My first birthday

Day 19

How often you ever think about your early childhood?  I bet that we don't think much about it considering the fact that most people rarely remember things so early in their life.  I think my early memories have to be around the time I was 3 or 4 years old but as of today I'm not sure and I may need to talk to my parents about events around then to see how accurate they are.

The reason why I'm talking about this is that my mom recently sent me pictures of myself when they were celebrating my first birthday, back in 1986, and it's kind of funny to see at the pictures but also kind of sad that I can't remember early childhood. I do however have flashbacks of things when I was fairly young (5 years or younger) and sometimes I find funny I remember those stupid details.

Thankfully most, if not all of my memories are nice ones, I remember how crazy I was whenever dad showed around, I would run around and go to him in a flash, or how I won $10 pesos (or $20?) when said the alphabet during a blackout, which were very typical then (and sadly still an issue in my home country).  I remember I used to cry a lot also, anything and everything made me cry but I also remember the pets at home prior my first real own dog and companion Alf.

Prior to Alf we had Puchy and prior to that Flash (a chihuahua) but could have been the other way around though.  Alf was the gift of a then girlfriend of my brother Gabriel, but I felt in love with the puppy right away.  I had him for 15 years and even until these days, my closest friends keep bringing him up in conversations, but talking about Alf will be another day.

In my early years I had my only picture taken with my parental grandfather, who passed away I think in 1988, his final years he lived in my house in what today is "my room" at my parents.  Rumor has it that my grandpa ghost haunted the house and that he would knock on the door of rooms, and I remember been super scared of getting out of my room late at night because of that but I'm pretty sure it was either my maternal older brother playing a prank on the younger ones or (way less likely) my parents playing a prank on us.  Legend says that the haunting ended when a white cross was painted in the trunk of a Guanábana (Soursop) tree we used to have in the patio.

Me in the lap of Don Gabriel Terrero Reví - Dad and brothers in sight too

Talking about the patio, there's nothing outstanding to say about it other than the fact that we used to have a cherry tree and the guanábana tree, and that at one point we even had a cow there (this is pending confirmation), but we indeed had plenty of different animals throughout the years like: a turkey, a pig, 3 guinea fowls, 3 roosters, cats, dogs, a freaking goat, pigeons, among a few others.

One not so funny story I remember is how my older brothers (whom are 5 and 7 years older than me) used to scare the shit out of me saying that "Caamaño" was going to take me away from my parents because I was an adopted Haitian boy from a massacre that happened there.  Mind you, the massacre happened in 1937 but at a very young age you wouldn't know that and funny enough, it was one of my very first memories of racism/xenophobia in the Dominican society.

You see, without delving deeper in the topic, that your brothers bullied you saying that you are adopted (adding to the stigma), that you are not Dominican, that you were a black Haitian baby who was taken from the breast of your dead mother does leave some trauma indeed.  I never found it funny, and, in our society, we do have to deal with that shit fairly frequent and whenever I racism/xenophobia I will call it out in the blink of an eye.

I'll be traveling back home soon, and I will get some stories out of my parents regarding my early childhood and maybe bitch them a little about allowing my brothers make my life miserable then.

See you tomorrow.

Me and my cousin Sandy with my birthday cake.  There are a few fun facts in the picture, as you may have seen from the other picture my shirt said "USA" - and even though was not ever a dream of me to become American, I ended up being one by the time I turned 36. Another fun fact is that on the decoration of the cake is a figure of Donald Duck, my favorite Disney character and with this info I will get a lot of flak from Luis.  Lastly, I do have to tell stories about my cousin, but that will be for another day.

NOTE: The Caamaño I mentioned above is Francisco Alberto Caamaño Deñó, a Dominican president and revolutionary fighter.