A photo, by Josep Martí Blanch

A photo in the family group of WhatsApp. The sender is my brother, a man given to share images of all the dishes he cooks and the most nimio detail of the day -to -day life of his two children. The stews should be saved, because it is natural law that it is always the older brother, that is, who best manages between stoves (I owed it!). The second, on the other hand, is essential to be aware of the heroicities of little Jordi and Carmen. This digital album updated to Pathaa daily, which does not eliminate, the physical distance between us and allows the rest of the family to take note, even if far from the small and large heroicities of the nieces. This week, for example, the thing has gone to costumes. But the photo I want to talk about I received it a few days ago. They pose more than a hundred children before the camera (I got tired of counting them!). All disciplinedly uniformed with the team of the local soccer club and perfectly aligned for the official snapshot of the season.

I find my two nephews among the child crowd. I’m glad to see them there, smiling, genuinely happy before the camera. On the other hand, I pity my brother, and the thousands of fathers and mothers like him, for all the early morning on Saturday morning to arrive on time to the matches and for the hundreds of kilometers that they must travel to accompany their offspring to the displacements. Although it is true, and it is fair to make it notice when they complain, that scabies with pleasure does not pike. Naturally, these things from the Martí clan to you are brought to Pairo. And it is normal that he is thinking, and rightly so, how low is the level of columnism that is limited to accounting for the very author’s personal care. But I will add in my discharge that the photo I speak of not only has a personal dimension. It is also an antidote against increasingly generalized pessimism and the traps of any past time was better in which many adults live trapped.

We played football and we had fun, so the substantial has not changed

Because this photograph that now appears on my phone thanks to my brother’s diligence, and that is repeated year after year in hundreds of towns and cities, realizes the fate that the kids have to grow and form in today’s world. Lawn, decent facilities, monitors, children of both sexes practicing the same sport, boots and approved equipment in quality to that of professional players.

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What else can be asked? The image does not resist any comparison with the conditions with which we manage in its day the children of the past that we combat gray hair. That further and further past that we recreate romantically in our heads was clearly worse. We played football and had fun, so the substantial has not changed. But back to photography a certainty is imposed: the only thing that can actually miss the longing is his childhood. The rest is nothing more than a sweetened memory.