Sunday, June 18, 2000

Musician inspires children

Once a week, Marie De Los Santos welcomes a handful of children into her home, where she encourages them to experiment with her living room sound system, take up a musical instrument and command the mike with their vocals.
   It is the start of a lifelong dream to turn a painful past into a positive life mission.
   As a child, De Los Santos coped with an absent father and an alcoholic mother the only way she knew how, by lying.
   "I felt like a homeless child," says the 40-year-old nurses' assistant at Driscoll Children's Hospital Intensive Care Unit. "All the kids I knew had things in common and I felt very different. In order to hang around with them, I had to make up stories to cover up."
   But after the state took custody of her at age 12 and she came under the care of a loving foster family, De Los Santos eventually found her way out of a stranglehold of emotions that had kept her down for so long.
  
   For the children
   Today, De Los Santos is also a solo performer, known as Simplemente Mari, and a member of a fledgling group called Trío Pasion. Through music, De Los Santos has found a way to communicate with and inspire children. To that end, she hopes to one day convert her garage into a music studio for children.
   "I want kids to know that they can become whatever they want, if they just work at it," De Los Santos said.
   While the children who come to her home aren't foster-care children, thoughts of children who are, or children living in dysfunctional families and on the brink of being removed from their homes, are never far from her thoughts. Which is why two years ago she composed a song with these children in mind.
   "It's a song that came to me during sleep one night," said De Los Santos of the piece that she would eventually title "Aquí Estoy (Here I Am)."
  
   Inspirational dream
   "In my dream, I was walking along the beach singing this song. I knew then and there that this was the creation of a song and that the song told the story of my life."
   "Aquí Estoy" relates the power of positive thinking, which De Los Santos belts out during her engagements as Simplemente Mari for the benefit of any child sitting in the audience who may be secretly living the nightmare she once experienced.
   That sense of mission, says De Los Santos, is what has emboldened her to disclose details of her past, in poetry and in song, in order to help children drowning in their own family difficulties.
   That strength of purpose is not lost on her husband or their 16-year-old daughter. Neither is it lost on such co-workers as Ruby Peña, a registered respiratory therapist at Driscoll.
   "She is the perfect example of someone really courageous," Peña said. "Her will got her through past difficulties and now this is her way of giving other kids a chance.
   "She's very inspirational in that she keeps on giving and keeps on living."
  
 

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