Papito

When I write about papito, one question that comes up immediately is whether I should speak of him in the past or present tense. Is he still alive or has he died? As he would be 86 years old, most likely, he has died.

His name was Fernando and he was born on April 14, 1927 (we share the same day and he shares the same year with mamita) in either Holguin or Bayamo in the province of Oriente. His parents were Antonio and Amalia. Amalia's mother, bisabuela Dora, raised papito just as bisabuela Angela raised mamita. Abuela Amalia rejected papito in the same way that abuela Isabel rejected mamita. Maybe that is why mamita and papito felt attracted to each other when they met at the University of La Habana.


The elderly woman is bisabuela Angela. She stands in back of mamita en la playa de Caibarién.
At that time, he was a slim, good looking medical student specializing in Pathology and she was a slim, beautiful nursing student specializing in the care of premature babies. Papito was a very outgoing, charming ladies' man while mamita, at that time, was very shy. So painfully shy was she that papito nicknamed her "Orillita" (diminutive of "border" or "margin") because of how she would walk bend over, hugging her books to her chest and brushing up against the wall as she went along the University's hallways.

As I heard it, Amalia was a pharmacist and she met Antonio who was a medical sales representative. Antonio was a ladies' man, a philanderer and he understood right away that Amalias was only interested in wealthy men and that the only way to bed her was to wed her. So he succeeded in making her belief that he was wealthy then he proposed and she accepted. After the honeymoon, she found out the truth and immediately divorced him but she was already pregnant.

Papito, as an infant, was a failure-to-thrive baby which is a nebulous label for a healthy baby that starts dying because of lack of maternal care and warmth. (Love is indeed life.) One of the many life-threatening events that happened to him as a baby is that someone (Amalia most likely - I can't recall) gave him injections that became infected and, as a result, his buttocks became necrotic and he almost died. Papito grew up with hollows where most people have roundness. Thankfully, one way or another, he survived.

As the story goes, when he was 3 years old, he was having lunch with Amalia and Dora when he accidentally knocked over a glass of milk. Amalia flew into a rage and started beating papito. By the time Dora got Amalia away from him, he was unconscious and almost lifeless. That day, Dora took papito away from Amalia and he lived with her until she died some years later. But, at least for a while, he was loved and sheltered.

Papito dearly loved Dora as the abuela that raised him tenderly. But, all his life, he continued to love Amalia with a love that was entwined with sadness and pain because, usually, we don't stop loving our mothers even when they are sadists.