Father, Long-winded, Pumice

 

The beautiful moments were rare and fit inside my hands, but we all know that when we imprison something, we lose ourselves, becoming hostages of that something that we dare to make captive. I had to find a way to keep them alive, to guide me and motivate me, and not to idolize them. I wanted to see them multiplied, as well as the mathematical numbers that my grandfather insisted on seeing me repeat, the multiplication table. Without the cheating of finding them, through the fingers of the hands and then the feet, that it was ugly, daughter, to find them without making use of the mind, why do you want a mind, if you go to the shortcut?

Then, as his protection shielded itself in the monstrous disease that also took him upon him, of a threatening pancreas that diminished his health and happy days, I tried to make use of the mind that he had assured me I had, to preserve them, without binding them, and I learned the multiplication table of multiplying embraces and intimate confessions, in the way that seemed most effective to me, without the use of shortcuts, which the grandfather had assured were double jobs and without recourse to his imprisonment. The beautiful memories he hid between his chest and his soul, which was the place where he believed they were his home. And when it came to me to live one more, like this, dignified and untouchable, full of superior grace, I repeated this math.

Until I learned that, like the plants, the shoots and roots that infiltrated into the earth, when well cared for, did not wither, on the contrary, they extracted from the natural mathematics of the universe that gift of multiplication that I had known early from Jesus, through the film Jesus Christ Superstar that my grandparents took me to see, in the multiplication of bread and fishes, to quench the thirst for lovelessness and helplessness that the totalitarians were making progress. And the smiles of extemporaneous, occasional joys grew serendipity, like the health of a limb that had fractured and healed, without blemish or aggravation, like the passion for other beings, in which the admiration for the intellect and human forms thrived.

Growing up was an arduous task, when circumstances were left with vicissitudes and uselessness, lack of support and comfort. Neglected children were being prepared, through omission and conflicts, for mysterious disputes and this dossier was kept under lock and key. Losing father, mother, grandparents, sources of support and guarantee of protection was the herculean task that promised impossibilities, above all. The possibility of love would have to arrive in other ways than those considered normal. We were many of us born and raised like this, in a God will give unforeseen events.

It was hard to see them defeated, watertight, wax, compressed in mahogany and cherry boxes, no matter how many laces and ornaments, no matter how many prayers and tears, their physical absence gained space in the time of my childhood, which is that well-deserved time, to smile, without questioning the world for the pains that exist. So many times, without them, this ugly childhood had grown fat, with more disappointments and deceptions that found reason in the occupation of time, negligence and sadness that dominated adults, like machines. Adults who stood up and distributed to themselves, tasks of obligation to march, disconnected from anima, but more serious than that, disconnected from heart. Very similar to automatons, they did not question the revolt of small or great deeds, they did not intend to endorse evil to a deserted place, where the gift of multiplication could not be operated. From the act of living, they were deprived of thinking and feeling. The only gift they possessed was that of cooperative, cooperative and disproportionate servitude.

I know that my inner cries were tamed, because I never let them go, I never released them into the light of day, I kept them, disciplined, I gave them hunger and thirst so that they would wither. And when one of them grew up and became greater than my strength and tried to ram me and my mother's boys, where I replaced her, I surrendered to the pain. I asked for death and I know, today, as an adult, that the child that I was, who pretended to be strong, was weak, fragile, vulnerable, like the reeds in the sugarcane fields, like the herbs that bent in the wind. Who saw herself as weak to later extinguish the extent of the orphan's wound, there was, therefore, in that weakness a greater force, capable of extinguishing, shaking and understanding the many whys that operated.

My blessing was answered, despite the times I had resorted to the cheating that grandfather Rodrigo reproached me, that of hiding my fingers under the table, to find the correct multiplied number, telling me stories with happy endings, and even with some malice or malice, shouting daddy's name, loudly, memorizing all the corners where the executioners could come from, so that they would know that we were not alone. Neither me nor my mother's boys. But on that day, the blessing arrived and it was Saturday, which the believers of a distorted Bible said, the day of rest. On that day, God did not rest, and neither did I, until he embraced me and promised me that he would show me that the days would gain other shades, more than black and white, more than gray or from which descending, the night would have to be the hiding place to take refuge in the rainbows kept in my chest. On that day, in the embrace of God, snuggled by the angels, they assured me that I would show all the colors, without fear that they would flee or wither from me due to deprivation. My body was just another body, lying on my back, thin and skinny, a kind of object out of tune with the magnificence lived on that plane of light. Love was my residence, not the pains and misunderstanding of events devoid of humanity. And when I returned, I found myself hiding, even from myself, this consolation that the angels had offered me, not for fear that it would be stolen from me, no one can steal the best that we carry inside, not even by killing the body that carries the soul. The fear of the incomprehension of the occurrence was that my golden boys would be stolen from me, that wherever they threatened to take me, my arms could not reach and protect, that my eyes could not see and my heart could not even guess the evil deeds that adults practice in secret, full of masks of kindness and cordiality. Only with a present, whole and vigilant body could he do so. The constant verbal threat of being thrown into a boarding school was very pleasing to my stepfather and the careerist automaton my mother had become. The devil's messenger. Vegetalized by the various antidepressants and sedatives that put her to sleep in the social role of greater responsibility. That of being a mother!

Needless to say, along with the good moments that did not multiply according to the needs of joy, the bad ones always had a day and time to happen, suppressive and sudden, worthy of many diaries scribbled with inquiry. In the last greatest pain, in the last pages of my adolescence, the test that made me revolt and I had to transform it into serenity and acceptance was that, when I saw him, small and blue, in that box shorter than all the others, more beautiful than all the others, he more beautiful than all the others, without creases of worry or pain on his face, sculpted like wax, by angels and cherubim, inert and faint, full of newspapers filling the brain, autopsied, with blood-water descending from the nasal cavities, due to the thawing of the body; God wanted to take him, a promotion of position or a need for his services elsewhere and that's it. The blow hit me hard and made me retreat to begging God, again. Why and were they whys addressed to the divine, full of revolt and indignation, you who can do everything, strengthen the weak, give support to the vulnerable, appease the hosts, take angels who give us an appetite for life, could you not give him a younger heart? O God, why do you displease me, why do you make the gift of life so difficult for me, if you take away my joy from my eyes, if you make me crawl again, in the anguish of incomprehension, please give me absence, take my body that I do not need, that I have left here, without reason to want to use it for more purposes! Why didn't you bring me to me? First, you stole from me the grandfather who taught me not to cheat in life, whose principles replaced those of the father you took me and, not even two months later, you tore away from me the angel full of limitations and who, despite them, kept our joy in a warm and frequent smile in his presence.

As much as I wanted to understand all the designs, I was prevented by being a simple mortal, but I asked him, that night, since you cannot turn this whole event into a nightmare from which I can wake up and continue, relieved, in the realization that it is finally this nightmare, give me the ability to accept this interference and to diminish the longing that will multiply far beyond a hundred years, far beyond all difficult multiplication tables!

The ugly days could diminish within my square meter, because your promises were fulfilled. That your embrace healed the most prolonged misunderstandings. You brought poetry to my days and the teenager who was already a woman found paths that no shortcut replaced. The analogy I make today of myself, of that time of transmutation between the young woman and who I am today, is that of the pumice stone that, after the encounter between fire, earth and water, air and the circumstances that separate me from clairvoyance, continues to execute me as this hard and light, inanimate object, of cleansing and treatment, to serve others as the removal of tartar that lodges in the appendages of existence, that from ledge to ledge, exterminates, through the understanding that the salt of time gives, the emotions that are lodged and grow unreasonable, uprooting them so that they do not multiply in diseases of multiplication tables where love is absent. I was born of an explosion and will be extinguished in another, when you see fit. Until then, I will be rational and mathematical in affective understanding and in the extinction of terminal illnesses that the lack of love and misunderstanding produce. The three feet, grandfather Rodrigo, of a square root, raised to the divine power of the trinity. And it is long-winded, until God completes the promise to me. Dad, am I ready?