Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Hayward  & George Waterhouse Hayward

My mother fell in love with a Manila doctor in the early 30s. In 1938 she threw a ring he had given to her into Manila Bay. Then she, her mother, sister and brother moved to Mexico City.

In my desk I have yellowish envelope addressed to my mother by her doctor (Ramón Andía). It is opened as my mother read it. I never have as I know its contents. Dr. Andía was gay.

Until my mother died in 1972 she wrote many poems to him and sent letters to him until he died. 

Of my father George Waterhouse Hayward, my mother told me that he was her second best. I was born August 31, 1942 but my official Argentine birth certificate says my birth was April 18, 1943. My mother told me that my father forgot to register me at the hospital. I have come to believe that is untrue as all births are duly recorded in Argentine hospitals. In my case it was the Hospital Anchorena. I believe that the real truth is that my mother was unmarried and pregnant (count the months). Since my father was divorced they had to go Uruguay to get married as divorce was verboten in Argentina.  Whenever we crossed borders my mother had in her documents that she was Filomena de Irureta Goyena and she would warn me in advance about my "correct" birthday.

In 1950 my father left our Coghlan home voluntarily as he was a terrible alcoholic. He went to live at a pension. On weekends he would come to take me to see Westerns and war movies. In 1953 when my famil moved to Mexico City they had to get a lawyer to arrange my leaving with them as it was then necessary to get a father’s permission to exit the country.  I believe my father never found out what had happened to us.

I returned to Buenos Aires in 1965 with two missions. One was to do my compulsory military service, in my case in the Argentine Navy, and the other to find my father. I did.

We would meet on weekends for chats until one day I got a call to the fact that he had died. He had enough money in his pocket, passed to me by an honest police sargeant. He told me that he had been saving up money by working at a laundry so he could bribe an army general to send me back immediately to Mexico to my mother who was living in Veracruz, Mexico.

When my mother died I had her lovely poems Things & Thoughts, bound by a Frenchman in Mexico City. While I had read the poems many times I never noticed one in particular.

Yesterday I found the old Mexican notebook that has her poems also in her lovely handwriting. When I spotted The Pearl Gray Tie I read that she talked of a man and I quote: “I found a blue that matched your eyes”. Doctor Andía did not have blue eyes. This is obviously a poem dedicated to my father.

My mother wrote the poem in November, 1956, when she was teaching school for American Smelting & Refining Company in the northern town of Nueva Rosita, Coahuila. 

The discovery of the poem has made me smile, but at the same time I am melancholic that it took this long for me to recognize its content. My mother often told me, proudly, how when she and my father danced the tango in dance halls in Leandro N. Alem in Buenos Aires, people would stop to stare at how well they danced.  “One day you will dance as well as your father.” I managed to learn some years ago here in Vancouver but all I can say is that I danced efficiently. My father like my mother was a wonderful swimmer. I am a terrible one.

At the very least I did inherit some of my father’s Englishness and his ability to write. He was a journalist. I am also a very good cook. My father told me, "Alexander if you ever are going to cook you first have to learn to make saucess."