1.

Susanna Says... This is my Life

BY SUSANNA

Music

A TV's life is a composition of music and imagery. that is exciting and languid, and imagery that forms a torrent of colored pictures, as vivid as a technicolor movie. To write one's own life is to close our vision of the present and slide backwarda in time until we stop at our earliest recollection, our first re- alization that we were different from others.

At the age of 7, Susanna was a nameless little girl--she was not to be baptized until some thirty years later. Her parents did- n't know she existed, and she became aware of herself when her al- ter ego, a rather frail little boy, as rich in the imagination de- partment as he was lacking in muscle and brawn, was suddenly con- fronted with a scene that was to remain the most vivid single ex- perience in his entire life. But before we describe this moment of revelation, let us briefly see the social frame of reference in which this boy had grown.

Non-smoker, non-

Father: healthy, muscular and fun-loving. drinker and with an eagle-eye for the fair sex. The latter, a common and socially winked-at trait in the Spanish-speaking comm- unity where our story takes place. He was proud of his son's in- tellectual prowesses in school, but lamented the kid's lack of interest in rough body-developing sports. The boy tried hard, but without success. The mother: rather frail in body, delicately built and with a great capacity for love towards the world. Always passive and feminine. And then there was a sister, four years younger than the boy in our story. She was--as it sometimes happens closer to the father in personality traits. Independent, strong willed and disinterested in household tasks, which held a secret fascination within her brother's mind. The boy felt peculiarly oloser to the mother than his sister did. And the mother, sensing the hopeless task she faced in instilling her daughter with those attitudes which society expects of little girls, instinctively turned towards the boy, subconsciously finding in him the femin- inity not shown by her little girl. Let us say at this point that at no time did she pressure the boy into feminine tasks, although