I MET HER SOME FORTY YEARS AGO - Prof Raul Iturra
On the other hand, a bit more laid to the 50 than anything else. She was so hairy, very white and pink, but that black hair bothered me a lot. One of the nurses said to me: Do not worry, Senhor, it only means that she is healthy, well conformed and yet, only a foetus away from her mother’s body just now, after nine months of swimming into her Mum´s womb, isolated and eating a lot. She was all wrapped up into a large banquet. It was five in the morning of a Tuesday day, the 26th of June of 1968, winter, Chile, Viña del Mar, private clinic Miraflores. Her Mother and I had been on labour ever since 15 hours of the day before. At the time, you were not able to know the gender of the baby of your child until she had been born; you were only able to presume. However, I was tanner sure, which would be a lad. The pink colour had been banned from he house, and yet, the mother of the mother and her other daughter, when I was not there they knitted pinkly dresses what were hidden the moment I arrived, usually at seven in the evening.
The mother of the baby was very sweet, fat because of the liquid into her womb, although she was a thin woman when I fell for her in the town of San Filipe, on January he third of 1961. I saw her at a distance. I found her beautiful and before meeting her or having been formally introduced to each other, I fell for her: her beauty, good looks, merriness, well dressed as she was with German cloth; I turned around and told a friend: Is that the girl that you wanted so much to come to our to our summers works to alphabetize the rural labourer? Well I will marry her. Courtship started before we were introduced. It was not Chilean machismo or arrogance from my side, it was love, I was 22 she was also the same age but, to be gentle, I did not confess my passion until the day before we finished our works. She was pleased, but not in love. She preferred well-dressed young men, well behaved, not all what I was at the time. However, I was very persistent, though I tried to conceal my affection; I was unable to guard my secret as everybody guessed, though I said not one word. Once our works were finished, I declared myself in our campament, away from the others, she said no, but I kissed her nonetheless, started to go to visit her at her house, where she begun a transformation of my clothing, my glasses, my way of dress and when I looked more similar to her father and cousins, all elegant people, then, she accepted me. It took me two years to accept my transformation, I joined the families in Laguna Verde, they became very good friends and a year later, my parents had to go to petition of hand on my behalf. Her mother was a widow, a brother of her father represented him, uncle Ramón and we started a formal relationship. In 1967, we married, April the 10th and you were born in June 26th of 1968. I would have saved all of my anxieties if we had remembered that an spontaneous miscarriage has happened before, of a baby boy we assume, hence the next had to be a girl. Nature is wise and knows well what she does. We forget.
As a result, there were you who were born to our joy. Both of us used to go to many places before marrying, but in a very sweet way, I embraced her all the time, kissed her, but never touch: I had said: woman, you will be my wife and we shall have plenty of time to be in an secluded place to enjoy life and make children. I never touched her; times were different as they are now: there were women to enter to satisfy the libido, and women to marry. The Mum of my baby belonged to the second class. We knew well that many engaged people used to live and intimate life and then marry in a hurry.... I was a man of my word. I had promised marriage, and wed did we have. You are the proof.
At the time, I thought I was a Roman Catholic man, and Mum a liberal girl. Little by little, I realized that I did not believe: it was more a way of being, an elegant and bourgeois custom an elegant thing to be done: I gave up and brought you up within a liberal mind.
Forty something years had elapsed from our wed, celebrated by eleven priests, a Bishop, and a cable prom the Pope. They pushed so much that we fell to the other side of the wedding horse. My name has a reputation and the ceremony was attended by five hundred people, appeared in the news and we received so many presents, which allow us to mobilize the house.
When I say I met her some forty year ago, I do not know if I am talking of the daughter or her Mum. I had to accept a number of concessions, such ear rings- diamonds my father, gold from Mum’s Sis. I wanted the name Juana, so Chilean, so firm, but Mum asked for Paula, and Paula it became. She had to be inscribed in the Civil Register, my best friend Francisco Vio was the witness. They demanded a second name and in honour to her God’s mother, we choose Eugenia a name that was in the family for ages. A name within the family, ever since they lived in France. Where the great grandfather, an engineer who constructed the
We were lucky to have a room with a little living room, as so many people visited us! You were the most spoiled baby of the world, up to now, by your loving husband and your lovely kids.
That is all. You know your actual history better than me. Except for those three years that you lived here with me in Portugal. You prepared and won a Diploma in Psychology at the private institute of Applied Psychology , but you misbehaved and I sent you to the best place in Clinical Psychology, you choose The Netherlands were you met the most loving man in the world, you married once you finished your MA at Free University, and a PhD at Amsterdam University. You have had two beautiful kids; he is Tomas, 14, and Maira Rose, 11, clever kids, cleverer than their parents and their grandparents.
I am proud of you. I still remember when I told Mum: do you want to return to Europe? She said yes, I applied for a grant, which I won: of 200, I became the 5th. So, at your 9 months of age, you start to live in Piccadilly, London, and then in Scotland where to learn how to walk and speak. Those were our happiest days of our lives! Now, you live in eternal happiness with your little family.
We wish you a many happy returns! Moreover, that we may count them!
Raul Iturra
16th of June 2014.