La Voz de Galicia – May 8, 2020 →
We went out for a stroll and suddenly everything changed. “What are you doing, Maruxa?» «I am picking out a spot so that Xan can take a picture of me.» The roads are full of beautiful wildflowers, and the entrances to homes in my village are small botanical gardens. Everything is beautiful. We walked and walked, and the truth is that we didn’t even speak much. The two of us were looking everywhere, like tourists in our own land. And if any comment broke that magical silence, it was to praise the power of nature: «Look how it looks for the sun; roots and brooks always find a way to survive.»
During these last sixty days that we have spent together, we have gone through a range of emotional states. She, I, and Xan. At times, uncertainty led to anxiety because we didn’t know what was the next step; but that same uncertainty also made us embrace the fact that, in truth, we had never known what the next step would be.
There are days when I think that all this is a parenthesis, in its mathematical definition: «Sign employed to isolate an expression and to indicate that a specific operation must be completed with the complete expression,» and I try to be excited by the idea that once the operation is solved, we will be able to continue with the equation of life. But I am aware that this parenthesis of time and space will have permanent consequences in our lives, and that until it is over, we will not be able to adapt.
But step by step a path is made, and so, I was speaking on the phone with a friend of my deceased father’s (who would die all over again if he knew the bars were closed); Luisín shared with me the best quote I have heard at this time, something that Orentino had shouted at him through the trestle: «If we survive this, it’s because we are immortal!»
