A Memory of Days Gone By

While I was on my morning walk a memory of days gone by popped into my head. I don’t know why, it just did. The memory was of an old friend who I met in the Women’s Studies Department at UNM many years ago. She was a part-time student, a nurse by trade, married to a doctor with two small children and a house in an upscale neighborhood in the North Valley. We became friends in class and soon she invited me to come meet her husband and kids. Which I did, and soon after, she asked me if I’d be interested in staying at her house and taking care of the kids while she and her husband went to Mexico for a few days.

I knew nothing about taking care of children. I had twenty-something priorities of drinking beer at Okie’s, the university bar, and dancing at Rosa’s Cantina in Algodones (always political, I found time to write for the alternative papers Seer’s Catalog and Coatamundi). I’d only known her for a few months and she was willing to trust her children to this ignorant caregiver? And these were young children, four or five and two or three, somewhere around there in age. I, of course, said yes (again, I’m a pretty nice person who likes to help people out), but I’d have to bring my dogs with me, which I did, to combine with their several dogs, and, as a bonus, a gorilla.

Now, I don’t remember if she provided the gorilla information to me at the outset and I was intrigued by the situation, or it came as an afterthought and I was caught off guard. The gorilla was named Huerfanita, who had been born at the Albuquerque Zoo but abandoned by her mother and was being raised by the wife of the zoo director. My friend and her husband were taking care of Huerfanita for a short period of time to give the zoo keeper’s wife a reprieve, but why they thought they could go off to Mexico and leave this baby gorilla in my care is also a mystery.

So for three or four days, I don’t remember (a recurring theme) which, I stayed with two toddlers, four or five dogs, and a gorilla that clung to my chest during its waking hours while I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or spaghetti to feed these children who spent a lot of time tormenting me by getting into all kinds of trouble in the house, usually involving water in the bathroom. But I survived, I stayed friends with the family, and watched these children grow up. I babysat many more times over the years and enjoyed their packed refrigerator, pantry, and bar. When Mark and I became a couple, he and I babysat the kids and enjoyed the amenities together.  And many years later, the doctor ended up delivering our first baby, Jakob, when I had to have a Caesarian section instead of a natural birth at a the Southwest Maternity Center (he was the consulting doctor for the Center). We paid him for his services with pot.

Mark and I attended the wedding of their youngest son. But then years started going by and we largely lost touch (we had moved to El Valle and were much farther apart logistically as well). The last time I had any contact was when their older son developed a critical medical condition and we spoke on the phone. As far as I know he recovered.

Now I don’t know if they’re even still alive. She was 10 years older than me, he even older. But I’m very happy that for some inexplicable reason I thought of them this morning: they came in and out of my life, as so many others have done, but I have the memory.

-->