ARGENTINA. Buenos Aires Through Harold’s Lens:
4:12 am. January 9, 1955.
The brass ringer bell on our rotary phone screams and screams and screams outside my bedroom door.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
I’m in deep sleep. Ring. Ring Ring.
I am only 14. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Old enough to know only bad comes with a call in the black of night. Ring. Ring. Ring.
I’m into horror movies. Ring. Ring. Ring.
I am terrified. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Slapping bare feet rip down the wooden hallway. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Total silence. A mind-piercing scream rips through my bedroom door. I leap from my sheets. I tear open my door. I’m face to face with my Mother. Wracking in tears. Sucking for air. Eyes wide with terror. “Maudie”, Mom gasps. The hospital. Her five-month old daughter. Dead. I wrap my arms around Mom’s heaving, sagging shoulders. Mom and I cry.
Please Lord. There is an order to birth. An order to death. Our children are not to die first.
A jet black old rotary in an antique store in Buenos Aires evokes a 50 year old painful memory of an ice cold January morning in upstate New York and the value of life.
