Today is my great grandmother’s birthday, as well as her twin brother’s! Unfortunately, my great grandmother and her brother have passed on and if they were alive today they would have been celebrating their 91st birthday. They were both born today, March 1st in the year 1923 in the town of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Their parents were from Morovis and how/why they gave birth to their twin children in Cabo Caribe, Vega Baja is beyond me. (I recently talked about this in a post about Ernesta’s mother Ramona Rivera).
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| Ernesta Miranda Rivera [Personal Family Photo] |
The story of their birth is an interesting one! My maternal grandmother tells me that when Ramona Rivera Rivera was delivering her child, they were unaware that it was a set of twins. Back in the days in Puerto Rico, many childbirths occurred at home due to inaccessible to centralized hospitals and the low socio-economic status of many working class families. The story goes that Ramona gave birth first to Ernesto and after his birth there was another placenta. When they cut open the placenta, inside was my great grandmother Ernesta. Quickly googling the phenomena, it is scientifically possible – it is known as “intact amniotic sac” and according to an article it is “ultra rare”. I’m not sure how true this story is, their birth certificates don’t mention anything of the sort yet at the same time I wonder how birth certificates would actually even mention birthing stories on documents.
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| Ernesto Miranda Rivera [Personal Family Photo] |
My great grand-uncle Ernesto Miranda (pictured left) worked as an ambulance driver. I actually don’t know too much about Ernesto, I have that his wife’s name is Angelina Rodríguez and that they had two sons together. Ernesta (our family calls her Ernestina) moved to San Juan as well as her brother but I wonder if the family just drifted apart, whether on purpose or by mistake. According to a social security record I found, it seems that Ernesto passed away in 2010 in San Juan, which actually wasn’t too long ago. My maternal grandmother remembers talking and meeting Ernesto but we really don’t have too much on him and his life. I have this picture thanks to some searching I did in my grandmother’s closet while looking through my grandfather’s things. In the photo album he had, there were many pictures of his mother and some of his uncle and cousins from his maternal side of the family.