Ninina: Xmas, 1959, Cuba (left); and November 27, 2009, Paris (right)
Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad!
The picture on the left is the picture of me I used on my Xmas card this year (along with Bianca's picture, of course). The picture on the right is the one a kind and techno-savvy stranger took of me in front of the batiment (pavilion) at the Pitie-Salpetriere where Papi learned the craft of neurosurgery from Dr. Clovis Vincent.
Same little girl, eh? Fifty years apart.
Fifty years during which Papi would have to abandon his dream of devoting himself to his passion, neuropathology (which he was learning under the tutelage of the renowned Spaniard, Don Pio del Rio Hortega), after he would have retired from active nuerosurgery at age sixty. He ended up in the throes of starting a new practice in the United States, instead, after having had to go through hoops with the Board of Neurological Surgery.
And Mami: well, she became a doctor. Again. After not practicing between 1941 and 1965. And in 1967 she became a resident in psychiatry. And in 1972 she became a practicing clinician at South Florida State Hospital.
The little girl at five was aware of very few things; except that she'd had to be baptized at age four, so that Castro wouldn't send her to Russia. She'd had her famous--nay, infamous--fifth birthday party; with a magician; and everything! She'd enjoyed her day; though Papi and Mami were already worried about what might lie ahead. They'd been pursued by the Bolsheviks in Paris during the 1930's.
The woman at fifty-five found herself shivering her way through late November in Paris. (A new coat--to boot--H&M Pink Label--which she couldn't get any more in D.C.). It was a particularly cold and blustery afternoon when she devoted her time to wandering around the Pitie-Salpetriere. She'd ended up at the chapel, first, of the "Hospice de la Salpetriere"; and taken black and white pictures of religious scenes which actually looked better that way! More mysterious and mystical...Then she'd wandered up and down the "main" street of the hospital complex...and stumbled upon the sign on the building indicating that Clovis Vincent had practiced neurosurgery in that particular pavilion! She all but jumped up and down with joy; for that meant that her Papi had been in that building, with Vincent, too! She started snapping pictures; fiddled with her camera. A kind man offered to take her picture.
She also saw the pavilion where Babinsky--Vincent's professor, the great neurologist--had worked.
And she returned the following Monday--on Monday, November 30, 2009--to lay a yellow rose at the base of Vincen's plaque. In Vincent's honor. In her Papi's honor.
It's one year and a little under a month later, now. Xmas Day, 2010. Papi would have turned 100 years old on March 14 of this year. Ninina was back in Florida to be able to go to the niche on June 18 to lay some flowers, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his demise. She wouldn't have missed doing that for anything!
But now it's Xmas Day, 2010. Memories/Memorias. And promises of a future to come...
