My grandfather was a brave, fearless man, strong, manly. He left his homeland at the age of eighteen, went to start a new life in the confines of the new world and won. He never went back to Spain, the land where he was born. He fathered thirteen children, eight with my grandmother.
My grandmother, a woman of Italian descent, very religious, I remember well, attended to Mass every day.
The children my grandfather had with my grandmother, his second marriage, were all named beginning with the letter G, except for the last daughter, my aunt who received a diminutive name that did not begin with the letter G. I never understood why.
Until one day, in a visit to my older aunt, everything was cleared up.
She explained: It was to prevent pregnancy!
What? I asked perplexed.
Well, she said, my mother, a fervent Catholic, never avoided having children, but she had seven already, not counting the children from my grandfather’s first marriage, which she certainly in one way or another was involved with. Besides, she was pregnant again. In short, thirteen children, she didn’t want any more. But how to avoid following Catholic norms?
That’s when a friend, my aunt continued, taught her. Said the friend: When your child is born, give the child your name, this will close the circle and you will never have children again. Luckily a girl was born, who received the same name of my grandmother, only in the diminutive. Have you ever wondered if it was a boy? Poor guy, he’d have to spend his whole life with a woman’s name.
If this charm works in all cases, I can’t say. But in my grandmother’s case it either worked or other means were employed. She didn’t have any more children.
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