When sleep leaves me, coffee is my great companion. There must be many nights when I have seen the clock ticking, taking small sips of a smooth coffee, guarapo as we say in my country, very hot and with a slight touch of sugar.
A few days ago my youngest daughter, who lives in Spain, was on a trip to London, visiting a virtual friend with whom she had been communicating for years. It was five days in which the time difference meant that I was glued to the phone very late in the morning hours, and the only way to stay awake was with my cup of coffee by my side.
For her the most comfortable thing to do was to communicate in the early hours of the morning, in the wee hours of my morning, before she left for her day out. Then she would go to places where she often couldn't find coverage for her cell line. Plus his attention was focused on what he was enjoying. I would wait every morning to check in with her and know that everything was going well.
On the day of her return her flight was rescheduled so she arrived at the Barcelona airport at almost two o'clock in the morning, nine o'clock at night for me. At that time the best alternative was to stay at the airport until the buses started running to take her to the train station, where she would take one to the town where she lives, about eighty kilometers west of Barcelona.
During those three hours, every half hour I contacted her to talk to her, I was anxious that she was alone at the airport. As we talked, she would give me a good summary of her trip. Every so often I would go to the kitchen to heat up my coffee.
A little before five in the morning she told me she would take the first bus, time passed and she did not communicate with me...
After an hour I received the voice note on Whataspp, she informed me that she had fallen asleep on the bus and had missed the stop for the nearest train station. When she woke up she was in an area a bit unfamiliar to her. She had to walk a few blocks, freezing to death, until she managed to hail a cab to take her to the train station.
I imagined her in dark and lonely streets, like those of my city in the early hours of the morning. But then she told me that in Barcelona people were walking the streets at all hours, which gave me a lot of relief.
From that moment on I told her to put her location live on Whatsapp to know where she was.
At six o'clock in the morning, local time, he took the train. We stopped communicating for about half an hour, but I kept updating the location and watching his progress.
I got another voice note informing me that there had been a mishap on the track and that I had to transfer by bus to another train station.
The wait for the bus lasted almost two hours. I was really sleepy. Finally the bus arrived and transferred her to another train station. If all went well and there were no more mishaps she would arrive in her town in twenty minutes. I updated the location and watched with joy as she got closer and closer to her destination.
She had told me that it was about twenty minutes from the station to her house. I don't know if it was because of her heavy luggage or because she was already too tired after so many hours without sleep, but the trip was much longer, it took her almost forty minutes to get to the apartment where she lives.
That journey from the station to her house seemed very peculiar to me, I zoomed in on google maps and followed it step by step.
I could see that my daughter was walking through labyrinthine streets, some of them seemed to end halfway. Every now and then she would cross from one place to another. As I watched her trail I was reminded of those spy movies where the characters take crazy routes to mislead their followers.
The map pointer stopped for a few minutes, I thought I had arrived and indeed I had. After a few minutes in a voice note she told me that she was already in her bed, it was nine in the morning for her and four in the morning for me.
Very tired I went again to the kitchen for some coffee and realized that it was over. I didn't feel like setting up the coffee pot again.
I went to bed and had a little trouble falling asleep, I still had the map pointer in my head marking my daughter's footsteps.
Thank you for your time.
Images edited in Photoshop.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version).
Logo creado por @themanualbot
