Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Waterhouse-Hayward & Rosa 'Benjamin Britten' scanned 5 May 2026

With most of my friends, family and people I worked with (here in Vancouver) mostly all dead, their faces crop up in my memory randomly.

It was a few weeks ago that it dawned on me that I had many framed portraits of my family but only one, a little on of my mother where she is with my Rosemary and baby Alexandra in Veracruz. I remember driving with Rosemary and Alexandra in our VW to Veracruz so my mother would see how the newborn had grown. On the way I took a curve much too quickly and we turned over. Rosemary and I survived it well because we had installed some new-fangled shoulder seat belts. Alexandra was inside a wicker basket that had a hood so she was fine, too. A couple stopped and the man offered to drive our Beetle (it was drive-able once we had its wheels on the ground to Veracruz and his wife took us in her car.

Veracruz - 1969

I decided to set the record straight. Alexandra (we call her Ale, pronounced ahleh) recently gave me a lovely antique frame. I printed a picture of my mother to fit and carefully cut it to fit the oval frame.

It is difficult for me to explain the difference in seeing a framed picture on a wall as compared to scanning the portrait of my mother. While it was taken for some school annual when I enlarge it in my monitor there is a form of intimacy that happens.

Because my father was of English heritage (his father had been born in Manchester) I was often told of it. My mother and father took me to the Teatro Colón sometime around 1949 where I first heard Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op. 34.

When I spotted a yet unopened English Rose, Rosa ‘Benjamin Britten’ and noticed how lovely it looked I decided to combine it with my newly framed photograph of my mother.

And as I have often repeated in these parts, in the Veracruz photo I can imagine (as they are not well seen) how both my mother and Rosemary had beautiful legs.

I inherited my mother’s. 

P.S. I was one of the few who knew my mother's second name Cristeta. She hated it. I regret that I was never curious enough to know who gave it to her.