Lauren & Casi-Casi Met Up
I picked up Lauren at the end of her Arts Umbrella Dance class today here in Vancouver. She is 15. She has a sister 20, a father Bruce and her mother Hilary. Today she did not object to my question (“Who is the most efficient member of the Stewart family?”) and immediately raised her hand accepting my opinion that she is the most efficient (perhaps the only one) of her family.
I watched Casi-Casi go up our stairs. He does it gingerly. I believe that like his two masters, Rosemary and yours truly, he must suffer from arthritis. Casi-Casi is 12 years old.
The picture you see here I took around October 14, 2011. Looking at it made me think on how we go back and forth interacting (as in passing by or passing through) with people (and animals) and never give it a thought. Would either of them know or remember this?
I may have been 7 or 8 and my mother organized my birthday party on an August 31st in our Melián 2770. People came, a piñata was broken, a tail was put on a donkey and a cake was eaten (I passed on that as I have always disliked birthday cakes, even others’). And yet of one of those parties there is an image that is seared in my memory.
Our house had a very long but narrow garden. A tiled path was on one side from the gate at the street to where it went on to form an L when It hit the outside wall of our bathroom which was next to our kitchen.
I remember seeing this beautiful young woman (I now know she was 19 years older than I was) greet me at that bend. She was Inesita O’Reilly my first cousin and godmother. We had met 19 years before (of this meeting I have no recollection!) when she was present at my baptism.
Of that second meeting I remember nothing but that L shaped incident.
For many years after, beginning around 1965, Inesita was one of my most loved woman in my life. She died this year.
Thinking about it has made me attempt to recollect all those inateractions between us that may have included a kiss, a hug, a chat, a laugh or sharing a pizza on Avenida Cabildo.
I have no idea if Casi-Casi is able to delve into this process of transfer. I think that in this picture the cat was at his young peak while Lauren was a child about to grow up.
Today as we were eating our breaded chicken breasts Lauren felt something at her feet. She said, “Well, hello Casi. How are you?”
I wonder which memory transfers are being seared in her memory?
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
