470812 - Rescued Rat

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The Birth Diary ends with a notation in mother's hand on August 12th, that "Danielito" had a good day. So by then mother and son were back in New York. Mother's short sleeves and light clothes bespeak warm weather.

The good days, it would seem, were intermittent. According to mother, i had "the nine months colic" "Colic usually begins suddenly, with loud and mostly nonstop crying. Colicky babies can be very difficult to calm down." I drove mother to distraction and caused her to loose sleep. According to her, the pediatrician said, "Little mother, you need to get some rest." Instead she got penumonia and I was passed over into the care of my aunt and uncle, Mary and Martin Roach.

It will be noted that father is nowhere to be seen and he does not appear to have been the one taking these or the subsequent pictures. Smiling couple with happy baby... not.

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470714 - Twice Saved

•Kieran arrives

• Daniel leaves.

•Kieran "hypertonic" (i.e. stiff and swollen)

•Kieran returns from hospital.  

• First Rites...   

• St. Alphonse Church

•Kieran saved for the next world...

• Kieran lifeless and blue...

• Kieran saved for this world...

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It will be noted that no one was able to agree upon or get my name right.   According to mother, she and father could not agree on a name.   Every name she came up with father would veto on the ground that it sounded awful in Spanish.  "So, at last I came up with a name that couldn't be translated!"   Oh happy solution!  Also a name that none but inveterate Irish had ever heard of and that inevitably, without fail, got heard as and mistaken for Karen.   

My parents were of the enthusiastic view that my "bi-cultural background" gave me unspecified advantages.  No it did not.  It was a burden and an impediment made worse by the fact that, even correctly spelled, I had a "girl's name."   It only served to give me a perspective that was always at odds with wherever I was.   No more than anyone else I could never tell what I was or where my identities lay.  

Of course, confusion and uncertainty made me the man that I am; but, in the end, so what?  Nothing grand came of it.  All in all it would have been easier and happier to be ordinary.
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470527 - "A Drowned Rat"

My desecent took place at nine in the evening on the 27th of May 1947. Mother never said much about it except that it was a "dreamy" experience in which she saw dancing cut-outs or some such. My french aunt, Odile, was a little more explicit: I was thehre when you whehre bohrn!" from which I was left to understand that she was first witness to the event.

One wonders how much of anything a newly born drowned rat senses or knows anything but, throughout my life, I have always felt a close and returning attachment to Odile that was, in a curious way, deeper and quieter than my love for my mother.

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1.   Mother later said that when father first saw me he exclaimed that i looked like a "drowned rat." She said this in a cheerful tone of voice that expected me to find it amusing.  I suppose, it was one of her futile, fantasy attempts to endear me to an unendearing father.    But like many of her repainted realities, it was not true in any event.  Father was in New York recovering from an eye operation.  

Mother also later said that "when your father first saw you, he said...."  leaving it somewhat ambiguous as to when "when" was.   However, Odile who kept a diary of the events (it would be Odile) has an entry for June 24th  stating "Daniel gone."   So  Daniel did  come up to Canada, and did stare at me through pin holes in his darkened lenses; but there was no way he was hanging around in Hawkesbury for a month.  

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470527 - Hawkesbury

470727 - In the Dominion