In A Corner Of The Soul: The Secret Place Of Memories
” The great follies leave great memories … ”
– Danns Vega
I wish, dear reader, you were reading these humble words while listening to the unmistakable voice of Master Serrat and while you get excited as I do now, with the memories, with the memories that each of us have and that appear from time to time to make us cry or to make us laugh …
” They are those little things, which left us a time of roses … in a corner, on a piece of paper or in a drawer ” … those indelible, wonderful memories that no one or nothing can erase; the smile of our mother while she cradled us, our first kiss, the first love letter, the first drawing of our son who ran like crazy to show it to mom and dad …
Those memories that remain in our minds and that sometimes reappear like the greatest treasure, while we were looking in a corner, on a paper or in a drawer.
That’s when that photo of when we were just kids or that yellowish letter from that boyfriend appears. From youth … and the fact is that the letters were already so far behind, that they only remain in our memory and in museums … that’s right.
That dry rose between the pages of a book that still reminds us of our 20 years and the unmistakable innocence of our first love; that cookbook made with such care by our grandmother and that still tastes like cooked and sponge cake or that newspaper that until then we did not know and appears in our lives like a whirlpool ready to disarm our hearts.
I remember once they found the beginning of what was to be a diary, my grandfather’s diary. Unfortunately what began with such care could not finish and is that … life is like that.
I never got to know my grandfather so these written words marked a before and after …
When they began to read their writings aloud, while I remained silent and absorbed as in the best of movies, an inner emotion invaded me and suddenly I felt as if I had traveled in a time machine, as if one way or another I met my grandfather, that elderly man who recounted the adventures of when he was just a child with the same words and the same liveliness that I had heard so many times from my grandmother, his beloved life partner.
At that moment I felt that my grandfather’s words gained so much strength, that I felt him a little closer to me, despite not knowing him, at that moment it seems as if his words wanted his youngest grandchildren to know the grandfather they never knew. they could enjoy.
The story was so beautiful that we lost track of time and they kept reading and reading … Their antics at school, their relationship with their loved ones … until in a moment there was silence … I had only been able to write a few pages of it. which would be his diary, he did not have time for more …
That was when we were aware that he left too soon and although we could not enjoy his stories sitting on his lap, at least his words took a voice that unrepeatable afternoon … that afternoon of memories.
(Joan Manuel Serrat)
One is believed
to have been killed
by time and absence.
But his train
sold a round trip ticket
.
They are those little things,
that a time of roses left us
in a corner,
on a piece of paper
or in a drawer.
Like a thief they
lurk behind
the door.
They have you as much
at their mercy
as dead leaves
that the wind drags there or here,
that they smile at you sadly and
make us
cry when
nobody sees us.
And now I listen to this beautiful song again as I write these words and while I reread them and I understand the powerful power that memories have in us that “make us cry when nobody sees us …”
