A Happy Life, Part 1: We're Moving to the United States: Los Angeles

Change of plans

 

My mother had a friend who was kind of a wild girl.  She had five kids and was constantly separating from her husband; they were both pretty wacked!  Sometime before December, my mother told my sisters and I that she had a major announcement:  what did we think about going to the United States.  Us [yes, intentional] said:  “YES!!!”  Again we had no clue what moving to the US meant but that didn’t matter; we wanted to move because… no idea. 

        Mom told us that she and her friend, whom we called Aunt Gina [we called all of Mom’s friends Aunt] had decided to come to the United States to seek a new life.  Aunt Gina was not going to take her kids.  Not surprisingly, Aunt Gina abandoned Mom and us [she was sharing expenses with Mom] not more than two months after we arrived in Los Angeles.  She shacked up with some guy: goodbye to Mom and her litter [us].

            

        So, no more new home in Alcantara; we were going to Los Angeles, California, EEUU [the Spanish abbreviation for United States]. The trip was scheduled for January as I would be out of school by then.  I was in the third grade.

        

        Mom auctioned all of her family heirlooms, furniture, expensive stuff and managed to raise enough money for our new journey and support; though she cried over giving up all of her treasured possessions, like my grandmother’s ruby cross, Mom’s blue opal ring, and her treasured Ming vases.

       

        I was 8-years old when it was time to leave Chile.  I got a little sad when I thought about leaving my friends, but the excitement of the move and that I was going to get to fly had an energy all of its own.  

 

The trip   

 

On a late afternoon in January, we took off from Santiago, Chile on an Aereolinas Peruanas (Peruvian Airlines) DC-6, a four-engine propeller aircraft. Our destination was Mexico City.  After about an hour,  it became dark, and as I couldn’t see anything out of the window—we were flying over the ocean along the coast of Chile—I asked my mother if we were there already.  No, not yet, only about 18 hours more to go.

After landing and taking off from just about every capital city in the west coast of South and Central America, we finally arrived in Mexico City.  We were to spend the night in Mexico City as we were scheduled to fly via Western Airlines to Los Angeles the following evening.

        

        We had been warned not to drink the local water, and us kids just drank bottled mineral water.  I don’t know how or why, but Mom drank some local tap water (probably trying to save the bottles of mineral water for us) and almost died of dysentery. She had a horrible attack of colitis when we got Mexico City International Airport; and it was flowing from both ends.  The doctor at the Airport clinic kept giving her shots of some medicine or other trying to control her diarrhea and nausea. She was at the airport clinic most of the day while us little kids waited in the … waiting room.  My sisters and I were pretty oblivious to her condition, and just prayed she would get better—in between jumping up and down while watching the airplanes land and takeoff.

            

        Finally, that afternoon the doctor, bless him wherever he is, got Mom stabilized enough and cleared her to fly.  We barely managed to make it to the Western Airlines flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles.  The airplane was completely booked and, as we had arrived late to check in, we were scattered a bit.  Mom and my sisters were on one side and I was on the other side, though not too far from them.  

LOS ANGELES

 

My mother’s eyes were shining and glowing as she looked at the night lights of Los Angeles from our plane which was in final descent to Los Angeles International Airport.  

“Do you eat turkey on St. John’s?” I asked the elderly couple sitting next to me. They looked at me without understanding. That was the only English phrase I knew. I learned it from a board game of English phrases, from England, that my Mother had bought me so I could start learning English; I practiced with it after my mother told us kids that we were going to move to the United States.

We lived in Los Angeles for two years.  Mom spoke English, French, Italian, and, of course, Spanish.  The day before I started school, Mom taught me my first real words in English:  “May I go to the bathroom?”; very useful words for a kid in the third grade.

My third-grade teacher, Ms. Blow introduced me to the class.  I didn’t speak or understand English (other than “May I go to the bathroom”) but I still remember her saying “…far, far away.” Guess she was referring to where I came from…  When you’re a kid, you learn language fast. Within six months of arriving in the United States, I could actually speak and understand basic English. I could talk to all the kids at the school, so it was really great.  I remember how proud I was when Ms. Blow called upon me to give an answer to a problem. Of course, it helped my pride that I got the answer right. 

Mom had been a Red Cross volunteer nurse in Chile.  She assisted with handling the injured in the various earthquakes and tidal waves that Chile experiences.  She promptly got a job at Los Angeles General Hospital as an orderly. Then she got a job as an insurance claims processor with Prudential Insurance.  She never quite fully understood the process but worked well enough there for almost two years.  Everybody loved her.   Much later in life, the reality of what the job entailed dawned on her and she told me how easy it really was.  She hated higher mathematics especially common logarithms, to say nothing of natural logarithms.  

In the military, I moved at least 14 times in my almost 28 years of service; 10 of them with My Girl and our family.  In looking back, it took a lot of courage (more courage than most people I know including me) for Mom to uproot us from the life she had always known to the uncertainty of a new life, in a new country, with a different language. That she did so all by herself with three small children in tow, is a tribute to her courage and adventurous spirit. 

Mom, I salute you!

        Mom met an American man in the summer of the same year we arrived; they married shortly after. 

By:  Homeless With a Laptop, That is My Name 

       Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя

A Happy Life, Part 1: Chile, Death of my Father

 My father died when I was 7-years old. He was only 47-years old when died from complications associated with his muscular dystrophy.  It was a cold and rainy Wednesday morning in mid-August; it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere.  I had gone to school that morning as usual.  Suddenly, a priest came and told me that I had a phone call from my mother. She told me to come home as my father had died.  It was certainly not unexpected for her; and I didn’t have a clue as to what death meant.  Our next-door neighbor, the doctor, came to pick me up, and took me home.

My father died at 9:00 o’clock in the morning.  Mom told me that his last words to her were about me:  “Don’t tie him to your apron; don’t put him under your skirt.”  He had wanted to be a naval officer, as he admired the Royal Navy, and the Chilean Navy is patterned after the Royal Navy.  He was the only male of four children, and the youngest.  My grandmother prayed to Saint Gerardo (Gerard) for a son; and she would name him Gerardo.  My father’s name was Gerardo.  My grandmother loved and protected him with an all-enveloping love. When he told her that he wanted to go into the Navy, she almost died.  She basically gave him a small fortune for him not to join.  

He studied law at the University of Chile; and his theses “La Crisis de la Neutralidad” (Crisis of Neutrality) is available in hard copy at Harvard, University of Virginia and UCLA. He worked as a corporate lawyer for Armand Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum but because of his dystrophy he was not able to practice for very long.

After he died, they tied a handkerchief around my father’s head to keep his mouth closed.  My mom told me to kiss him good-bye.  I kissed him on the forehead and it was the last time I saw his face; he was smiling. The neighbors were really nice to us. They called my sisters and me over and gave us some soda and cookies—while my mother was dealing with the funeral arrangements.   Though my father’s death did not affect me much at the time as I was too young when it happened; it did affect me greatly later.

I was luckier than my sisters because I got to spend some time with him. My younger sister didn’t remember his face at all. I was not until My Girl got hold some old pictures of my father and mother and had them reprinted into glossy 8 x 10s, that my sister finally saw him; she cried.

I have an itemized list compiled by the coroner of his belongings at death: bedding, suits, ties, .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, pillow… it was sad.  

Plans.  After my father died, my mother began to look for a house to buy. One day she came home from work and told us kids that we were buying a house in a place called Alcantara, an upscale neighborhood in the Santiago Metropolitan Region.  Us kids got really excited though of course we had no idea of what this meant but it must be good because Mom told us.  We visited the home which was in the process of being built; Great! We expected to move in December—again being summertime in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

By:  Homeless With a Laptop, That is My Name 

       Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя

A Happy Life, Part 1: Chile, Tale of Two Dinners

         These two are my favorite family stories and I laugh every time I tell them; I hope you do as well.  In Chile, as my mother worked, and my father was incapacitated due to muscular dystrophy, we had two maids to help the household.  While this sounds… uppity, in Chile, at least at the time I lived there, most households employed at least one maid.  Our maids had room and board as well.

The two maids used to share the workload, one primarily doing the family shopping and cooking, and the other one doing the cleaning of the home and laundry. When I was around 6 or 7 years old, the maid that cleaned our home got sick.  Apparently, she had something wrong with her kidneys.  I remember that she was out of the house for a couple of weeks. 

The maid who cooked used to confer with my mother early in the morning over the day’s menu and get money from Mom to buy groceries.  She would then go to the market and shop accordingly.   One day, while the maid who cleaned was still out sick, my Mom, with an exquisite sense of timing, ordered kidneys and something or other for dinner.  Kidneys… Can you see the mind of a 6 or 7-year old working yet?   If not, here it goes, purely deductive reasoning from a 6 or 7-year old mind:  Our cleaning lady is out because she had kidney problems; she’s had an operation to her kidneys; she’s not been here for a while after her operation; Mom orders kidneys for dinner.  Therefore, it’s clear: the kidneys belong to the cleaning lady and there’s no way in hell that I’m going to eat them.  And to this day, I don’t eat kidneys…

Christmas dinners at our home were always special: lots of goodies and my father used to come down from the main bedroom, regardless of how bad he may have felt, and eat dinner with us.   We usually had roasts (whether beef or some game bird), plus lots of sweets, cakes, etc. In other words, they were always great, but…

One Christmas when I was 7-years old, us kids asked Mom what she was going to make for Christmas dinner.  She said it was a surprise but that we would really like it.  We were thrilled!!! A surprise!!!   Probably some great meat roast, chocolate cake and ice cream—in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s summer during Christmas, so yeah, ice cream. For about a week, we kept pestering her about what the surprise meal was.  She always answered, “It’s a surprise but you are really going to like it.” In a moment of weakness, she said it was beef… GREAT!  I could see a giant roast and, like Pavlov’s dog’ would salivate at the thought… Dog Boy!

Finally, Christmas day!!! After all the presents had been opened, Mom began preparing dinner.  Normally, the maid cooked but on special occasions Mom herself did the cooking with the maid assisting her.  This was such an occasion.  Naturally I was very curious about Mom’s surprise.  I tried to sneak into the kitchen—NO GO!  This was really going to be a surprise.  I went upstairs and tried to get my father to tell me, but he wouldn’t—he said he didn’t know.  I hung out near the kitchen door—lots of smells but… nothing like beef roast… 

Finally, it was time for dinner.  Dad came down from upstairs, we all sat down, said prayers, etc.  Time for the food… I get this plate with something grayish-white on it; it looked YUCK!

“What is it?” I asked.  

Mom: “It’s cow brains. Try it.”   

NO WAY!  It smelled… and not like roast beef for sure.  I think I may have tasted it once but didn’t eat any of it.  Cow brains for Christmas!  Love you, Mom, but really??? No thank you. 

Though I’m a meat and potatoes guy, I’ve never overcome my aversion to any kind of internal organ meats, whether kidneys, brains, liver, etc.  And even though our family comes from the Basque country in Spain where internal organ cuisine are a specialty, no internal organ meats for me.  Don’t know if the maid’s kidneys or brains for Christmas caused it, but I’m sure they didn’t help my appetite and I won’t touch any! 

By:  Homeless With a Laptop, That is My Name 

       Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя