The Return Home and a Star is Born
In which Teófilo speaks about the day his beloved little brother was born, and a few other lights from the end of 1973 to early 1974.
In the months we moved to la casita I started my third grade in la Academia. My homeroom teacher’s name was Mrs. Pérez. I don’t remember her first name. The only remarkable thing I recall of the entire school year is that I was to receive the Lord in the Holy Eucharist. My First Holy Communion! I imagine our catechization proceeded apace. But my First Communion was to take place in the spring of 1974. Before that happened my little brother – whom I’ll name “H” – came into the world in January.
We’d spent the 1973 Christmas holidays at la casita. I believe it was then I received my first microscope. According to Titi Gloria, she visited us twice at the shack. She came to urge mother to return home. We must’ve returned early in January 1974 as H was born in mid-January and we were already back home. Thus, without much fanfare, we went back home. Mom’s first and last foray into independence self-sufficiency had come to an end.
I’m sure I felt relieved, as if a 500 lbs. gorilla had lifted off from me. But I wasn’t the same after the experience though the outside of me showed little to the world. Maybe I took on a happier mien, but I can’t remember if I did or not.
I did note too that all the trinkets that belonged to Esperanza had disappeared from the house. Mom said that Titi Gloria had caught on to the “conspiracy” and put an end to it. This is the only positive thing I’ve ever heard Mom to say about Titi Gloria.
Thus, one day Mom went to the hospital to give birth returning with a very red-looking baby. She was accompanied by H’s Dad. Despite many ups-and-downs in their relationship, H’s Dad would always be present in H’s life, in one form or another. Mom allowed me to cuddle him and placed him on my lap. We bonded.
A star had been born.
Thence I began to share in his care. I would help bathe him, change his diapers, dress him, lay him down to sleep, feed him, etc. I was not a brother as much as a caregiver. I was 8 and though I did all these things with great reluctance, I did them all. I started to loom over this little guy as his primary protector. So much so that, when I became a father myself, much later, I would call my firstborn son after H. It took me a while to shift-change to the new baby in my life. That’s how deep a mark helping raise H left upon me.
Of H I must say this: he was – and remains – very good looking. Right from central casting one would say. He was fair-skinned and had light brown, straight hair that cascaded upon his forehead in bangs. He was and remains vivacious, outgoing, extroverted, lippy, and funny. As a kid he was all the things I wasn’t. In many ways he still is.
Lucky for H, Mom was never as physically abusive to him as she was with me. Not that she learned to stop her abuse of me by extending her no-harm attitude from H towards me. At least H had that going for him in his early life.
I regret I wasn’t H’s best friend through life. To this day he has better friends than me and our relationship remains distant, though very cordial. Helping to raise him distorted our connection as brothers. Now, I don’t regret having to take the role as circumstances demanded I did. The outcome in terms of distance, then, was inevitable. I was to set out in my life when he was still a child.
We did many things together. Other times he would drive me nuts. All those things we did and suffer together deserve their own book for storytelling.
Today, H is a Command Sergeant Major in the US Army, the highest enlisted rank in any service. He has completed undergraduate and graduate studies of his own. He’s approaching retirement after more than 30 years of military service. He was also a sheriff deputy in northern Alabama once. He saw himself as a “Bubba-Rican.” He’s a father of two and a grandfather of a little girl that resembles him so much. A veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s a highly decorated war hero and survivor of many a close call to his life. He’s my personal hero. I am proud of him beyond measure.
His story, and how he got there, is for him to tell, not me. But if there’s something I want him to know and remember at all times is that I love him very, very much.