When I was growing up, in a large extended family in the Dominican Republic, one of the things that distinguished me from that indistinct mass of siblings and cousins was that mine was the best godmother.
Her name was tía Amelia, and in her youth she had been a legendary beauty. Even as an older woman, which is how I remember her, she was beautiful. Her skin was dramatically pale in contrast to her black hair, which was, by then, streaked with silver threads; her eyes were an astonishing sky blue. I say “astonishing” because I had never known a Dominican with blue eyes. I thought of blue eyes as a trait of Americans, like speaking English, freckling, and sounding silly speaking Spanish.
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