The Semblance of Happiness

La Voz de Galicia – February 12, 2021 →

Cristina PatoAt times, I wonder how we will remember this moment in our lives, what parts of this pandemic we will decide to forget and what we will keep. It is curious to think that it has already been a year since the first cases (officially) appeared in our country. And it is even more curious to think of the passing of time during this year because for me, it flowed at a different rhythm than I was accustomed to. It was as if it were a floating time, a time that waits, that doesn’t know whether to save minutes or let them flow.

And just as life goes on, so does time, and on the way we lose a little bit of everything (lives, dreams, patience), and that cloud in which this time of pandemic inhabits seems to be making gray all that we aim for. And then I thought about carnival, in the hope of imagining another reality where one could be other things, in the joy of community. But for some reason, I thought about a carnival of time past, even though carnival is here, right now. It is like time is stuck since that last carnival, and at the same time so many things have happened! Could it be that we have spent a year of lent?

Today, before making the round of family phone calls, I decided to put on my costume, the semblance of happiness, because I did not want to transmit my sadness to the women and heroines in my life. It was not easy to find it because it was quite hidden: it was under things to be forgotten, at the bottom of the wardrobe of penuries–there was my semblance of happiness. And once I put it on, with the intent to make them smile with my ridiculous trivialities, I ended up smiling as well, and for a moment I forgot how sad I felt. And then, I decided to leave on the costume until carnival ends, to see if the illusion cheers me up as well…

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