Lauren & Casi-Casi Met Up
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
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| Casi-Casi & Lauren - 2011 |
I picked up
Lauren at the end of her Arts Umbrella Dance class today. She is 15. She has a
sister 20, a father Bruce and her mother Hilary. Today she did not object to my
question ("Who is the most efficient member of the Stewarts?") and immediately raised her hand accepting my opinion that she is the
most efficient (perhaps the only one) of her family.
I watched
Casi-Casi go up our stairs. He does it gingerly. I believe that like his two
masters, Rosemary and yours truly, he must suffer from arthritis. Casi-Casi
is 12 years old.
The picture
you see here I took around October 14, 2011. Looking at it made me think on how
we go back and forth interacting (as in passing by or passing through) with
people (and animals) and never give it a thought. Would either of them know or remember this?
I may have
been 7 or 8 and my mother organized my birthday party on an August 31st
in our Melián 2770. People came, a piñata was broken, a tail was put on a
donkey and a cake was eaten (I passed on that as I have always disliked
birthday cakes, even others’). And yet of one of those parties there is an
image that is seared in my memory.
Our house
had a very long but narrow garden. A tiled path was on one side from the gate
at the street to where it went on to form an L when It hit the outside wall of
our bathroom which was next to our kitchen.
I remember
seeing this beautiful young woman greet me at that bend. She was Inesita O’Reilly my first cousin
and godmother. She was I know
now 19 years older than I was. We had met 19 years before (of this meeting I have no
recollection!) when she was present at my baptism.
Of the
second meeting I remember nothing except for that L-shaped incident.
For many
years after, beginning around 1965, Inesita was one of my most loved woman in
my life. She died this year.
Thinking
about it has made me attempt to recollect all those inateractions between us that
may have included a kiss, a hug, a chat, a laugh or sharing a pizza on Avenida Cabildo.
I have no
idea if Casi-Casi is able to delve into this process of transfer. I think that
in this picture the cat was at his young peak while Lauren was a child about to
grow up.
Today as we
were eating our breaded chicken breasts Lauren felt something at her feet. She
said, “Well, hello Casi. How are you?”
I wonder
which memory transfers are being seared in her memory?
