get loose.  I also didn't want to disrespect him by not honoring his wishes.  So I did nothing, smiling dumbly at him, until he laughed his bright-eyed laugh,  and let me go.  He patted me on my knee.

"Ay, Dan," he said.  "La fortaleza es muy importante." ("Strength is very important.")

"Si," I answered, rubbing the feeling back into my forearm.  

My father-in-law, leaned back into his big recliner, and shut his eyes, the picture of contentment.

And of strength.