My Toddler Tantrum Phase And Happenings From 1979 #TheYearOf40

When I decided to do this storytelling exercise I didn’t think of how hard was going to be to extract the memories of my early years from my mother and father. For my second year of life when my toddler tantrum phase started, it wasn’t that hard after all. With a simple prompt, my mother quickly remember a couple of my toddler adventures that gained me a reputation that lasted more than 20 years.

Just in case my parents memories would fail  (often happens to both of them!), my father had made sure to leave proof of my toddler tantrum phase as you can see in the above picture.  Apparently lasted for quite some time, something like terrible twos merging into the crazy threes. Looking at this picture again triggered those memories for me as well; and I couldn’t possibly keep it from you guys now that I’m invested in recording my life story.

As I turned 2 in May 1979 my toddler tantrum phase was already in full swing, as my parents’ marriage was deteriorating after six years of union. You would think it couldn’t be that bad since I was so little still, but this wasn’t the case. Talking to my dad about this time in my life while my own toddler is still two, makes me marvel at the similarities, how genes are so amazing that I can almost see myself at age 2 through him.

Like him, I was a chatty box (no surprise there) and for the few things my father remembers, I came to the conclusion that my little one’s inquisitive nature, always discovering the world around him and his big smile and sense of humor are some traits I had when I was 2. Not to mention that my own toddler tantrum phase has me on my tiptoes, his mood swings and temper tantrums have also become legendary.

It has proven very difficult to have more details of what I was up to when I was just 2 years old, but although my father’s memory is not the best, I’m enjoying the process of scrapping whatever comes to his mind by looking at the old pictures and giving him some prompts.

A bit of Dominican history from 1979

While my mother dealt with my toddler tantrum phase and my older sister settled in school, life was happening for adults as usual.  In my opinion, and judging for what I’ve heard over the years, there were 3 main events that marked the year of 1979 in the Dominican Republic:

• The year started with a big win for catholics, which is a huge segment of the Dominican population, when on January 1979, Pope John Paul II visited the Dominican Republic for the first time. He visited the country 2 more times after that during his time as Pope.
• Antonio Guzmán, who had won the election the year before after Joaquín Balaguer’s notorious 12 years, was in his second year of presidency with a very high approval from the people. He was president for only one term and didn’t seek reelection, despite the fact that he could. He committed suicide on July 4 1982 while he was still the sitting president. Antonio Guzmán is regarded as the best president the Dominican Republic ever had.
• In August 31, 1979, hurricane David landed on Dominican soil via San Cristóbal & Haina, southern towns in close proximity to the city of Santo Domingo. The category 5 hurricane, that had winds with speed as high as 240 kilometers, was one of the strongest and most devastating storms the Dominican Republic had seen since 1930.

[dania]