The Day I Played the Role of an Angel…
I can say that I have often come across many "angels" on Earth troughout my life. One
that I particularly remember is Guillermo, one of my students in my first school year of teaching in Herrera. But I want to recall one anecdote that happened to me while studying in Slovakia, now almost 20 years ago. Seen with the perspective that Time provides, I guess that in that occasion I played the role of an angel…
There in Slovakia I met a young cuban female singer (who added the "colour note" to the Slovak Philarmonic Choir", being a mulatta) who would introduce me to somebody who would change my life (but that's another story…). After some time living there, since she could not (neither did want to) come back to Cuba, she managed to take her mother and later on her stepfather to Bratislava, where at least they could nourish themselves in a reasonable way and get the weight lost after years of hardships.
Now, in order to make the story understandable, I must go back to the years when I was a child and a youngster: by those sweet years, I used to go every saturday to my Grandma's home and there I would have my favourite meal (as most of children I guess do). There was “morcilla” most of the times, always accompanied by home-made fryed potatoes. As most of us (I presume), I enjoyed the potatoes I enjoyed the more where the ones I ate before sitting to the table, just picked up from the plate as they were taken out of the pan. Looking for her forgiveness when she inevitably told me off, I used to give her a kiss, which are said to be for free...
One day, Emelina, that woman's lovely mother was frying potatoes, as my grandmother used to do. I had lost my grandmother by the time I arrived in Bratislava, after a sad two-year agony. I was accompannying she and her daughter in the kitchen, chattering or doing I don’t remember what. At one moment, I came to her from behind, I put my head over her shoulder, as I used to do with my grandmother or my mum, I stole her some potatoes and gave her a kiss, not giving to this gesture any particular importance, although I am sure that I must have remembered both of them, my grandmother and my mum.
Later on, her daughter explained to me that she had cried of happiness beacause of that gesture. How them? - I asked her. And she explained to me the story of her brother, who was a brilliant doctor that suffered from childhood of a severe illness in his intestines, that finally caused his death when he was 28. Since she had loved him a lot, and probably more because of his weakness, so you can imagine how she did suffer.
My gesture, she told me, had remembered her of his son, since that was something he also used to do when she fryed potatoes (I guess whenever Cuban authorities allowed them to have such a “rich” meal), and she was convinced it was him who had send her his greeatings through me. She thought that also sort of a message that he was doing well…
So in that occasion, I myself was kind of an angel on Earth and through such a simple action, while remembering my grandmother, I had somehow put her in connection with her son. And who knows (to dream is free), perhaps my grandmother also received the very same message.
In my oppinion, are those such small details, as Serrat says, what make life in this World worth living. Although I may have been very naughty in my young years, even if I may have not been as “good” as I could have been, I think I'll always remember (as long as Mr. Alzheimer allows me to do it) that occasion in which I played that role and will be comforted for it.
