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 23rd, 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 25th, 1977 – Ceil keeps telling me I don’t look nearly as big as she thought I’d be…
January 28th – 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 31st, 1977 – My suitcase is half packed…hoping something starts to happen soon. I see the doctor Feb. 4thagain.
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 9th 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. 9th 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 10th 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 11th, 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
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