La Voz de Galicia – April 22, 2022 →
It was already late, and I was tired and grumpy. Even though it was not at all her fault, when one feels like this one tends to take it out with the loved one nearest at hand. This time, it was my mother’s turn to endure my nonsense about the meaning of life, and she (in her way of embracing oblivion), when I apologized for dumping on her all the things that worried me, simply replied, «Don’t worry about it–in five minutes I won’t even remember why you were upset.» And then she picked up the card deck and began to deal without saying anything else.
I think we played for about more than an hour. She won almost every hand because in the games of brisca and escoba, Maruxa has the advantage of many years over me. And we spoke about nothing more than about the corenta, the velo, the aces and the gold coins…And suddenly, at the moment of picking up the table to go to bed, I realized that the weariness I had was no longer present in the same way. That is to say, I remained tired, but the sensation did not feel as heavy.
Sometimes I wonder why we decide to make our lives more complex than they already are. Why do we insist on worrying about problems we cannot solve, and why are we not capable of stopping feeling upset about those small daily disappointments? I also wonder about what we can do to stop being carried away by apathy so that reluctance does not take over our lives. And it is then that I remember the game of cards with Maruxa, or the chapter of a particular book that saved my life this week; and I am moved when I think about how much beauty there is still around us, and in how difficult it is sometimes to prevent weariness from making us ignore the daily joys that life gives us.
