The tree that she was
My grandmother Eugenia was my father’s mother, an indigenous woman who lived in the countryside and whom my father brought home because he promised her that when he got his own house, she would live with him. When she joined my family, I had not yet been born, so I suppose that from the moment I opened my eyes, my grandmother was there: watching me, loving me. Since my mom and dad worked, my grandmother was the one who looked after us, her grandchildren.
That love she felt for us was mutual: the love I had for her was what made me teach her to read and write, because she was illiterate. It led me to take on the task, after taking a nap, of reading aloud to her all the newspapers of the day or giving her foot massages because her feet were cramping or very tired.
"My grandmother works magic," I used to tell my classmates always, as if my grandmother were the most wonderful being in the world.
For example, at home there was a guava tree that she had planted and it was the perfect place whenever I wanted to escape from the world. My grandmother had forbidden me to climb it, fearing I would fall, but I always did it without her noticing. Once, jumping from one side to the other, I fell and my grandmother ran to help me. I was crying as if I had broken something, and she just told me her magical words:
Heal, heal, little frog's tail, if you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow - she repeated over and over until the pain passed and I stopped crying.
That guava tree, where I climbed every afternoon, was used to give us shade while she told us stories, or when she sat to sew, embroider, sing, or take a nap, while I from above, threw dry leaves or little sticks to let her know I was there, near her:
Climb down from there, little monkey - my grandmother would repeat, playing along, but without doing anything to make me get down.
I can only conclude by saying that I am a lucky woman to have had an angel as a grandmother, whom I still remember and love very much, and that, although I am grateful for everything she gave me, I would have liked to have her alive longer because it’s not sentimentality, but my world has been very sad without her.
The images are from my personal gallery and the text was translated with Deepl
Thank you for reading and commenting. Until a future reading, friends