A NEW MEMBER OF THE FAMILY ARRIVES

NEWBORN ANGIE IN HER SISTER'S ARMS
IN SLC, UT, OCTOBER 1980

Prepared we were. Fanny´s mom, who then lived in NYC, came over to help me with the kids. She was then 50, and was full of energy and willingness to help. I just don´t know how would I have faced the facts without her. On October 30, 1980, one day before Halloween, at 8:00 O´clock, our new baby, our youngest daughter was born, at the LDS Hospital up in "the avenues" near down town Salt Lake City. The place was adorned all over for the occasion, with lighted orange pumpkins and spooky witches flying on brooms. She was the only black haired child in the whole room. She was the subject of attention from almost everyone entering the newborns´ room, where there were at least another ten children, all of them blue eyed blondes, who had been born that same day.

THE DAY ANGIE WAS BORN, THE LDS HOSPITAL
IN SLC WAS DRESSED UP FOR HALLOWEEN

Since our new baby´s older sister and brother had been delivered through a C section, it was just to be expected that this baby would be delivered through the same procedure, therefore, I had requested the doctor to allow me to be present during the operation, which I did. I was asked to dress up just as the doctors do, with a long-green attire with a head cover and a mask, just as the doctor's assistants did. I was in the operating room during the whole procedure, separated from the operating team just by a light blue curtain with a small "window” which allowed me to see almost everything that was going on in there. The anesthesia Fanny got allowed her to be alert during the whole operation, therefore, she was looking at me and I was looking at her all the time providing her with an "eye support" she seem to need. Everything seemed to be going as desired.
In a matter of minutes, the doctor was holding my new baby up by her feet in his right hand. He said in a relatively high voice, “it’s a girl”, and suddenly slapped the baby´s butt so she could cry, but she didn´t cry…she screamed, making us know she was alive and very well.
Deep in my mind I had been hoping that it would be a baby boy, however, almost instantaneously I felt a great feeling of happiness. She was held up in the doctor`s hands for a while, her body was all covered by a whitish greasy looking substance which they soon had to clean the baby from. Fanny was awake and smiling at the baby and, in a matter of minutes, the medical team placed the baby in her mother's hands and soon the baby was feeding herself like an expert. Mother and baby smiled out of happiness and comfort. I kissed my wife and my new and beautiful baby and thanked Fanny for the wonderful gift she just delivered to our family.
Fanny and I had agreed about the bay’s names beforehand, so we started calling her Angie as soon as she was born. Her name is Angela for many reasons, not the least of them because she was, she is and she’ll always be an Angel to us, but she carries her mom’s middle name, which is also that of my only aunt’s, my father’s sister first name. My aunt died of cancer of the uterus when I was very young, and I have a very lovely memory of her and her caring character. She used to say I was her favorite nephew. My Angie’s middle name is Judith, for my mother’s middle name. Time has shown us that Angie carries in her character the vision, the sweetness, the firmness of character, the readiness for hard work and the determination of my mother as well.
Back in September, when we took our two young children (6 and 4) to Woodstock Elementary, Mariuxi (6), who at the time spoke no English, was accepted for kindergarten and was given a special tutor to help her with the language. We were told that she could be moved to first grade but she would need to understand and speak English by Christmas; otherwise she would remain in kindergarten for the entire year. Mariuxi not only passed the test of English, but she did it two months before it was due. The speed at which she learned the new language was astonishing and the School Principal personally congratulated us on her progress. Rafaelito was registered in pre-kinder and, at the beginning he had some minor difficulties learning the language and adapting to the new surroundings, but, by Christmas time he was already communicating mostly in English with his big sister and feeling comfortable with his peers.

Fanny and I had decided that in order to help in the preservation of our culture and our heritage, we would always speak to our kids in Spanish, making sure they would never forget their mother language. By mid school year, in March 1981, both Mariuxi and Rafaelito were fully bilingual. At home, the rule was that they should speak English in their School, with their teachers and peers, and among themselves, but they should speak Spanish with us. The rule functioned very well for some time; however, by the end of the school year, in June 1981, they spoke English to us, while we would always speak Spanish to them. That worked well because it helped Fanny in her efforts to learn English too.


HALLOWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA WAS
DISPLAYED ALL OVER THE LDS HOSPITAL
THE DAY ANGIE WAS BORN

On Halloween’s day of 1980, I took Mariuxi and Rafaelito to the hospital to visit their little sister Angie. They were extremely curious and happy to be able to see their mom, whom they hadn’t seen for two days, and their newborn sister. They were also very happy to see the entire Halloween extravaganza displayed all over the hospital. I believe that was the day and the moment when Mariuxi made of Halloween her favorite holiday. Both Mariuxi and Rafaelito had behaved admirably at home in the absence of their mom. I was proud of them and so were their mom and grand mom as well. That night, Mariuxi, Rafaelito and I went trick or tricking in our neighborhood. Mariuxi was already pronouncing the key words very well, but Rafaelito was just saying "tick o thick" which sounded funny to our neighbors. They laughed and gave candy to our kids very generously.


DOWN TOWN SALT LAKE CITY IN WINTER

Two days later we took the mother and the new baby back home. It was a great day for all of us, we loved little Angie who was a real doll, she was slightly brown skinned, had brown eyes and had a lot of dark hair, she ate a lot and her mom was very happy to breast feed her, which she did it for the following six months. Angie was born with 7 pounds and 2 ounces but, at the end of the first six months she was already a 14 pound robust baby. Both the mom and the new baby were extremely healthy. On the Monday after we brought home little Angie, we were visited by ten ladies from the neighborhood who brought individual-handmade baby girl’s clothing presents for our new baby. It was like the Wise men visiting Bethlehem. They wanted to tell us they were happy to know we had a new member in our family and, therefore they welcomed their new neighbor. By then, we hadn’t even been introduced to most of these sweet ladies, but they wanted to show us we were welcome to their neighborhood. Nine of them were LDS ladies while the tenth was a Lutheran one. We received from these fine ladies an unforgettable lesson of good will, of kindness and religious openness. Here we were, Catholics in a land supposedly not very friendly to our faith, being greeted and treated with love, just like only brothers and sisters would, by people we hadn’t even been formally introduced yet. That was Utah's people at their best, which was also America at its best!. That very day we began to love Utah, as if it was our own homeland, that same day we began to love America more than ever before and we still do.
Little Angie was a quiet and charming baby. Her brother and sister loved to carry her in their arms. We allowed them to do it but were very careful to be close by just in case. Soon the holiday season preparations started and we, just as almost everyone else, began getting ready for Christmas and the New Year. It’s hard to believe, I'm writing all this in December 16, 2010, it is almost exactly 30 years ago that all of this happened, our lives have run fast, when I think of it, it seems that all of this happened only a few years ago.

We bough a natural Christmas tree and a lot of lights and ornaments, the children loved it all. By then, Mariuxi was already speaking fluent English and Rafaelito was getting there too. Advised by our friend and Angie’s God Mother Ceres Vallely, Fanny decided that on top of everything else she had to do at home, she would attend English classes at the University of Utah. That showed her determination to overcome the limitations imposed on her by the language. In the following six months she was speaking and understanding English enough to make her life much easier. She was by then, beginning to get used to her new style of life, she was by then just like any typical American housewife, no maids to help at home. Regarding me, for the first time in my life I began to do the lawn mowing and other house work I had never done before. I adjusted myself to the new life with no sweat too.



ALTA, IN SLC, UTAH-BEAUTIFUL
MOUNTAIN, GREAT SKIING
The winter season started and skiing is the sport almost everybody practices in Salt Lake City. Skiing is for Salt Lakers what soccer is for Brazilians. Therefore, winter is by far the favorite season for most Salt Lakers. The winter of 1980 was a great snow season in the Utah Rocky Mountains, which are widely known to have “the best snow on earth”. Fanny, Mariuxi and Rafaelito were soon in the “skiing mood” and so was I. We wanted to learn and start practicing skiing, so I had to buy skiing gear for the whole family except Angie. Soon we became skiing nuts as we were able to buy inexpensive season skiing passes through the Northwest Pipeline's Skiing Club which used to buy massive numbers of tickets for its members at wholesale prices and sold them to us at a 50% subsidized price. We skied the whole season which prolonged itself until late April 1981. We never got enough of it during that whole winter. Just as most Salt Lakers we began to think of winter as our favorite season too. We began to love Salt Lake City, its people, the snow, the winter, the whole thing…

In my next posting: OUR LIFE IN SALT LAKE CITY