I was born on a Sunday; 4 days before Thanksgiving. And for the second time, my mother spent a holiday in the hospital.
As this happened in the Republic of Panama, you’d think the just-before-Thanksgiving timing unimportant; that holiday being wholly North American. But my family, both maternal and paternal, is made up of Caribbean grandparents and great-grandparents who emigrated from Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago to the Latin American isthmus to work on building the Panama Canal. My parents, therefore, grew up and lived in the Canal Zone. A thin strip of land across an already thin nation, the Canal Zone was like a series of small, sterile U. S. suburbs dropped into the middle of tropical, vibrant Latin America.
My parents may not have known or cared about the British Pilgrims and Native North Americans and their supposedly peaceful shared meal. But the holiday offered a couple extra days off work and a reason to gather family close for a meal and a celebration. I imagine that all of my family took advantage of the free time.
Three years before my arrival, my brother (the first gess) was born on December 28th. It was a Wednesday. (Wednesday’s child is full of woe, but that is another matter altogether.) My mother was still in the hospital 3 days later (because that’s what was done back then, I guess) when she developed an infection. She spent New Year’s Eve day and night, a Saturday, in a hospital bed.
On November 23rd, three years later… Well, I like to think that my extreme cuteness made up for Mami missing another party. But seeing as she herself told me about these incidents, I’m guessing she was very disappointed in missing the family fun of those days and nights!