Words Matter, and in each language – in the different words – there are traces of stories, families; lives lived, loved, and lost. Similar words in different languages may have slightly different connotations. But they can be traced back to the epistemic origin of the word and show in its evolution the struggles of the people, the comingling of the blood lines, the co-habitation of the cultures. Thus, the gesticulation, diction, and articulation display empirical evidence of the change in folkways, mores, laws and taboos in the joint tenancy of cultures and sub-cultures surviving and thriving together, while asserting to be separate and apart.
LATER. A simple word imbued with complexities that underscore the passing of time. A second, a minute, or an eon. It comes after now, but it carries with it the DNA of a range of information that takes us from now to then – whether backward or forward in time or space. And we the people carry a time capsule with us that includes significant interventions of having been here and now with hopes of a future footprint. Forever. Whether we remember them or not, they are tattooed in our existence in an inextricable way that continually changes us by opening doors to our potential or killing straggling tendrils of our talent. At best a memory documentary, spliced together with castoffs from others and fortified, enhanced by the primal core of self-knowledge implanted at the moment of conception.
WORDS become the stories that we tell; the emotions that we feel; the actions that we take – or sometimes wish we had or perhaps had not taken. They become the timestamp for our lives, our existence, perhaps the progenitor of our hereafter.
For the title of my first book, I chose the words Hasta Mañana, with the above stated considerations in mind. I chose a mother as the protagonist of the story because deep in their being a mother – or a father – is a parent forever linked to the child. To think of ever being without our children is unthinkable. But words like “until tomorrow”, i.e., Hasta Mañana, give that symbolic continuum of hope that we will always have a viable connection through the string of tomorrows, because, truly, tomorrow never comes, just as the connection never ends. And if love is physical exertion – a way of showing that we love – rather than a mere verbal expression – it is never destroyed though it evolves even into dormancy. And even though it may be masked by wear and tear and sleepless nights, sometimes, Hasta Mañana – if only in our dreams – keeps alive the hope that we will see and be with each other again.
Hasta Mañana, to Miriam Valencia – the young mother in the timeless story of the changing dynamics of families, places, and same things with different names – lives with the hope that she will see her child again, even though it may be in a different place, a different time, perhaps through a spiritual connection. It is the eternal hope that one who loves another feels from the magic that the word “love” carries forth the dream while holding steady the dreamer. And though the heart can and will love again, the memory cannot and will not ever love another the same. So, in essence, for Miriam Valencia, Hasta Mañana keeps open the door of hope for a reunion tomorrow. Therefore, the mystery of the story is not only finding the killer, but also allaying the hurt and calming it with a bearable peace for the possibilities of today.
Hasta Mañana (Dorrance Publishing) is available at major book distributors and its release in the Spanish language is scheduled for late 2024.