MOTHER
One day I will need to repeat these words many times so as not to forget them. By then I shall be very old. My children will have children of their own, my skin will be blotched and cratered, my nails yellowed, my hair thinned and streaked with the grey of weariness.
I shall be very old then, dabbing the corners of my eyes with a handkerchief whose plaid has faded. I will wear slippers and have little to add to the world. People will speak to me as they do to a child, though without the genuine tenderness reserved for children. They will say: “Dad, eat this,” “Grandad, that’s not good for you.” My hands will tremble beyond my control, my gaze will forget what it sees—or perhaps it will still see, but no longer truly look.
One day, when no one is listening, in the limbo of my remaining days, I will repeat these words to you, Mother: it is you I have always loved most. It was because of you that I was always so different from you. It is you I think of—even now that I am old, even after all these stealthy years that crept through my body, even when I can no longer discern in memory’s fog so many faces, and facts, and days, and affections.
If I could, I would spend the last strength of these rebellious fingers on you. I would draw a picture for you, and in it place the most delicate flowers—hydrangeas and gladioli, geraniums and pelargoniums. I would draw a fragile little boy and a mother as vast as the sun, and I’d place them hand in hand, beneath the loveliest blue my coloured pencils could offer. I would build a house with very straight roof tiles, just as the teacher once taught. And then I would write: Mother, I love you. I want you to be proud of me.
One day, when no one is listening in the quiet limbo of my final days, I will remember this day and these words. I will know that I was cherished. I will know that foolish things sometimes darkened the beautiful blue of that drawing’s sky. And I will ask your forgiveness, mother—for having been so unlike you, for having forgotten that you are my oldest memory, the purest, the most precious.
I am far from that day—just distant, not gone. Today, I am still the one writing these lines. Today, I know that one day I may grow so old that I might forget to tell you: Mother, I love you. I want you to be proud of me. I am far, and I keep playing that Sérgio Godinho song on repeat—Spread the News. I wanted to write you a poem, to draw a little boy—but I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. Forgive me, mother, forgive me.
One day, I will be only old. The stealthy years will have crept through my body. And when no one is listening, in the limbo of the days that remain, I will repeat it: Mother, you are the oldest and purest flower, the wisest of them all. If I could, I would spend my last strength on you. I would draw a picture and place within it, hand in hand, a fragile boy and a mother as great as the sun—and above them, the blue, the most beautiful of all colours.
SMALL GESTURES
It’s the small gestures I prefer. I’ve always known this—but I like to be reminded. I close the car door, walk with no destination, and slowly take in the many perspectives of the city: its houses, its people, its colours, the cobbled stones underfoot, the places I like more and less. The cold air cuts through me—body and soul—an autumn breeze, washed clean, full of memories and sensations that cling to me, vivid and inexplicable…
Brooding on this strange business of being alive, I wander the same streets again and again, hands in my pockets, eyes alert, mentally recording movements, impulses, ideas—until I am suddenly overcome, in some tucked-away corner, by the sublime scent of freshly baked bread, the purest and most poetic of aromas! What an extraordinary scent! I smile, remembering how I once wanted to be a baker, back when all the other children dreamed of becoming doctors, mechanics, or ballerinas.
A writer’s path. Fuelled by bread, by memory, by cold air, I dive into words. I add the taste of coffee, and there at the table, I uncap my Parker—faithful among all pens—and send it racing across the blank page, filling it with scrawls and corrections, letter after letter, scattered phrases, stray verses, tentative notes, the rough sketches of literature. I feel the need to write, to feed that hunger that cannot be explained—though often, it torments.
I daydream about the city, about small gestures, about how alive my senses feel in this season—uncovered, awakened—as if everything were being perceived for the first time. I repeat to myself: It’s the small gestures I prefer. I’ve always known this—but I like to be reminded. I close the car door, walk with no destination, and slowly take in the many perspectives of the city: its houses, its people, its colours, the cobbled stones underfoot, the places I like more and less.
Small gestures are never small. They are everything. Gestures like writing a letter on a sudden wave of friendship; gestures like watching the tenderness with which a father or mother takes a child by the hand; gestures like weighing the warmth contained in a hug or a kiss—or savouring the tiny rituals that surround us, made invisible by habit: stirring coffee and brushing away the scattered sugar grains; basking in the gentleness of the afternoon sun in these final days of November.
Perhaps I regret having overlooked them for so long—how life once seemed like rubble, or a puzzle of disconnected pieces, or that emptiness where even triumphs and conquests cannot silence the sense of something missing, the ache of something absent, the urgency of something unnamed…
I get back into the car and close the door. With my notebook resting on the steering wheel, before heading home, I jot down in small, steady script: The cold air cuts through me—body and soul—an autumn breeze, washed clean, full of memories and sensations that cling to me, vivid and inexplicable…
Fastening my seatbelt, the key in the ignition, changed now, at peace, I make myself a promise: to better cherish those unrepeatable moments in time, the fleeting instants of a daily life so often dull and senseless. Moments like unwrapping a gift or listening to water run, tying shoelaces or feeling a hand on my face, even just holding this old Parker—which, all this time, has shared with me the light and the shadows of our mutual existence, each made for the other.
