The Magical Life of Mauricio Saravia

By Maria Eloisa Damele

This is the story of the late artist and poet Mauricio Saravia, who despite suffering McCune-Albright and Lion's Face Syndrome, had a real magical life. You will virtually travel with him his adventurous long journey through Uruguay, New York, Springfield, San Francisco, Denver, and finally Hollywood, although he had a brief life with many limitations. This story may be an inspiration to others with the same or other medical conditions and limitations as Mauricio had. Although hard to believe, the book cannot be considered a drama, because Mauricio had a very good sense of humor, he was always making jokes and making his friends laugh. Besides, interesting and funny things were always happening to him. The story has a little bit of everything, as well as real life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684708697

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Damele

Copyright © 2019 María Eloísa Damele.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0870-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0869-7 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover art design by Marcos Keldjian

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 09/20/2019

mauriciosaravia.jpg

Photo by Todd Pierson - Denver - 2004

TO THE READER

Mauricio Saravia suffered from one of the most severe cases of McCune-Albright syndrome. If you are a McCune-Albright’s patient or a patient’s loved one reading this story, please take into consideration that each case is unique. The syndrome’s range of severity and symptoms can differ greatly.

This is Mauricio’s story and here I am telling the medical situations he lived, his limitations, the physical changes in his visage, and his ending, which were exclusively his. María Eloísa Damele

THANKS

I want to thank all those who, with empathy and big hearts, helped Mauricio in many ways; giving him support, love, and friendship. All of you are part of his story.

My eternal gratitude goes out to the evangelist churches that taught us to have faith and provided some financial help to us during difficult times. They are the New Apostolic Church and the Jesus of Nazareth Church in Denver, and World Impact and Kairos Church in Los Angeles. Their congregations were like family to us.

Mauricio also had Catholic, Mormon, and Jewish friends, as well as many others who don’t profess any religion. Believers and non-believers partnered for the same humanitarian cause, and all of them have been part of Mauricio’s journey. I am really thankful to them all.

I also want to express my gratitude to all the Hollywood celebrities who, before knowing who Mauricio was, and regardless of his strange appearance, treated him respectfully and kindly, in every event. They made him feel an ordinary man, increasing his self-esteem.

Special thanks to the many photographers and visual artists who generously captured his artwork with their cameras, exhibitions and his own image, forever. I have named them all in this story.

Thanks to Erica Arvizu who helped with part of the correction of my writing and gave me very important advice.

Above all, my most sincere gratitude to God for all the small miracles He made in my son’s life, and all the magical moments He created along the way.

INTRODUCTION

Mauricio Saravia was born on January 27th, 1970, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He died in Hollywood, California, on December 12th, 2008. This is his story.

Although this book is not religious in nature, you will find many of Mauricio’s stories to hold miraculous events. This is not a medical book, but you will learn details of two very rare medical conditions that Mauricio suffered from; McCune-Albright Syndrome and Lion’s Face Syndrome. Though this is not a self-help book, I believe you will find his life’s stories to be inspirational. This is not a social- educational book, but I hope that once you’ve turned the final pages, you will have a better understanding of the challenges and hardships endured by individuals who have physical limitations and suffer from discrimination. I hope that his story might awaken empathy, respect and a sense of solidarity within you.

I would encourage teachers to read to their students these tales of Mauricio’s journey, as an example of the damages that bullying can incur, and how unfair they are.

Above all, I expect Mauricio’s life story will challenge anyone who looks different, to go out and face their community and remind them that what we look like is merely our container and who we really are, our true self; our essence, is inside of us. That version of ourselves can be seen by the mind and spirit of a sensitive person.

I am Mauricio’s mother. I am not a professional writer and English is my second language, but I have dared to do my best to share Mauricio’s story. Please, forgive any errors you find in my writing and try to see beyond the words, the message that I am trying to give.

He was born a normal looking boy, but because of a cruel genetic mutation, which doctors say occurs one in a million births, his exterior slowly deformed year by year, while his inner-self became more and more beautiful. He was gifted with an enlightened spirit and artistic mind. I think his most important trait, though, was his ability to accept his destiny and to still enjoy his life with what he was given. He accepted his talents as humbly as he accepted his terrible medical condition.

The following is a collection of anecdotes from the last decade of his life, along with some stories from his early life. I want to share his stories and achievements in those final stages of his life, which are impressive even if you disregard his health issues. In those years, he made an incredible number of friends, marking their lives forever in a positive way.

This book might make you cry, in certain pages, but it also will amaze you, amuse and entertain you, because Mau, as they called him in the states, had a great sense of humor and incredible things were always happening to him.

So here it is; a collection of anecdotes that will make you see life, love, death and humanity from a different perspective. Reading this book you will understand why Mauricio Saravia’s life was magical.

PART I

New York

Mauricio leaving the country on his own

On June 28th 1998, I hugged Mauricio and painfully watched him while he limped, dragging his wheeled bag toward the ticket counter at the Montevideo airport. He was going to New York with the intention to live there.

We had gone to the airport with my daughter Catalina, his step sister Zulma, his aunt Esther (both on his father’s side) and my friend Cristina. We knew that his decision of going to New York was very risky because of his weak health. Macarena and Eloisa, his twin sisters, were already in the US, but on the West Coast. We didn’t know anybody in New York.

A lot of thoughts passed through my mind while we were waiting for him to be called to his gate. I tried to hide how worried I was because I wanted him to enjoy this so long-awaited moment. I wanted him to be full of hope and encouragement. I was also hoping that his dreams could come true.

When they called for his flight, we were kissing and hugging him, and wishing him well with eyes full of tears. Then Mauricio left us there feeling helpless, and he went through the gate to the open air where there was a shuttle which would take all the passengers to the plane. Montevideo’s airport was old and small in 1998. There was no tunnel to take the passengers to the plane.

I tried to be strong as I had always been, but I couldn’t help my fears and worries. Would I ever see him again? How would he manage alone in New York with the little money he had and his rare medical condition? It hurt too much.

Catalina, Zulma, and Cristina had to go to work and old aunt Esther had to go back home, and so did I. We didn’t make any comments. We all knew. We had already had long talks about how dangerous this trip could be for Mauricio, and we were now speechless. There were no more words. We all knew what the other was thinking and feeling.

I went back home alone. I had got the day off at my work as an English teacher in the Army. I knew there would be around twenty hours of flight, and that he needed to find a place to stay before calling me and telling me how he was.

He took with him, his wheeled carry-on bag and two big wheeled suitcases. Besides his clothes, he had packed a heavy scrap book with photos and newspaper articles about his artwork, some issues of his two poetry books, and three acrylic paintings on wood sheets that barely fit in the bags, were mingled about his clothes.

He was taking the money that he had saved from his computer work, his disability pension, plus the money he had from selling his computer, printer, CD player, CDs and some important books. I could only give him a hundred dollars, and our friend, Ambassador Julio Cesano, had given him five hundred. Everything together added up to thirty-six hundred dollars. I had tried to convince him to stay home with me. The house belonged to me and although I had a low salary, we could live on it. Nevertheless, he wanted to follow his dreams, and he decided to go to New York. I would be cashing his disability pension, which was only two hundred dollars every month, and sending it to him via Western Union. I would also spend some money to buy his medicines every three months, and send them through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Consulate of Uruguay in New York, where he could go and pick them up. He had been on a chronic pain treatment for the previous six years.

I am back home alone

It was painful to imagine Mauricio flying to New York and arriving alone at the airport, without anybody waiting to help him and with so little money. I prepared some food, and then I went to talk with my neighbor and friend, Milva, trying to find some comfort.

Milva was an Italian-Uruguayan friend, my age, very tall, blonde who had kept her Italian accent although she had gone to Uruguay very young. She usually comforted me with my sad situations. As soon as I arrived to her house, she was asking questions about Mauricio’s trip. We were remembering how Mauricio had been waiting for years to emigrate, but both his grandpa, and his father, got very sick, so he had stayed to give them company and take care of them to the last moment. His grandpa had passed away in 1990, but then Mauricio had two spine surgeries in 1991 that required a long post-surgery recovery. When Mauricio started to feel better from his surgeries, his father had started suffering health issues. His dad was very sick until March 1998 when he passed away.

Mauricio had deeply suffered his father’s death, and he was mourning in sorrow. Soon he pulled himself together, as he always did, and he started to make arrangements to leave the country.

I thought that he was going to stay some months, as he had done in 1989, and that he would then come back to me because he needed my help with his physical disabilities. I was wrong. He had decided to settle down in the US or die in the intent.

I went back home and, that night, alone in my bed, unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep, I was thinking for hours on what Mauricio’s life had been until then. Images of the past running through my mind, as in a film. One of the memories that came to my mind was an awkward situation I had experienced in 1969, in the second month of my pregnancy. My husband Gumer and I were at home one morning. I was making him breakfast while he was getting ready to go to work. The doorbell rang, and Gumer went to open the door. Pedro, a teenager, the son of a friend of ours, was there. He had never visited us in the early morning. We let him in, and he started walking around the living room looking anxious and confused.

What’s going on? Can we help you? I asked.

Is anything wrong? Said Gumer. Sit down and have some breakfast with us.

What’s wrong, Pedro? Why are you acting so strange? Tell us. I said. He stared at me in concern for a moment and asked, Are you alright? Yes, I’m fine, thank you. Why? I responded.

Then Pedro looked at me with scared eyes and asked, How would you know if the baby dies inside you?

Gumer looked upset by this, directing Pedro to stop saying things to worry me and urging him to go home.

It’s alright, I said. He looks concerned. Let me explain it to him. Listen, Pedro, there is no reason to worry. I’m feeling alright. About your question, if the baby dies I would lose the baby naturally. It is what doctors call a miscarriage. Why did you come to ask me that at this hour in the morning?

He looked at me hesitantly and continued.

I went to the house of some friends last night and the lady there was with a couple of witches in a room, he said. I overheard them doing some curse on you and your baby. I opened a little the door of a room and saw they were on the floor lighting dark candles, drinking rum and saying spells for you. They were repeating your name. I couldn’t sleep all night.

This made Gumer even more upset and he asked Pedro again to leave, in a very rough way. The young boy left and we stayed there looking at each other without knowing what to think or say. I knew that the lady Pedro mentioned kind of hated me, but my husband and I didn’t believe in any supernatural stuff. We were not religious at all back then, had never even read the Bible, and really had no idea what witches used to do. I had never gone to any of those places that people talked about. Uruguay shares a border with Brazil, and with that there is a crossover of old Afro-Brazilian religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. Macumba, voodoo and things like that. I had not even gone to consult tarot cards for fun, as some of my friends had, because I thought those were things for ignorant people. I was not really worried about what Pedro had told us. My husband didn’t believe either, but he was very upset with the young boy.

I forgot completely about that morning until one evening, a month later, when I started bleeding.

It was 1969 and we didn’t have a phone at home because we had moved to that apartment recently, and to get a phone in Uruguay, at that time, it took a couple of years after requesting one to the only phone company, which belonged to the government. My husband was at work. I was alone and I didn’t dare to move much. I took a big towel, put it between my legs and lay down on the bed without moving at all and feeling very frightened. I remember I was feeling weak, maybe for the blood I had lost and I slept some hours. When I woke up, it was getting dark and my husband was back from work. He turned on the light and wanted to know why I was in bed so early. I told him and showed him my intense bleeding. He also got very scared when he knew what was happening to me.

Don’t move, he said, I’ll go to call from the cafe on the corner.

He went out and called the gynecologist. When he came back, he said that I should stay in bed, drink a lot of water, milk, eat well and that a nurse will be coming home the following morning to give me a shot. Gumer brought to bed all kinds of things. Water, milk, a steak and salad, a dessert he had bought in the cafe and he placed everything on a little table next to my bed.

I won’t be able to eat all that. Not even in two days, I said. I’m not hungry.

Well, I’ll make you eat it. You’ll have to, Gumer responded.

He didn’t go to work for several days and gently took care of me. By the following afternoon, the bleeding had stopped, but I still felt sick.

We didn’t want to talk about the story of the witches, but I am sure it was in his mind, as it was in mine. My sisters-in-law came to visit.

The gynecologist, Thomas Green (an English name - something very unusual in Uruguay, in the sixties), saw me three days later, ordered some tests and sent me home.

What was the shot for? I asked on our way out.

That was to keep your womb closed. You shouldn’t walk much or be standing for long, he said curtly.

I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do, nor that I wanted that, but I let the doctor and my husband do it. I didn’t like the fact that they hadn’t even consulted me about it.

I remembered what Pedro had said about the witches many times more during my pregnancy; although I sometimes had doubts, it was hard for me to believe, as an atheist, that the almost miscarriage of my baby had something to do with voodoo, and Gumer and I never mentioned it out loud.

My parents, my uncle and aunt, some friends, my sisters in law, my step daughters and step sons, everybody came to visit and helped me.

The pregnancy got to its end, and Mauricio was born, looking cute and healthy on January 27, 1970, after a long and painful day and a half of labor (probably because of the shot that had closed my cervix).

You are lucky. First child and it’s a beautiful, healthy boy, said Dr. Green. They put him on my chest. It was a magical moment, of course. I had never seen a newborn. There were no babies in my family of old people. I had never carried a baby, ever before. It was a shock of crashing feelings. That little thing was alive, I had given life to him, it was mine and I didn’t know what I was going to do with him. I had no clue of how to take care of him. Oh my! I was so ignorant! His face was perfect with delicate features. Perfect lips, tiny nose, pink cheeks and his eyes seemed to be large and very apart, getting almost to his temples. His hands were perfect, with beautiful long fingers. I opened the cloth that was wrapping him, and in curiosity I wanted to see the rest of his body. Everything was complete. Yes, he was a whole boy. His feet also were complete and they had ten toes.

I was marvelled. But his head…

Doctor, why his head is like a cone? I asked.

Don’t worry, my dear. You had a long labor and skulls are flexible in newborns. His was under pressure, he said reassuringly. Tomorrow it will be ok. What’s his name?

I don’t know yet, I said.

They wrote boy Saravia Damele on his wristband and took him away from me. He seemed to feel that, and he twisted and cried a little.

I went back to my room and it was full with relatives. My parents, aunt Tita and uncle Gabriel, Ester and Dinora; they all wanted to see the newborn. They went to the nursery to see him. Gumer and I were talking about the name.

You worked very hard to give birth, and also in the pregnancy, said Gumer, you choose the name.

Are you sure? I asked, in doubt that I could decide on something. Usually it was always his will.

Yes, yes, you choose, he said.

Well, there is my father’s name. Tomás. But, don´t you think it doesn’t sound good with the beginning of the last name? Tomas Saravia? People will pronounce it altogether and it doesn’t sound good. I’m sorry dad, I turned to him and said.

My dad looked discouraged but, although I was sorry that I could not please him, I always had the idea that the name is very important for our personality. I love my second name, Eloisa, and nobody calls me by it. But I feel I am more Eloisa than the nickname that people used to call me; Marisa, which comes from a combination of Maria Eloisa.

When everybody left, I asked my husband to go and get a newspaper. He did and I went to the social pages. As it was summer, there were several social pages, full of weddings and all kinds of events in Punta del Este, the high-class resort on the Atlantic coast that is like The Hamptons to New York. I am a fast reader and I went through hundreds of male names and none called my attention.

What kind of name are you looking for? Asked Gumer.

I don’t know. The name of the most successful man I can find, which also sounds good, I answered.

This one I want; Mauricio., I said suddenly. Mauricio who? Asked Gumer.

I don’t know. Here it says Mauricio Litman. The name sounds nice and he seems the most successful man in this important party, I said, pointing to the article.

My husband burst into a loud laugh and he couldn’t stop. I hadn’t heard him laugh so loud in a long time.

Sure, he is successful! He is an Argentinian Jew, he said in gulps of chuckles, the most powerful millionaire in both coasts of Rio de la Plata! I don’t know why, but many Jews who came as refugees, chose the name Mauricio to translate the Hebrew name Moshe instead of Moises. Are you sure that’s how you want to call our baby?

Yes, I am. Ok! He said.

And Mauricio he was.

Looking back, I feel it was not a spiritual way to choose my son’s name, but at that time, I was not a religious or spiritual person. Anyway, although it wasn’t my direct intention, and I didn’t realize it at that moment, I believe that God guided me to choose the Hebrew name Moshe. Moshe carries a big load of spirituality. He is one of the most important characters in the Bible; a man chosen by God. And there must be a reason why the Jews who relocated to Uruguay used to change their name from Moshe to Mauricio.

Even though his actual birthday is January 27th, his birth certificate says February 2nd because my husband didn’t want to separate from us, and by the time he went to register the baby, the January registration book was already closed. Now that I remember that, it sounds like colonial times. There were no computers, and there was a clerk who wrote down, in handwriting, all the births, on a huge book, which was changed every month. The earliest blank space he found in the big book was on February 2nd, which, by coincidence, is the date of my birthday.

Mauricio was the first of my four children. I married his father, Gumersindo Saravia, in January 1969. Gumer, as we all called him, was a divorced man. He was twenty years older than me, very handsome, and some people said he looked like a Hollywood actor. He was skinny but athletic, brown hair, brown eyes, and very charismatic. He already had four children from his first marriage and I thought he wouldn’t want to have more but as soon as we got married he said he wanted to have a baby with me and I got pregnant three months after our wedding.

Mauricio was my first son, and my parents’ first grandson. Maury was my husband’s fifth child, but he loved children and he was very moved with Mauricio. We were all very happy with his birth. When he was one year old, we moved to a bigger and nicer apartment and we got a phone. My husband was happy to be able to call me from work, to see how Maury and I were doing. We used to take him out for a walk every morning. He was a cute and hyper-active baby. We took him to the park, or to the beach in the summer because we lived three blocks from the coast. There was a promenade and a park very close to our home, and we knew he needed to spend all that energy he had.

I started to review Mauricio’s life since he went to live in the US. Not only at night but during the day when I was alone. I often thought on him when I was walking the twelve blocks I walked to work. I don’t know why I did that, but it was something that I needed to do. Maybe it was my way to feel him near.

His first work of art

I was a private English teacher and school tutor, and I worked at home. I had been teaching since my early youth, and I also used to do hand- crafts for my classes, or to decorate our home. I had a lot of art materials and markers of all colors. Mauricio had many times, since he was a baby, observed me very attentively, opening the markers one after the other, drawing and coloring cardboards.

I remember that, one day, I answered the phone and Mauricio was playing with car toys near me, in the living room. Suddenly, he wasn’t there. I supposed he had gone to his room, so I wasn’t concerned. I got two calls in a row, so I was a long time on the phone. When I hung up, I went to look for him. It took me a while to find him. The terrace, which had high walls and windows up to the ceiling, was the last room where I went. When I entered there, I suffered a sort of a shock. I saw almost all the long, white wall transformed into his personal canvas. I couldn’t believe my eyes. He had taken the box with all my markers to the long, closed terrace that went all along our three bedrooms, at the back of our apartment, facing the Villa Biarritz Park. He placed the markers on the floor and picked up and opened them one at a time, closing each one as he finished, and putting it back on the floor as he used to watch me do.

Being my first child, I had no experience with children because I was the only child of a small family. I never expected him, being only two years old, to do something like that. I was angry and, at first, I scolded him, thinking on how much it would cost to paint the wall again. I explained to him that he couldn’t do that, and he listened to me. He didn’t cry or say anything because he could hardly say a few words. I never knew why he couldn’t talk much at that age, and that was one of my concerns. I could realize that he understood more than other children of his age, but he hardly talked. He was a very quiet boy who never got angry.

I took him to the room where I had my hand-craft materials, and I gave him a lot of blank sheets of paper and crayons, which are not so messy as markers. I took him to his room, and I showed him that he could only draw and color on the paper sitting on his small chair at the small table he had in his room. He understood, and he never painted a wall again. After that, I also got him color pencils and lots of drawing paper. Experimenting with colors and shapes became his passion, and he spent hours doing that. He showed his dedication to arts all his life. I kept his drawings for several years but, unfortunately, due to all the times we moved to different addresses and cities and countries, all his early drawings were lost.

I remember that later that day, when I calmed down and accepted the idea that I had to paint the balcony wall again, I went to look at the drawings and I was surprised. Despite my lack of experience with little children, I realized that his drawings on the wall were a pretty neat work for a two- year-old kid. There, in the lines on the wall, I could see a car, a plane, a kind of tube that looked like a rocket pointing the sky, a kind of pyramid and even a mountain that seemed a volcano in eruption, smoke and fire coming out of it. He had used all the colors well. The car was red, the rocket was blueish, the mountain brown, the fire red, the smoke grey, the plane grey. Why did he draw those things? Where had those images come from, into his mind?

I then thought on the many hours he used to spend looking at books and magazines full of drawings and photos. Thumbing pages was one of his favorite things. He would also look at art coffee-table books that we had in our living room, which were too heavy for him to hold, so he sat or kneeled on the floor by the small table on a pillow and he would turn the pages very slowly, staring carefully at every image with passion. But I never thought that he could memorize any of those images in his mind and that he could draw them down from his memory. Years later, looking back and with the necessary experience with children and knowledge from reading special books, I understood that on that day I was in the presence of Mauricio’s first artistic expression and that the balcony wall had been his first canvas and I felt guilty for not praising him for his work. I was so ignorant that I couldn’t realize that. A dumb, ignorant mother. Sorry Maury! Well, it was not my only mistake as a mother and not only with Mauricio. Sorry girls! And I don’t think I have been the only mother to be wrong. Sorry, children of the world!

Szaicew, the Hungarian artist

When Mauricio was three and a half years old, my husband brought home a Hungarian artist who was living in Uruguay. His name was Eugene Szaicew and he was in his late thirties but looked older. He was very tall and very skinny, with deep blue eyes, half bald and his thin, very straight hair was light blond,. He had a very special gift; he could imitate any of the great masters and create paintings that seemed to be done by them. He didn’t paint reproductions; better than that, he created paintings in the same style of the great masters. My husband had asked him to paint a Chagall, a Ferrari, two Larravides and one Remington (the famous American painter). Gumer had also got him several clients. Every day, Szaicew covered our living-room floor with plastic, started crafting a canvas on a frame and then he began mixing into bowls, oils and acrylics with strange elements like toothpaste and white glue. Mauricio watched in silence, he seemed mesmerized with the whole process. After several days of work, Szaicew came up with a piece of art. Mauricio would then observe, with intense interest, when we hanged the canvas on the wall.

I wondered why Mauricio was so attracted to Szaicew’s painting technique, that he stayed some hours observing him painting instead of going to play with his toys. Sometimes, Eugene asked him to bring a cardboard and let him take a brush and paint a little on it. Mau was mesmerized with the experience of dipping the brush in the paint and striking it on the cardboard, but he never bothered Eugene much. He just watched in silence as the great artist’s brush strokes onto the canvas. It was not until he was a teenager that I realized that art was going to be his career. He kept on drawing all his life.

Szaicew was a very kind and sweet man, very humble and poor. He worked and ate at our house. We offered for him to stay in our guest room but he didn’t accept because he had to go back home to take care of his old and sick mother. I sometimes sent some food to her. We paid him more than he asked for his paintings and we got him clients for a long time. I thought it was not fair that he lived poor having such a great talent. He always seemed like a character from a European novel to me.

Maury calls from New York

Mauricio called from a phone booth using a phone card as soon as he could to let me know he was fine. He said he was staying at the YMCA but he could only stay a few days more there because it was very expensive for the little money he had. He was looking for a cheaper place.

He also said he was afraid that somebody could rob his paintings. I told him to go to the consulate of Uruguay and ask them to keep his paintings for a short time. He promised to do that.

I went to work after he hung up and I felt my head was going to break into small pieces. I didn’t know what to do to help him. I had only a small salary.

Three days afterwards, he called again and told me that the consul general didn’t want to talk with him. He said the secretary had entered the consul’s office and when he went back to Mauricio, he said that the consul was not in. Mauricio felt as though the consul was there, but didn’t want to receive him. He asked permission to leave his paintings in the consulate for a few days and the secretary told him to call the following day because he would have to ask the consul’s permission for that. When Mauricio called, the secretary said that the consul had not authorized to keep his paintings in the office.

Mauricio told me that the following day he had gone with the paintings and told the secretary that he didn’t know anybody in New York and he begged him to hide the paintings somewhere in the office until he could go to pick them up. The secretary showed some compassion for Mauricio and he said he would hide them in a small closet next to the bathroom, where they kept the cleaning stuff, but he told Mauricio not to tell anybody about that.

While the secretary was hiding the paintings, Mauricio had a crazy moment and went to the consul’s office door and opened it. The consul was there, reading a newspaper and doing nothing. He stood up and started yelling at Mauricio to go away.

I was listening to Mauricio’s story and I couldn’t understand why a man could be so rude and inconsiderate with a poor young man from his own country.

I had worked myself in the Consulate of Uruguay in the 80s when the offices were in San Francisco and we oversaw 19 states. I remembered that we had found lodging in Uruguayan houses to some Uruguayans who were visiting. What was wrong with that consul? Why was he doing that to a handicapped young man. I never mistreated anybody in the three years I worked in the Consulate.

I did my best to comfort Mauricio and I told him not to go back to the consulate and to keep on looking for a cheaper room so he could start going to galleries and find one where he could put his paintings for sale.

I love you! You are strong. Don’t get angry. Don’t let this put you down. I know you will go on trying and remember, you have a ticket to come back and live with me. We can manage with my salary and some computer work you can do. I don’t want you to have any other bad time there and I want you to eat good and healthy. Here you don’t have to worry about renting a room or buying food. I will be happy if you come back.

I know. Thank you, mother, but I want to stay here.

We said bye and he hung up. I was crying, desperate. What could I do to help him? Then I had an idea. Mauricio’s father had been a relative and a friend of the president of Uruguay at that time: Julio M. Sanguinetti, whose mother´s mother was Regina Saravia, a close relative of my husband. I decided to write a letter to him, explaining the whole situation and the way the consul had rejected Mauricio. I arrived to the presidential house, just when the president was leaving. I saw the official cars pass in front of me and I waved to the president and showed him the envelope with my letter inside. He saw me, recognized me, and waved back to me. Oh, oh, I thought; bad timing. When all those cars leave at the same time it usually means the president is not coming back soon. I stayed there, at the entrance in distress, but as I am very stubborn, I walked a few steps to the security guard booth.

Good morning, I said, accidentally interrupting him as he spoke on a communicator.

Yes, Mr. President. The lady is here, the guard said into the radio.

My face illuminated. Was he talking about me? There were no cell phones in Uruguay in 1998 so the president was talking by the car radio to the guard at the entrance. The guard hung up the radio and he greeted me.

Do you have a letter for the president? I do. Here it is. I handed it to him.

Fine. The president is going to the airport. He is traveling to Washington today, but there is another car leaving for the airport in a minute and the driver is going to take your letter to Mr. President.

I thanked him very much and went back home. Later I knew that the president got the letter while he was waiting for his plane at the VIP room, where he also had a brief press conference. He was going to Washington DC and took my letter with him.

I was also told that President Sanguinetti had called the consul in New York while he was in DC, to tell him that he was related to Mauricio and that he would like Mauricio to be treated in a special way. But, unfortunately, it did nothing to help the situation. The consul didn’t do anything different and he didn’t change his attitude. Mauricio and I could never understand the reasons he had to treat him like that. For me it has been one of those mysteries of mankind attitudes.

Next, I went to talk to our friend Ambassador Julio Cesano and told him what was going on. Julio Cesano is our only African Uruguayan Diplomat, highly educated, and a very nice man. He is handsome, a real gentleman, and very compassionate. He informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs and gave him a letter written by me where I explained the situation. He also, promised to talk on the phone to a lady, friend of his, called Carmen, who lived in New Jersey in a big house and with only one roommate. He gave me the lady’s phone number.

I went back home very excited and I called aunt Ester. I asked her to send an email to Mauricio, telling him about the possibility that he might get a room in the house of a lady in New Jersey and gave her the name and the phone number to pass to him. I did not have a computer at that time, so Mauricio could only communicate on the phone, which was expensive and by regular mail, which took a long time. So Ester wrote an email to Mauricio for me, telling the news and sent him the phone number so he could call the lady. Maury went every day to a cyber cafe to write an email to his aunt Esther and to his twin sisters who were living in California. When Maury got Ester’s email with the good news, he called that number right away. The lady was very nice to him and told him that he could go to live in her house the following day. She said that he wouldn’t have to pay anything for a couple of months until his situation could get better.

New Jersey

Mau called me that night to tell me the news, very happy and excited. He said he was moving to the lady’s house the following morning.

We thought his problems would be solved, at least for a while until he could sell a painting or get a job as a graphic designer or web developer. To show his gratitude, Mauricio decided that while he was not paying rent he would try to do some cleaning in the house. He was always very neat and tidy. He used to vacuum, wash the dishes and put things in order every day. Carmen went out to work early every morning so she didn’t have much time to clean her house. The following day, after cleaning up as much as he could, he went to Manhattan. His hopes were to find a gallery for his paintings. Then, he decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building out of nostalgia for the trips he would take with his father when they went to the U.S. for medical treatments when he was younger. The hospital was in Massachusetts, but before going to check in for treatments they went to New York and stayed a couple of days at the house of some friends so they could visit the city and have some fun. What Maury loved most was to go to the top of the Empire State Building. Mauricio said that the feeling was like he was on top of the world, almost in the sky. He went, although it was not cheap, but he needed to have that experience again. He spent a long while in contemplation, observing every building, park and street that could be seen from there, in attempt to recall the same feelings of his childhood trips. He called me on the phone later to tell me that. He said he had been watching the big apple for a long while from the top, remembering his father, almost feeling his presence next to him. This time he was alone and in a very difficult situation, but he decided to enjoy that moment without worrying about his future. That was his way of facing every day, every moment.

He then told me a very nice story. He said that suddenly, a guy who was with his wife, approached him, introduced himself as Avi Lipton and started a nice conversation. They talked for a long while, then Avi, a middle aged white man, brown hair, with a very neat short beard and a friendly smile, and his pretty wife, invited him to a cafeteria and told him to order something to eat. Mauricio was really hungry and he was happy with the invitation. While he was eating a sandwich, Avi gave him his card, on which Mauricio could see the letters PHD next to his name. Mr. Lipton had a position at the University of North Carolina in the department of religious studies. He told Mauricio to call him to talk sometime and asked him to give him a call if he ever went to North Carolina.

Mauricio, who knew rejection and discrimination, was very happy anytime somebody was nice to him. He interpreted that encounter as a sign that he was in the right place or at least in the right country.

He told me that story, then mentioned a little again about the consulate incident, but he immediately changed the subject. He was very excited about his new friend, Avi Lipton. Mauricio said that they had the same preferences in books and that Avi also liked Sufi poetry. Mauricio couldn’t find anybody who knew that poetry in Uruguay so he was very happy.

He also wanted to tell me how happy he was with his room in the house of Carmen in New Jersey. Our phone call felt delightfully long. Maybe because I was happy to hear good news.

Mauricio, how much did you pay for this phone card? Three dollars, he responded.

How is that we are still talking, then? I think we have been talking for 20 minutes. A three-dollar card would only last a few minutes.

Yes, you are right! It is going to be disconnected any moment.

Ok. We better say good bye then. The line will cut off any moment. Please, take care. Always keep your documents in that special flat leather wallet with a button that you can hang at your neck and carry a paper with the consulate phone number, my phone number in Montevideo and your aunt’s email address in case you have an accident. Please, remember that if you don’t feel well or if you think you can’t make it in New York, you can always come back here.

Do you remember how much I worked to buy a good computer, a printer, a CD player and a tower of CDs and one day thieves broke in, robbed our house and took everything? I won’t go back by any means.

We had been talking for one hour and a half. He asked about his sister Catalina, who was living with me. He told me that he had talked on the phone to his twin sisters Macarena and Eloisa, who were living in California. They both were complicated and they had told him that it was very hard to settle down in the U.S. They said that he wouldn’t get medical assistance and that it would be better for him to go back to Montevideo and live with me before his visa was due. He described all the tall buildings and stores on the street around the phone booth he was at. He told me about his dreams, how much he loved the U.S., how excited he was to be there.

We said goodbye like four or five times, thinking the card was going to expire any moment. When the line was finally cut off, I burst into tears. It was a magical moment. I felt that it was like a miracle that the phone card had lasted so long. A gift from God, so we could talk, feel ourselves nearer and sooth our sorrow for being so far away. But I was also afraid. What if it was the last time I talked to my son?

Peace didn’t last long at the house in New Jersey. The other roommate in the house was a crack addict and as Carmen was all day out working, she didn’t know that, but Mauricio had to deal with him.

To avoid being alone with the roommate, he had to leave the house as early as Carmen and he wouldn’t go back to the house until late in the afternoon. He used to go to Manhattan and visit different galleries, talking to several gallery managers and showing his scrap book with photos of some of his paintings that were in Uruguay. He had dreams that maybe somebody would accept to do an exhibition of his paintings. If he sold them at a low price, he would ask me to send some of his paintings to him. He also used to go to small bookstores and showed his two books of poems with the hope that somebody would want to put them for sale. Although nobody accepted to sell artwork or his books in New York, he was never discouraged. He also showed some samples of his graphic designs and offered his services to do posters or business cards in different stores. He had so much to offer that he was sure he could get some work.

As he had to be on the street almost all day, because it was a bad situation to go back to the house, he went to a cyber cafe to receive his emails and write emails to his aunt and sisters. He would drink lots of mineral water and buy a couple of hot dogs or a hamburger that he would eat sitting at a park, to rest and recover so he could go on walking to other galleries.

He had also been looking for a room to rent but he couldn’t find