Thoughts on Family...and the Bar Mitzvah

        

Our family at Seth's Bat Mitzvah in Tampa

Sharing it all with Jessica...

        “Aunt Kristina,” I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Hilary, standing next to me.  We had just come from the Friday shabbat service on the weekend of her son, Seth’s Bar Mitzvah.

            “Would you and Uncle Art be willing to read the Prayer for Peace at the service tomorrow afternoon?”  she asked.

            I felt tears come to my eyes and replied, “Of course, we’d be glad to.”  She handed me a photocopied piece of paper with the Prayer and reminded me if we had any questions to ask before the service on Saturday afternoon.

            It took me a minute to compose myself as she walked away. I was touched by her request that we be part of the Bar Mitzvah service. We had participated in small ways once or twice before at other family events but usually it was Art who was asked.  Perhaps I was overly emotional because of the family gathering for the weekend. I was thinking all weekend about our 45^th wedding anniversary.  Some of the same family members including Hilary, when she was 4 years old, had been at our wedding on Feb. 16^th, 1975 in Orange, Connecticut.   I had come into Art’s family 45 years ago and yet for much of that time felt like the outsider.  (Art was the first in his family to marry outside the Jewish faith.) At Seth’s Bar Mitzvah in Tampa last weekend the invisible barrier was not there.  I  was a part of this warm and loving Jewish family that was Art's family.   

            Growing up in South America, I was envious of the culture built on strong extended family connections .  I saw it all around me from the time I was very young. I knew that was not something I had in my life. We had no family in Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia – all countries we lived in until I went away to college. Instead, my adventuresome parents had willingly left home in their early 20’s to go far away and start their own lives. 

Dad took a job in Bolivia and  moved to Chile while Mother waited to get a passport for 2 years because it was war time.  She traveled to Chile in 1944 to marry Dad in a Chilean Civil Service ceremony in Spanish.  “I didn’t understand a word,” she said.  “I didn’t care because I was happy to finally be married.” 

They had their reasons for wanting to go far away and leave family behind.  Mother was the shy, quiet, third sibling growing up under the shadow of a beautiful and popular older sister who garnered all the attention.  Dad, was the unwanted baby whose Mother died at 29 and whose father left him to be raised by grandparents in their fifties and already old. He was the “poor” relation who was determined to go as far as it took to prove himself. Other than occasional visits which we made every few years to the States, we never lived close to family. Mom and Dad said they never regretted the path they chose. 

             Mother often said to me, “It’s not all as great as it looks”, when I would express envy over the Latin American multigenerational families who seemed to rely and enjoy each other so much.  I didn’t believe her.  To me my Argentine or Brazilian friends had a real sense of belonging which I never felt.  They were loved and had a place in a large extended family. Cousins grew up together, aunts and uncles grew old together, and grandparents were respected and cared for by all.  

            When I married Art we went back to South America to live in Santiago, Chile, and then in Costa Rica and Manila, Philippines.  As an adult living in these countries I still found myself  the outsider looking in to the extended family culture . I had a baby in far-away Chile but no siblings, cousins, even grandparents close by for family support. That was always missing in my life.

            I remember Art’s mother, Ceil, telling the story of finding outt she was having twins.  “I came home and cried,” she told me. “I didn’t know how we’d manage with two babies.”  Then she  added that when the twins (Art and Norm), were born, her sisters came every day to help with the feedings and to offer moral support.  I loved that story and still think about it today.

           Going back to Argentina recently reminded me of my longing to be part of an extended family. I asked my Argentine classmate Eva, whose husband has dementia, “How do you manage on your own?”  She told me matter-of-factly that everyone in her family helps her out.  Her granddaughters come to sit with their grandfather when she needs to be away from the house because she won’t leave Brian alone. They come to dinner at her house every Friday night for the shabbat dinner. In turn, Eva helps her recently widowed daughter financially and in any way she can.  They are in and out and part of each other’s lives every day. 

 My Anglo Argentine friend, Teeny, who lived across the street from me when we were growing up,  has a husband dying of lung cancer.  She married an Argentine, against her Anglo parents’ wishes, had four children and has 15 grandchildren. It has been a happy marriage.   When I saw her in November, Jaime was going through a difficult time with chemotherapy  She told me her daughter, Dolores, had come to stay with her, and her grandchildren from “the campo” who are going to college in Buenos Aires, board with her.  She has caring family all around her now that her parents are gone and her beloved older brother has died. She will always be cared for as the matriarch of the big family she and Jaime created together.

            

            Last weekend we travelled to Tampa for Seth’s Bar Mitzvah.  (Seth is our great nephew and grandson of Art’s sister.)  Like the many family gatherings for Bar, Bat Mitzvah’s, weddings, and funerals I have been to during our 45 year marriage, this one was no different and just as elaborate and fun.  Almost everyone in Art’s extended family came from Colorado, Connecticut and Massachusetts. All the cousins were there. We hadn’t seen most of them for several years since the last event.  This time, Hayden, Jessica, and Austin were there. I liked watching Hayden reconnecting with family and loving being a part of an extended family which he did not grow up with either.

Hayden & Art

Our party guy...

 Trying not to look too hard at each other for those  signs of how we are growing older, we were genuinely delighted to be with family again.  Art and I are now part of the “oldest generation” in the family.   As we took part in the weekend events leading up to the Bar Mitzvah and the celebration afterwards it reminded me how I have always admired the importance of family in the Jewish culture.   Now, married to Art for 45 years  I can say I am very much a part of Art’s family

            As we said our good- byes and thank yous to Hilary and Jeff, they reminded us, “Don’t forget, we’ll see you back here for Arielle and Alyssa’s Bat Mitzvah two years from now.”  Hilary seconded Jeff as she hugged us both.  I felt embraced by family…Art’s family…but now my own.

Family together in Tampa.... 

            

Birth stories...

         

           Every year after I grew upI would get a birthday card with a letter in the mail from my motherr telling me the story of my birth in Santiago, Chile.  I came across a saved email from August 31, 2005 which reads,

            A few more days of your being 59.  I’ve been thinking of those days before your birth in Chile so many years ago.  And then I was thinking about when I flew to Chile and arrived the day after Hayden was born there….  

Mother loved to reminisce about my birth, her firstborn in a South American country in the 1940’s. It was an adventure giving birth in a maternity clinic in a faraway country where she spoke little Spanish. She never let on that she was frightened or worried. She was the only foreigner in the Clinica Bunster where I was born, and the only one with no family to stay with her all the time as was the custom among Chileans.  Dad stopped by to see her at the end of his work day but went home to sleep.

            Today is Hayden’s birthday and my first thought was “I must send Hayden his birth story”.  I have done it many times and he knows it.  Yet as his mother, I tell his story more for me than him.  Just as like my mother did. 

            Forty three years ago today was a hot dry summer day in Santiago, Chile.  It hadn’t rained in months.  I had been waiting for several weeks to have this baby that was predicted to come in late January or the first few days of February.  But nothing had yet happened. Being a letter writer and having no Internet nor long distance phone service, I wrote many long letters home to pass the time.

January 23^rd, 1977 – Ceil (Art’s Mother)  is here with us and that seems quite unbelievable.  She arrived yesterday morning at 6:30 a.m.  We drove out to the airport at the crack of dawn half expecting her not to be on the flight as we hadn’t received a letter from here.  Were we ever surprised to see her.

January 25^th, 1977 – Ceil keeps telling me I don’t look nearly as big as she thought I’d be…

January 28^th – Today Ceil went downtown with me while I had to see the matrona (midwife) at the Clinica Central where she works.  She examined me very efficiently and said right away the baby was not ready to be born yet….Ceil is impatient to see the baby and I wonder if she’ll stay until it’s born.

January 31^st, 1977 – My suitcase is half packed…hoping something starts to happen soon.  I see the doctor Feb. 4^thagain.

            With Ceil coming to visit and await the birth of her third grandchild, I felt some anxiety.  She almost missed him because Hayden took his time coming into the world. (Once he was born he would take his time with everything in his life just as he had coming into the world.)  Ceil stayed into February. As the days passed, she encouraged me go for long walks with her and Sabrina, our poodle.  We walked up and down the four flights of stairs to and from our apartment on Avenida Pocuro numerous times each day.  There was no elevator in the building.

            The first nine days of February were a waiting game and I grew more worried  I had to have this baby not just for us but for my mother-in-law who gathered all her courage to take the longest trip of her life and come to Santiago to see him.  Labor pains began the evening of February 9^th and that was when I hoped the baby wouldn't come too fast...not until morning.

            Santiago, Chile in February 1977 was under a toque de queda (curfew) imposed by the Pinochet military regime.  The curfew meant everyone had to be off the city streets and home by midnight until 6 a.m. the next morning.  I worried what might happen if we had to go to the Clinica Sara Moncada between midnight and 6 a.m.  We had been told that we should hang a white handkerchief out the window of the car and the police would allow us get to the hospital.  I was skeptical as I did not trust the soliders that were everywhere on the streets of Santiago.  Anything could happen…this was the country of los desaparecidos (the disappeared) and I often was scared.

            I sat up most of the night of Feb. 9^th listening to silence after midnight when all cars were off the street.  I was very uncomfortable.  Somehow I must have willed myself to hang on until 6.a. when the curfew was over.  We called the doctor and around 7 a.m. headed to the clinic in our car.  Ceil, who was leaving to go home to Connecticut in 2 days was ecstatic.

            The Clínica Sara Moncada in Providencia was close to where we lived.  It had the façade of an elegant eighteenth century mansion that could have been a European hotel with circular driveway leading up to a marble entrance…or even a mansion belonging to a wealthy family. No one would guess it was a maternity clinic.  Each mother had a private room with French doors opening to a small terrace and garden.  Three course meals that bordered on the gourmet were served on china with real silverware.

            Hayden Richard Aaronson was born at 1:30 p.m. on Feburary 10^th and Art and Ceil were the first to receive the happy news.  “Es un varón” (it’s a boy) they were told.  I was awake during the birth with an epidural injection for pain.  I remember euphoria and exhaustion...and relief.

            In my private room I spent hours gazing in fascination at my newborn son fast sleep in delicately embroidered sheets in a cradle with a lace canopy that was wheeled next to my bed.  He looked like a royal prince. He was the only blond baby in the clinic because most Chilean babies were dark haired.  The nurses called him el rubio as they could not pronounce his English name, Hayden.  Dra. Aubrey, my obstetrician in her high heels, dangling earrings, and slightly dirty white smock was all kindness.  With a genuine smile she was there to tell me what a beautiful son I had.  Tiene un hijo hermoso…

            Ceil spent the rest of the day holding Hayden and looking at him.  The next morning, February 11^th, Mother arrived from the U.S.  She was returning to Chile for the first time in thirty years after giving birth to me.  Our two “Moms” overlapped for a day at the clinic before Ceil was on an airplane back home to Connecticut.  I was always grateful that Hayden had decided to show up before she had to leave.  Mother stayed an entire month with us.  When she was not helping me she had time to reminisce about the bride and new mother she had been in Chile.  No one could have predicted that her first grandson would be born in Santiago, Chile where I was born.

            I have heard my story dozens of times but since Mother died in 2014, I miss not hearing it from her any more.  Now my birthdays lack the story of my coming into the world as she liked to tell it.  I write this down for Hayden, today, on his birthday, knowing he will appreciate hearing his story yet again from me.

           

 Hayden and Grandma Ceil

Hayden and Grandma Virginia