Saving Fireflies, Fishes and the Deep Blue Sea
Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
That was 45 years ago. “My father's death at sea gave the ocean a special place in my heart because it is only the sea which holds the secret to his death,” says Roselle, 51, a registered nurse in Columbia, Maryland.
Fast forward to 2019. Roselle, her husband and three children settled in their Columbia home close to the Howard County General Hospital where she worked. During summer evenings, she delighted in the sight of fireflies circling the flowers and bushes in the backyard. But her husband’s allergies prompted the couple to clear all the green spaces and reconstruct the yard into a Zen garden – a dry landscape of rocks and gravel. The lush vegetation was gone, and so were the fireflies.
Nature Conservation
“Their disappearance made me sad,” Roselle recalls. “But it also opened my eyes to the natural environment.” This sudden awareness was a turning point in Roselle’s engagement with nature conservation. She started learning more about living species from books and walks around the neighborhood. She also started writing poems and children’s stories, eventually getting them published. By “spreading more awareness and appreciation in a fun and lyrical way,” she hopes her readers, especially children, will be “enchanted with the wonders of nature and be fascinated with our eco-system; the plants and animals.”
She has since turned the misfortune of vanishing fireflies into an inspiration: writing, illustrating, and publishing children’s picture books. And she is donating proceeds from the books’ sales to fund a nature conservation project that’s helping save the environment in Siargao, an island in the Philippine province of Surigao del Norte. Many on this island live below the poverty line. They are mainly engaged in farming and fishing, ventures which are all dependent on available natural resources.
The livelihood of women seaweed growers in Surigao del Norte need investments in local sustainability programs aimed at building a more resilient community. Nature conservation groups like the Sining Pangkalikasan Cooperative support such projects. (Photo by Erwin M. Marcarinas)
Formed in July this year, Sining Pangkalikasan Cooperative, (Environmental Art Cooperative), is a group of Filipino artists based in Dapa, Surigao del Norte. Its 22 members are teachers, farmers, fishermen, government employees and health professionals. Its initiatives include ocean clean-up, recycling, vegetable gardening, and nature-inspired crafts such as batik painting and textile weaving.
Personal crisis
In July 2019, Roselle was diagnosed with breast cancer. The alarming news hit her hard. Still reeling from the shock, she and her 18-year-old daughter, Faith, were injured in a car crash only a few days later. Faith, who had minor injuries, was driving their car when a truck hit the passenger side. Roselle suffered broken bones and pelvic fractures. She was bedridden at home for four months.
Roselle and daughter Faith were in a car accident in July 2019, which left both of them “emotionally and mentally scarred.” Photo was taken in the summer of 2014. (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
During that time, she had her first of two breast surgeries to remove a cancerous lump. The cancer treatments and the car accident “scarred me and my daughter emotionally and mentally,” Roselle recalls.
“I felt the need to run to safety,” she wrote in the preface to her first book of poems, Finding Pieces of Me: In Life, Love, Praise and Poetry, published in 2020. But rather than giving in to anger, sadness and despair, Roselle turned to poetry for healing. “It relieved me of my stress and freed my imagination, which yearned for peace in this chaotic world,” she wrote.
Peering outside her bedroom window, she found inspiration in a maple tree. It has graced their backyard with blossoms in autumn and the rustling of leaves in the spring. Without the shrubs and bushes, the tree was the closest she had come to nature.
Sleepless Maple was her first picture story book, published in 2022. “I was eager to teach young readers about nature and some values to help them build a strong character and a better future for our world,” she says. There’s also a clear message about the dangers of deforestation, as illustrated in the book by the tree’s own fear of being cut down. Without trees, the habitat of animals and birds is destroyed.
The maple tree in Roselle’s backyard is the inspiration behind her first book, ‘Sleepless Maple.” (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
Eager and excited to see her story in a picture book, the self-taught artist learned digital illustration during her recovery. Her three children pitched in to buy her an iPad for her 50th birthday. It transported her to a world of dreams and imagination.
Growing up in the slums of Iloilo City where she swam in flooded streets during a heavy rain, writing Sleepless Maple was also a reminder of how trees protect soil from erosion and reduce flash flooding caused by climate change. Her family’s home was in a poor neighborhood that was the most flood-prone land in the city.
Ocean Conservation
The Fisherman’s Boy, published this year, is a book that shows how human behavior, like dynamite fishing, overfishing and pollution, endanger sea life and the livelihood of fishermen. Subtitled “A dreamy tale about ocean conservation,” Roselle’s story encourages young readers to learn more about the ocean and sea animals by visiting libraries and aquariums, and doing simple things like recycling to help decrease the amount of garbage that could end up in the ocean. The book’s message echoes what Robin Wall Kimmerer, a plant ecologist, wrote: “We have betrayed the millions of other species with whom we share this leafy paradise with an extractive culture that threatens their inherent right to be.”
Among Roselle’s seven picture books, which she wrote and illustrated, is “The Fisherman’s Boy,” published this year. (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
“This book is special to me because I was raised by three men who were sea merchants,” she says. “Aside from this personal story, this book is my contribution to ocean conservation.”
Roselle’s published works, including story telling videos on YouTube, can be found in https://naturepoetryandstories.com/ and are available at Amazon.
A place of pain and healing
Born to a poor family in Iloilo City, Roselle went to high school in Pampanga, where she lived with relatives. After earning a Nursing degree from Mary Chiles College in Manila, she worked as a waitress in a hotel for three years while on a job search as an RN. Married at 23, her salary was not enough to raise a growing family of three kids.
A 2011 summer outing with her three kids, from left William Hawke, Faith and Lancelot King. (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
In 2002, she was hired by an American Nurse Travel Agency in Jacksonville, Florida. With an immigrant visa, she was able to petition her family a year later. They joined her in Baltimore, Maryland., where she worked at a medical center. She is currently Staff/Charge RN at the Johns Hopkins Howard County Health Care & Surgery Center.
She recently joined the Philippine Nurses Association of Metropolitan DC (PNAMDC), serving as co-editor of its newsletter. In 2010, she was honored with a “Service Excellence Employee of the Year” award by the Howard County General Hospital.
“I love nursing,” Roselle says. “I consider it a vocation and a calling.” Having been through childhood trauma and health challenges as an adult, she says she now has greater empathy for those with similar struggles. Her lifetime commitment to Sining Pangkalikasan Cooperative, she asserts, comes from her own place of pain. Like the ocean, which holds the secret to her father’s death 45 years ago. She hopes to find answers someday.
Roselle, left, at a 1992 Lamp Lighting and Pinning Ceremony in nursing school. (Photo courtesy of Salvacion ‘Roselle’ Reyes)
To sustain this project means writing more stories and publishing more books. About the ocean as a place of healing. About the fishermen of Siargao who depend on the sea for their livelihood. About the endangered animals under the sea who also have the right to live. Professor and writer Maya Soetoro-Ng says storytelling is fundamental in encouraging children to “imagine a better world and begin to make it real.”
Roselle hopes her stories will “inspire others to find light when they find themselves lost in the dark,” and “illuminate others with their additional spark.”
A journalist and activist, Jon Melegrito lives in Kensington, Maryland with Elvie, his wife of 53 years. An avid gardener, he volunteers for Meals on Wheels and serves as Executive Secretary of the Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project (FilVetREP).
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