Sigh
Well, let’s see if I can answer them. First of all, all bears have Spanish names. Either that or Italian or Scandinavian (where the Russian thing got started, I’ll never know, but I’ve never met a bear with a Russian name). This is just like all cats have Welsh, Latin, or Arabic names; and all birds have Bantu, Japanese, or German names. As for dogs, I’m not really a dog person. I don’t know how you can be ABD and not know this, but PhD programs aren’t what they used to be.
That said, the name Gomez goes deeper than that. It belongs to my ancestor, a double-great grand uncle on my mother’s side. He was a Spanish privateer known as the Red Gomez, or Gomez the Red, so called not so much for his vicious habits but his drinking ones. Still he was greatly feared.
One day on a resupply in Lisbon, he was pickpocketed by a rapscallion and gave chase through the city. He never caught the boy, but found himself lost in the middle of the city. He asked a young lady named Adelina if she could help him find his way. He found an excuse to stay in the city for another day, then offered to whisk her away on a life of adventure. She agreed, and by the end of the year they were married. One day she found some old maps and journals that belonged to her grandfather, Ponce De Leon (Her mother was his illegitimate child, it’s another story for another time). The journals outlined some of his findings during his quest for the Fountain Of Youth. By then, Adelina was a skilled quartermaster, and somewhat versed in nauticisms, and she puzzled out a location for the Fountain. She took her findings to Gomez.
The Fountain turned out not to be in Florida, but the Caymans, and Gomez became bent on finding it. Adelina was more prudent, questioning the right of mere mortals to partake of such power. After a lengthy dispute, she refused to go with him, and he left her and their two year old daughter in Valparaiso. When Gomez got to the Caymans, he found a Dutch ship blocking his way. This was during the midst of the Eighty-Years War, and Gomez was forced to fight. After a lengthy battle which left most of his crew dead or wounded, Gomez found the site of the Fountain. Mortally wounded himself, he drank of it without thinking of the consequences. He was healed, but found to his horror that the Fountain did not grant immortality or youth such as we know it. It permitted one to live beyond the normal life of a human, but never again as a human. Gomez would die at the age of 55, only to be resurrected as a grasshopper. He was constantly reincarnated over the ages until one day, I discovered this legend in my travels. It turns out Gomez’s spirit can be imbued into the animal of his descendants’ choosing, and only his descendants can communicate with him.
He has been a parrot for a little while, but we had an argument recently, and now he’s a sea monkey. (I won.)
