I arrived from my one week in Mexico City on Thursday 19th minus my suitcase. I was in limbo until Sunday when it was delivered. Since then I have been spending lots of time with my cats Niño and Niña.
I have avoided reading in my NY Times hard copy anything about the present wars or about Trump and most of American or Argentine politics.
I have been going back to my memories with the awful realization that most of the people in them are dead. There is one memory that haunts me. In 1957 the film Raintree County with Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint and Montgomery Clift was introduced. Late in that year my mother took me to Austin, Texas to the St. Edward’s High School where I would be a boarder for 4 years. When she left to return to Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, this 16 year old boy cried.
But there was one sunny day on Congress Avenue that I have always seen with a smile in my imagination. My mother took me to the Varsity Theatre, on Congress Avenue, to see Raintree County.
Yes, Elizabeth Taylor was beautiful. But my eyes were all with the blonde Eva Marie Saint. In my pantheon of women I fell for, she was only second to Grace Kelly.
How was I to know that in 1967 I would spot a blonde woman, with long straight hair, in a mini skirt, showing the most sensational legs I had ever seen? And better still, a month and a half later, we were married in Coyoacán, in Mexico City.
It is this memory that keeps me sane as I navigate my life three years after having been married to that blonde for 52 years, who died 9 December 2020.
I am not superstitious nor do I believe in fate. And yet, Raintree County and my mother (who Rosemary and I watched die in 1972) somehow all became a neat combination of events that will be with me until I meet my oblivion.
Rosemary and I had two daughters, Alexandra and Hilary. I am happy to report that Hilary is a sensational blonde (the other one while not blonde is sensational, too).
