From the beginning
A matter of a week ago I lost an important document--which, by the way, was not mine, nor was it I who mislaid it -- but since then an uncomfortable little twinge flickers in my temple at night and warns me that it will be there until I get it sorted out.
The thing is that I went today, for the second time, to pick up the document at the branch of my distribution, and although the women are there in their office, enjoying the air conditioning without doing anything and their bureaus clean of back work, they don't do the paperwork today, only Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I left there very pissed off under the terrible afternoon sun, without realising that the exit was exactly at the back of my old primary school.
It had been a while since I'd been there, and if I did I didn't pay much attention to it, but suddenly I remembered the following theme launched by @ericvancewalton:
Monday Memories #25 (26 August - 1 September): Have you ever lost a friendship that meant a lot to you?
The view of the backyard behind the closed gates of the place suddenly brought me closer to a past as distant in time as the laughter of children who at that very moment were playing mischievously infiltrated inside the school.
A great friendship.
When I arrived at this school I was eight years old, had just moved in, and literally left no special friendships behind, just my dolls and my usual books, and the odd cat, lizard and sparrow from the previous playground.
So it was that I met in the flat below mine, in the new building, another girl of the same age, with a great desire to laugh, mischievous, funny, witty, very talkative, and with extraordinary social skills.
Let's name her Alice, she was unbelievable.
I can't describe the number of adventures Alice and I had, starting a friendship that lasted uninterrupted for nine years.
Since I entered this school, we have been together in the same classroom and at the same study table; the teachers have tried to separate us many times because of our chatting, but in the end the magnets have brought us together again.
Honestly, because of her funny way of being, she attracted many children, so that two multiplied into four and six and eight progressively, there was no possible way to stop the society of the funny girls.
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Our neighbourhood, our homes.
I remember that song by Cindy Louper called ‘Girls just want to have fun’ and I can see us there in front of a film projector dressed as princesses, making up scripts for series, promoting apples (which were green tomatoes), giving interviews to radio and television journalists which we would record on cassettes to later show them to the family and laugh all night long.
A very nice stage of my childhood.
But, one day, puberty arrived and with it came new approaches; the beginning of junior high school changed the environment, and although we were stronger because we accompanied each other, the perception of the world began to transform within the semantic language of our minds.
My first year of high school was a total disaster, a lot of nonsense and bad grades, that was the trigger to understand that I was doing something wrong, or that I was wasting my time on nonsense.
So little by little we started to drift away from some common goals, I mean, I don't remember her goals very well, but I guess for all of us it was a common factor, just studying, but she was a good girl and she was still my friend Alice.
We arrived at high school together, but already too divided to share ideas or plans, let alone common studies, and a series of jealousies, arguments and perhaps misunderstandings buried what was left of our old relationship.
When it was time for me to go to university, I realised that our friendship was definitely over, and that we had nothing to do with each other even though we had been at school together for so long.
Thus we closed a friendship that lasted throughout our elementary and middle school, she moved out of the building, then I did, and we disconnected for seven long years, after which we were never the same, but I can say that we still see each other and greet each other with great affection.
Alice today is an excellent mother of two beautiful young boys and has developed some very nice skills in creating home decor items, no doubt her love for the art of handicrafts has helped her to get ahead.
Of course, I have not only had Alice as one of my best friends, I have had other important people on my list of best friends.
But the reason for the current distance is mostly due to processes of demographic mobilities.
During my stay at the pre-university school, mostly on scholarship, I had the good fortune to meet a boy who, during the three years of my studies, we shared a table during the classes.
I remember arriving at that school a month after course started, and all the tables were already occupied, except for his, which was exactly in the middle row, the fourth row, and I went there and asked him if I could sit down, and with a sullen, cold indifference he replied that he didn't care.
A week later he was teaching me English with songs by Tracy Chapman and Bryan Adams, while I returned the favour with the step by step trigonometry equations, and we were hand in hand laughing at the world while he affectionately called me the Poli, a moth and I called him a Garrapato, because of his two front teeth separated from each other, it has nothing to do with him but I related him to Goofy the other Disney puppy.
We inevitably drifted apart after finishing school for more than thirty years, mainly because we don't live in the same municipality, and because we took very different directions in life. Today he works in important hotel companies in the country and from time to time we catch up on WhatsApp and laugh a lot about the politics of our country.
My best friend.
My best friend, the friend of maturity, was a kind of companion, a mythological being who accompanied you without judging you but always warned you of all the mundane dangers of life.
She was a very humble, very simple person with a heart of gold.
We met during pre-university, and she used to be a quiet girl who got along very well with everyone, too quiet for my taste, I thought, so much so that a couple of times I harassed her with my indiscreet questions, but she resisted like an oyster all my interrogatory massacres with tremendous dignity.
Then we went to university together and we sealed a deal for life, my mother used to make an example of her and I looked at her sideways because of that, it turned out that in my house the girl had a godmother and a godfather.
We graduated and she got a very good job that allowed her to get ahead and help her family a lot, then she emigrated (more than 20 years ago) and she owns a bakery in Spain, and from time to time she dedicates one of her most beautiful cakes to me.
Even after so many years we still talk to each other and catch up, but from a distance the world is not the same, and the distance hurts because you miss the embrace, the closeness, the confession, and the warmth of your favourite humans.
Thank you for the space you offer us every week, @ericvancewalton without a doubt this series of memories give us the opportunity to relive the past with an indescribable nostalgia and joy, at least in this one today it has been like that for me.
If you want to know more about this beautiful proposal just follow the link.
Always very grateful for the reading.
Photos taken with my Xiaomi Redmi 9C
Photos edited in Lightroom App
Translation done with Deep Translate, free version.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
