Javier Morillo

And traditionally, they are wrapped in banana leaves.

But our pasteles were wrapped in aluminum foil.

Because when you're a Puerto Rican mother in Germany, you make do.

I didn't think this at the time, but this party must have been expensive for my parents, and we were not at all wealthy by any stretch.

My dad was enlisted in the army.

He had just a few short years before come back from his second tour of duty in Vietnam, where he had experienced the horrors of that war on the front lines.

My parents had escaped poverty in Puerto Rico when he joined the army.

But although I know now that we did not have a lot, it never felt that way.

Because mommy made it her sort of goal and task always to ensure that we felt not just that we had enough, but that we had a lot.

And not just at Christmas time.

All year round, she did this.

And this fell on her.

largely because dad, because he was in the infantry, he was away for weeks at a time doing military field exercises.

So it was mommy who enrolled us for school, mommy who bought our school clothes, it was mommy who was called in for parent-teacher conferences.

I remember when I started school, mommy putting me on a school bus in Mainz, Germany, in a little denim suit that she bought.

I may have been five years old, but I knew that my bell-bottom jeans and matching jeans jacket were cool.

And I rocked that look.

Mommy had sewn a patch over the left breast pocket that said, proud to be Puerto Rican, with our flag right in the middle of it.

Puerto Ricans, we love our flag.

I had no way of knowing that my kindergarten teacher, Ms.