"The criteria of a child will always be distant from the understanding and reason of an adult. It is there where the experiences are born that, as adults, transport us once again to the memories of our childhood". Being so small and inexperienced in the face of life, we tend to see certain aspects of it with the clarity of an imagination that makes us fly. The safest and most comfortable thing for a child may be what is closest to adventure and fun, and depending on where you see it from, your own experience will give you the power to judge the outcome of such actions.
I write this from the essence of the child I was yesterday, who with a somewhat rebellious and reckless spirit always reflected the restlessness that at times caused my mother to worry. Despite having a source of distraction through my toys and television, sometimes my curiosity escaped these limits and led me to think about doing something that from my point of view would be more fun. What could it be? Well, on one occasion I wanted to jump from a wall to a rope hanging from a mango bush to swing at full speed, and ended up giving my mother a big scare while I broke my left arm thanks to a rather spectacular fall.
Could that have discouraged my desire to walk on the heights? Well, I don't think it wasn't even a year after my accident when one afternoon something new occurred to me. And that is that right in the front yard of my house there was a guava bush, one that I used to play under the shadows of its branches on some afternoons. "Why not give it a try, and climb it to see how far I could get?" Obviously on my first attempt I earned my mother's scolding, but that was nothing to the joy and satisfaction I could feel.
I felt very happy and even privileged to be able to climb this tree as many times as I wanted, times when in most cases it had to be at my mother's carelessness or ignorance. This guava tree was not so high, but for me it was like the highest mountain that could exist. Fear? Not at all! For my heart felt totally confident, as if it were a beautiful home that I could climb up and down with dexterity and agility. This bush also became my refuge and escape route when I knew I had done something wrong, and although I could escape for a while, in the end my mom would always tell me: someday you will have to come down! 🙈😅
From one moment to the next the guava tree became my ideal place to play, and thanks to this I even convinced one of my neighbors to come up and play with me. Sometimes we had nothing to do and suddenly I would say "Hey, José Luis, let's go to the guava bush!" And so in just a few minutes we were both up in the highest part of the bush, a place my friend named "Los Copitos" 🤔 I really don't know where he got that name, but I thought it was cool and that's how it stayed ☺️
Maybe my accidental experience in which I fractured my arm left something latent in me, and a sign of that is that there were certain moments when I was aware of the danger of climbing the bush, especially when it was rainy season. I remember that once, one of my mom's friends told me to be very careful when the bush was wet, because it gets very slippery, which is totally true. That's why, in rainy weather, I was only content to play metras under the bush.
In most cases, I was always alone up in the bush, either playing, eating guavas or throwing them to passers-by. There were afternoons when I would simply climb up to watch the birds that were going to eat the guavas, and so I would entertain myself for a long time. My mother no longer had to call me to know where I was, since she went directly to the bush, and I was very entertained in that place. Suddenly that fruit tree became my favorite place to play, enjoy or simply think, giving free rein to an imagination that sometimes turned the bush into a huge war tank or a spectacular spaceship 🥲.
As an adult, one afternoon I was sitting with my mom on the front porch of the house when a startling noise seemed to shake the house. We quickly ran in front of the house, and so we saw something totally unexpected: the guava bush fell by its own force, leaving that place that for many years it had occupied in a special way. Among many assumptions, inevitably came to me a kind of "Flashback" that invaded me with a deep feeling of farewell. I even reclaimed myself for an illusory idea of believing that that tree had felt a kind of abandonment or absence on my part, perhaps reclaiming that affection that nested for me in my childhood times. ❤️
This is one of those publications that revive in me that bittersweet taste that usually keeps the past, because on the one hand it rejoices once again that child that still exists in my heart, although with an innocence that in order not to be abused simply shelters in the deepest part of my being. Because it is not about being like a child once again, but about feeling like that free soul who is not afraid to fly and who feels so comfortable and safe for being the way he is.
