The first Christmas - 1950 - George Waterhouse Hayward

I Remember Five Christmases

Tomorrow Christmas Eve I am invited for dinner at my younger daughter Hilary’s Burnaby home. Her older sister Alexandra (who lives in Lillooet) will be there as will Hilary’s daughters Lauren (21) and Rebecca (26) with their respective boyfriends. Of course my son-in-law Bruce and his mother Marjory will be in attendance.

With my loss of  Rosemary before 2020 Christmas, I hardly know how to celebrate without her. We shared everything. I was not looking forward to driving to Burnaby even though Bruce is a good cook and Hilary will have lots of baking to offer us.

I did not sleep much last night as I began to cook up an idea that now is making me look forward to Nochebuena (Christmas Eve in Spanish) tomorrow. This blog is thus a practice run on my “Show & Tell – I Remember Five Christmases”

Christmas for me begins at the first Christmas I remember. It was in Buenos Aires in 1950. Because Christmas falls in the middle of an Argentine summer, I recall that is was very hot on the Christmas Eve evening when we went to Misa de Gallo (Midnight Mass). My mother who had connections with the American Embassy had produced a can of fake Noma snow and told me to spray our tree.

The little church was around the corner from our house. I cannot forget that when they passed the collection tray, my father who was an alcoholic and probably quite drunk, placed some mints (I even remember the brand name, Volpi) in the tray and I was terribly embarrassed.

We went home and under the tree my gift was a beautiful red Schuco Maserati racer like the one Juan Manuel Fangio drove. It had suspension and steering. It had a windup motor. Within minutes I was crying as I had lost the windup key. My father, by now sober, told me, “Alexander, Santa Claus had a suspicion you would lose the key so he gave me an extra one. Here it is.”

By the next year my father voluntarily left our home to live in a pension. This he did. My mother, grandmother and I left for Mexico City in 1953 without telling him we were gone. This would bother me for many years.

The next Christmas, this one a memorable one, happened a few weeks before Christmas 1965. I was doing my obligatory military service in the Argentine Navy and I was given a week of leave before Christmas. I was madly in love with a Jewish girl called Susy Bornstein. I could not understand how any beautiful woman could possibly fall for a nerd like me, and especially with my navy crewcut. She took me to the Ezeiza airport. We were both shocked to see my Braniff Boeing 707 which was painted in bright colours. I did not know then that the design was by Alexander Calder. 

Susy Bornstein - Buenos Aires - 1965

Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Hayward

 I distinctly felt uncomfortable as I had a few cold sores on my lips. This did not prevent Susy from giving me on of the longest and finest kisses in my memory.

My mother had managed to find money to pay for my round-trip ticket to Mexico City and from there by bus to Veracruz.

This specific Christmas is one that left me in shock for many years. My mother told me, “Alex because I am a mother I have to love my son and I love you. But I have never liked you. Something in Argentina has made you change and I beginning to like you."

I do believe I may have told my mother that when I had first arrived to Buenos Aires I had been able to locate my father. We had pleasant weekends chatting until he died of a heart attack sometime in October.

 The third Christmas was a melancholy one. After my military service, an admiral  (Almirante Garzoni) had felt sorry for me and he had found me passage as the only passenger on a an Argentine Merchant Marine (ELMA) Victory Ship called Río Aguapey.

Río Aguapey

I boarded it November 1966 and I found myself on a slow boat, that stopped in every Brazilian port. For fun I decided to photograph every sunset (that cured me for life as I  have never been tempted since.) and I discovered Oswald Spengler as my reading material.

We arrived in New Orleans on Christmas Eve. I went into town, and in my complete ignorance on the subject, I decided to see burlesque in a bar on Bourbon Street. This was a complete letdown. I ordered a bourbon (I gagged drinking it) and watched a bored woman turn on some tunes on a jukebox and she danced with no visible emotion. She did not impress me and I left.

I went to the ship, where we had a complete Christmas dinner, that included all kinds of Argentine beef. We drank pre-dinner drinks, had wine during the meal and we finished with desserts and more drinks.

My mother called to the ship’s phone. Nobody answered. We were all drunk. On a much lighter note I must point out that many years later I found out that my Río Aguapey had been built at the Burrard Shipyards in North Vancouver.

The fourth Christmas is the best I ever had. Sometime in the end of November 1967, I was teaching English in American companies in Mexico City. One afternoon, as I was leaving the school to go to teach at Colgate Palmolive, I spotted a woman in front of me who was also leaving. I saw her (from the back). She had long, straight blond hair; she was wearing a very short, dark blue mini skirt and had legs that rivalled my mother’s. To this day I cannot remember how I approached Rosemary Elizabeth Healey (from New Dublin, Ontario).

On February 8 of the next year, 1968 we were married in the fashionable Coyocán neighbourhood by a judge.

When Christmas approached I told Rosemary I wanted to show her off to my mother in Veracruz. 

Mocambo - Veracruz - Christmas 1967

I have no recollection if I placed my Pentacon-F on a tripod and used its self-timer or if my mother snapped the photograph of us at the Mocambo Beach.

The Fifth Christmas will be tomorrow. Part of my show and tell will be that I will bring my pot of Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ to show my family how in her own special way Rosemary will be present. 

I will also point out that since my fingers have grown smaller I am again wearing my wedding ring made with a band of fired blue enamel.