August 31, 1942 - August 31, 2013
Saturday, August 31, 2013
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| Aunt Inez & George Alexander, 1942 |
Twelve months before my first birthday, I
was present for an occasion for which I had no choice. I have no memory of it. My
mother says I took a long time and that she had a painful delivery. It also
seems that she had to try very hard for a few years before I came along.
From my album I have found what seems to be
my earliest picture. I am being held by my father’s oldest sister, Aunt Inez. She
had divorced her first husband, Ralph Barber and married a man from Mendoza called Alejandro Ariosa.
In those strange circumstances that devout Roman
Catholicism brings to such events as births, my Aunt Inez who wanted to be my godmother, could not because she was divorced. So it lay on her daughter Inesita, 19, a
Catholic free of all legal sin to be my godmother. While Inez could not hold me
in the baptismal font, her husband Alejandro did (he was not divorced) and that
is why my middle name is Alejandro.
Shortly after my birth my surrogate
godmother, Inez gave me a Mappin and Webb birth spoon and a very large sterling
silver medal with St. Rose of Lima
on the front and on the back it says George Alexander, August 31, 1942.
Alas today I looked everywhere for that
medal but I did not find it. Until I was 8 or 9 that medal hung in a hook over
my bed.
I grieve at its temporary loss but on
second thought, once dead, if anybody found the medal in my belongings it would
be devoid of any significance to them.
Of late, depressed as I usually get around
my birthday (I miss al those of my past who are now all dead), I have been
thinking that as one nears death, one’s belongings should be given away or
thrown away. I believe that death and memory go hand in hand. That medal brings
to me instantly the voice, a mezzo voice of my Aunt Inez and the smell of the
rain coming down on or near my birthday, that ever so famous Tormenta de Santa Rosa.
The second picture here, of a very young me, is one that comes with absolutely no memory attached. On its back there is the seal of the photographer called Muska whose address is Bartolomé Mitre 1970.
The second picture here, of a very young me, is one that comes with absolutely no memory attached. On its back there is the seal of the photographer called Muska whose address is Bartolomé Mitre 1970.
The third picture in that odd deck chair is
dated simply in white ink by my mother, Buenos
Aires, 1943. Who could have guessed that the anonymous
photographer used Dupont film?
The fourth photograph dated August 1944 is
significant in that I remember vividly the gate and the yellow colour of the
tiles of the sidewalk in the Buenos
Aires suburb of Martínez. It would seem that the first
signs of self-awareness where latent.
It wasn’t until around 1948 when I was 6
that I went into my mother’s armoire to purloin candy corn that she had
obtained from the American Embassy. She would hand me a few at a time every
day. I wanted more. I opened the armoire and helped myself to the whole cellophane
bag. The armoire had a full-length mirror on the inside of the door. I stopped
to stare at myself. I remember as if were today that I looked and thought, “That
is me. I am me. I am me and nobody else.” Consciousness was not latent on that
day. I was now fully functional, for better or for worse.
