Entry #4
La tarjeta de navidad de mi padre. My father's Christmas card - Sharing childhood memories of his first Christmas in Guernica, after the town was completely bombed. So moving! I promise to translate it to English soon.
Mis queridos chavales: Begotxu, Caterina y Bob,
Ya se sienten los aromas navideños y recuerdo que los turrones me parecían lo mas exquisito que había. Nuestra primera navidad en Guernica después del bombardeo la recuerdo inmensamente. Recién pasado el bombardeo, llegamos a vivir en los escombros del chalet del Conde de Arispe en unas ruinas que quedaron debajo de esos escombros. Recuerdo que mucha gente del pueblo llegaron a visitarnos, y nos traían canastas con comida, ropa y hasta dinero con un cariño que no habíamos conocido en toda la guerra. Fue impresionante como llegaban con sonrisa cariñosa y nos acariciaban llenos de asombro al ver ese cuadro tan desgarrador.
Yo pienso que las gentes eran mas humanas en ese entonces, y tenían un corazón noble y generoso. Los tiempos que vivimos eran muy difíciles y las personas se compadecían mas de esos horrores.
Nosotros somos bendecidos del todo poderoso y esta navidad debemos hacernos el propósito de tener un gesto generoso con algún desdichado harapiento que transita sin brújula ni dirección que lo cobije. Perdonar si parezco algo pesado pero estoy aguantando mis lagrimas al recordar tantas tragedias de la vida, y cada día vamos peor.
Nosotros os recordamos con gran cariño y deseamos tengáis un año amoroso repleto de salud y aventura, y que siempre sigáis siendo tan extraordinarios como siempre. Que sea este el año de las sonrisas y del crecimiento espiritual y de las relaciones generosas con toda la orbe.
Feliz Navidad, venturoso 2011 y que la vida os siga sonriendo y llenandonos de nobleza y amor. Zorionak, Jesus, with love for ever.
Entry #3
Gernika, Euskadi, España 1965
Before leaving the house, mom or my tia Maite would call us to the kitchen for some hot chocolate and cookies, as they’d be preparing the baguettes that were being filled with either butter and chocolate, chorizo or tortilla de patata for us kids to take to school. Walking out the building and onto the street was an event. We always met up with the donkey carriage parked out in front of our door step as a heavy set woman yelled at the top of her lungs the arrival of fresh warm bread, eggs, and milk. By the way, the most delicious bread I’ve ever tasted, and ever will. The neighborhood women ran out their door to clamor around the carriage, waving peseta bills, and demanding their usual. Except for my mother and aunt who wouldn’t leave the house without first being perfectly made up, in slippers and house dresses the other women stood waiting their turn, gossiping and holding empty glass milk bottles, egg baskets, and cloth bags for filling up with the long crispy baguettes. I and my two older cousins Carlos, and Begoña, headed for the convent, north eastbound on Esteban de Zabala numero doce primero izquierda, leaving the crowd behind us and collecting along the way neighborhood school mates. A dirt yellowish steep uphill road was every day’s morning journey, remembered as an exhilarating hike that exerted every ounce of my being. The monumental incline forced it all out of me as I suffered with glee my childhood pangs of those untimely arduous excursions.
This childhood memory was enduring and powerful until the day when I returned to Gernika, at age eleven and saw that what I had maintained as being an overwhelming climb revealed itself as barely a slanted upward stroll to the convent near Lumo.
That impression in itself now prevails, helping me better understand the degree to which a child responds to the world in relation to us grown-ups, except for the taste of those oven baked baguettes, still the best in the world.
Hollywood, 1969
Entry #2
“I can’t remember that far back mom. The photographs I see of me when little confuse my imagination,” Caterina explains. “Do you remember your earliest sad moment?” I ask her. “Just blurt out the first image that comes to mind.” She blurts out, “I think it’s when Yaya Pepita died,” her face saddens. “I remember we were in New York, and Dad called us from Barcelona, we held each other tight and cried. It was a strong feeling that lasted forever because I can still see your eyes confused and teary eyed, but I can’t remember anything more.” Cat makes me realize that what lingers on is the emotional experience, and the image is just something that connects us to that emotion. “Was I four or five years old?” Cat wants to know. “No Cat, you were already seven when that happened.” She stays quiet in thought. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t seen so many photographs so I could have a better memory of my past,” she reflects. I wonder if there isn’t some truth to her statement, as I recall the Shaman’s belief that a picture steals the soul of the person or that a snapshot captures the subject’s energy, their state of being, their information, their DNA. Sometimes it’s a tool for good use, and other times for harm. A psychic can look at a photograph in an intuitive reading to discern a crime, and unravel a mystery, while a vodoo practitioner can manipulate an image to distroy someone’s wellbeing. I’m not certain how potent any of that can be in the face of a person who consciously walks in step with truth. I also believe that prayer is a real force, and helps to develop inside us a detector to shield us against harm and evil. Growing up our nightly ritual was to kneel and pray with my mother and siblings, holding hands and reciting an Our Father and a Hail Mary. Across the street from First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, on Gower and Carlos, one night after our prayer practice, already in bed when I hear my father making noise, I come out to discover that he is packing his suitcase. I can still see the huge suitcase standing on the same spot where we had just been kneeling. I run to my mother who lays immobilized in bed pretending to be asleep, but of course wide awake. I tell her with heightened urgency, and she wispers back, filled with fear and shame, “go and speak to your daddy and ask him to stay.” I run back out, confused, staring at the suitcase, and his pain, “daddy, please don’t leave us.” I remember begging him and crying. Dad was very gentle, and nice about it, “I have to leave.” He lifted me in his arms and I wrapped my grip around his neck, hard. I felt devastated watching him take for the street in the middle of the black night. These images are preserved as mental photographs; the green color of the rug, the cream shaded drapes, the grid heater on the floor, the door opening and closing to the sounds of the crickets.
I’m always impressed when I speak to my daughter, though young and innocent she always, always, always makes so much sense to me. Yes, a photograph does disturb one’s organic image of an experience and weakens the muscle of recall, but a moment of consequence where emotions receive a shock, remain forever inprinted in our mind’s personal iPhoto.
Entry #1
Bogotá, Colombia 1963
My earliest living memory is of this little girl, two years old, standing up high on top a large working table, being held by the hands of two old men, maybe they were young, but in my eyes they seemed old, as one of them proposed his love for me and desire to marry me one day when I grew up. “When you grow up, you and I will marry and you will be my wife.” He pronounced as he looked into my eyes. These men were bakers who worked for my father at his “Pasterleria Guernica” on Carrera decima, numero 21-58 in Bogotá, Colombia. I remember clearly the sweet aroma of vanilla, and cinammon upon entering La Guernica. Just to the right upon entering, was a large display with all sorts of delicious, beautiful looking pastries. More often than not, passing by these delicacies, I’d sneak behind the counter and poke my finger into one of the Eclairs, or Brazo de Gitanos to scoop out the yummy creamy filling bursting inside. In the back room where my father and his assistants massaged the dough into delectable creations, stood these ominous like sculpture pieces of metal mixing bowls sitting on bases of industrious machines. Glances of puffy breads and naked cakes emerged from inside ovens that continously opened and closed, ready for their decorating dress up phase. On the floor stacked high were bags bigger than myself, filled with flour and sugar. The two men must have proped me up onto that table, holding me hostage for their own entertainment, and fantasies of later years. “You came out looking like a little monkey when you were born, I was in shock how ugly you were at birth,” my father sometimes reminded me. “You became beautiful later on, but at first you embarrassed me you were so hairy and ugly.” My father didn’t mean any harm in saying these things to me, or at least I didn’t take them mal intentioned. Maybe because by then, I felt pretty enough and secure enough to enjoy my father’s accomplice revelations. I couldn’t have been that ugly, I probably thought, if the bakery assistant wanted to marry me. Somehow that early memorable incident gave weight to my sense of self as a positive outlook insisted on taking shape. Looking back I think to myself, how dare they say such things to a little girl. What could marriage possibly signify to a merely two year-old? What did they expect me to feel? Proud? Happy? Loved? I recall feeling a kind of unspecific fear, confussion, and loss. Their niceties while holding me up high on a table, without my father or mother nearby was the begining of men's suspicious overtures.
