Only you matter

Alba left the vacuum aside while she had a glass of water. Looking to the kids´ playroom, she found a phone toy with smiley little eyes and a red nose... just the same as hers when she was little.

Its old wheels made her remember Mrs. Teresa, the small fatty colombian woman who used to pick her up at school every tuesdays and thursdays.

-Have the salad too -said Teresa, with her usual bossy voice and her unmistakable colombian accent. 

-But I don´t wanna! -answered Alba, as usual.

-That´s not my problem, miss. You have your salad and I´ll tell you what happened last night on "The Lady In Pink."* 

-What if you tell me and then I have it?

-Yeah, right. I wasn´t born yesterday, you know?

Alba smiled wickedly while looking for The Lady In Pink´s theme in her iPod and then started to clean the dust from the toys. Franco de Vita´s sickly sweet lyrics remind her of other conversations with Mrs. Teresa.

-Is your house beautiful, Mrs. Teresa? -asked Alba, as a teenager.

-A lot, miss. There are flowers in every window, a pen and a vegetable patch that my Jon loved.

-Then, why don´t you live there? Why did you come here?

-Because of the war, miss. War is mean, and I´ll do anything for my children.

Alba came back to the reality and couldn´t contained the tears when she heard her iPod: "Only you matter. It´s the same if I have everything or nothing. Only you matter."**

She remembered how lucky she used to feel because she was an Engineer and she didn´t need to escape from war like Mrs. Teresa. 

She rememebered the days when it looked like she would have a brilliant career.

She remembered the slow lost of her quality of life and also the day she decided to move to Spain.

She remembered her baby´s face, for whom she would give up her life if necessary.

And then, she recognized Mrs. Teresa´s face on her own. 

Alba turned off the iPod, wiped out her tears and stood up. "Only you matter. I´ll do anything for you" said to her baby in the distance. Then, strongly took the cloth and kept on cleaning other kids´toys.  

*"The Lady In Pink" (In Spanish: "La dama de rosa") was a succesful venezuelan soap opera in 1986.

**Author´s lyrics translation. Original in Spanish: "Solo importas tú. Da igual si tengo todo o nada, solo importas tú".
***This post was published in Zhandra Zuleta´s original blog on Jan 20th, 2014.

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Within two minutes

-What time is it? -Jose asked his wife.
-4:22 -answered her, with weariness.
-We are going out now, right?

She looked into space and ask herself "How did we get here?"

She reminded the first time she saw him. It was at an office she was working as a secretary. Jose, a young, self-confidence, handsome man who just graduated as an Engineer, came close to her with a charming smile. 

-Good morning, miss. I´m looking for the Maintenance Manager.
-Good morning. Eng. Rivas is in a meeting, if you want to leave a message...
-We´ll do something: I´ll leave the report here if you give me your autograph -Said Jose, while giving her the aknowledgment of receipt. Rocio smiled, signed the receipt and carefully read the name of the report´s author: Eng. Jose Dominguez Gomez.
-See you later, miss. I hope to see you soon. He winked at her and she stayed as dazzled as blushed.

Years later they would get married, and by their first anniversary they had little Jorge.

Rocio reminded with special affection the 1979 Christmas Eve, when Little Jesus not only rewarded Jorge with the longed skateboard, but he got a little sister too.

By Christmas, 1985, things weren´t as good, but Jose managed to keep Jorge and Lucrecia´s illusion, disguising as Santa Claus and giving magic powers to the simple gifts they could afford.

When Jorge got married, Lucrecia was about to graduate from college and Rocio thought she had had a plenty life, with financial ups and downs, but a very happy life. "Now we just wait for Lucrecia to get married too, and we´ll spent the rest of our time enjoying our grandchildren". Today, she thought she couldn´t have been more wrong...

Jose got very distracted since "the kids" went to college, but none of them took it too seriously. When he lost his keys, Jorge used to joke saying: "Is the old german guy playing tricks on you again, dad?." They all used to laugh, but deep down all of them considered Alzheimer´s as a terrible syndrome. A syndrome of others. 

When her second grandchild came, very frequently Rocio had to finish the phrases Jose started, and every now and then reminded him in what month they were.

When diagnosed with Alzheimers, only Rocio lived with him. Lucrecia had moved with her husband and children to Australia and Jorge lived travelling according to his company´s needs. "How are we going to deal with this?" she thought, while smiling to a very confused Jose.

Little by little Jose was loosing more and more skills. He used to wake up worrying because he was late for a meeting that took place 20 years ago, he wouldn´t recognize the house where he had been living for the past 15 years, he used to forget if he was having lunch or dinner... but Rocio´s taughest day, even taugher than when he forgot her name or when he started to turn all his frustration on her, was when she passed the phone to him because Jorge wanted to talk to him and he said: "Who´s Jorge?."

Her plenty life began to fill with holes. Explaining to him that she wasn´t his sister, feeding him like a baby, answering time and time again that today was monday and no, he wasn´t late for any meeting.

Frustration started to take over both of them. He didn´t understand why her answers were so weary, and she couldn´t take to see that self-confidence Engineer asking her the same thing every two minutes.

Days went by and she was every time less able to shower him, change his dipers, being a housewife and being comprenhensive. On the other hand, he had less and less lucid days, everytime was less polite in showing her mistakes, and everytime was more filled with anger... anger that he poor out on her.

The nurse came up, say hello to them and made sure that Jose didn´t need a diper change. Rocio ignored her and continued thinking, while the nurse went on checking the other oldmen.

-What time is it? -Jose asked his wife.
-4:24 -answered her, with weariness.
-We are going out now, right?

*This post was published in Zhandra Zuleta´s original blog on Sep 1st, 2013.

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