La Voz de Galicia – February 7, 2025 →
The other day, I called Yoly, and she put me on with her hens. I was having one of those upside-down days, in which, for whatever reason, nothing seemed to go right. I decided to call my sister to check if she had arrived, as she was taking the bus home that day, and on days like that, I always imagine the worst. And through the video call, she pointed the camera at her chickens. “How many do you see?” she asked. “I count four,” I replied. We talked about how they roamed freely around the garden, and she showed me each one, explaining who was who (though in my ignorance, I couldn’t tell them apart). And as we chatted about our own things, I watched the hens parade around the yard, and between Yoly and the chickens, for a moment, I forgot that my day had started off all wrong.
The previous week, I had spoken to her cats—all of them except Mosquito, who hadn’t returned from his latest adventure. “He’ll come back, he always does,” my sister said. Conversations with the cats flow more easily because, unlike the chickens, I can recognize each one, and even though it’s Yoly I’m talking to, she keeps the camera focused on the cats, so our conversations naturally weave through whatever each of the little felines is doing.
I think talking to Yoly in her natural universe makes me feel good—it reminds me that, despite everything, life goes on, and we are a part of it. And on days when, for whatever circumstances, my mind jumps to the worst possible scenarios, when I can only imagine terrible things, sometimes I catch myself redirecting my thoughts to seek refuge in my sister’s cats and chickens so I don’t dwell too much on what’s happening around us.
(I’ll save for another day the conversation with her neighbor’s geese…)
