My Birth, Resumed
In which Teófilo returns to the day he was born, in the place he was born, and talks about the immediate and remote convergences, and circumstances surrounding the blessed event.
Let’s return to that late, winter day when I was born. For the record: like billions of human beings before me - except for one - and after me, I was conceived in the normal manner and born in the ordinary way. I was born just before dawn at the brand-new Ponce District Hospital, then located in the northeastern outskirts of town surrounded by sugarcane fields. It was a public hospital.
Mother told me she took a taxi home from the hospital, accompanied by her sister-in-law, whom I came to know as Titi (Auntie) Annie, married to my Tío (Uncle) Pedro known as “Pin”, mom’s brother. Titi Annie once told me before she passed that she carried me on her lap.
The new house the taxi driver took Mother was (and remains) located in one of the just-built suburbs then sprouting all over Ponce, in which all the homes were built of cinderblocks, with Miami-style windows, and flat roofs that could’ve seem like a vast cemetery to an unwary visitor of that time. The family had just moved from an older city ward into the new home.
These homes were built in about 4 different basic models and then the owners were left to customize them to their taste. I remember the original back door opened to the backyard, with the sink located outside by the propane gas tanks intakes. The garage (“marquesina”) opened straight to the backyard. There was no fencing, no ornamental irons and only three bedrooms, and one bathroom; a small living room and a kitchen with a gas-stove and a standard refrigerator. All that was to change later but at that time, the house I’ve just described is the house that welcomed me the day after I was born.
In the house lived my grandfather, Don Pedro; Mamá Ana his wife; my Titi Gloria, and Mother. Completing the picture of salaried-class domesticity was a black cocker spaniel dog with the too obvious name, “Blackie,” maybe the first word in English I’d ever learned.
Missing from the picture was Dad, for you see, I was born out of wedlock, and Mom was a single mother unable to establish a household of her own with me. This circumstance would mark the rest of my life but the happy baby I was didn’t care. Besides, my grandparents loved and doted on me, as well as my aunt. I will get more into this story on my next installment, when I talk about my parents.