Since I read it, in that edition of the defunct Global Rhythm, the beginning of The year of magical thinking: “Life changes fast, life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and the life you know is over.” These words form a strange footnote and act as a warning: unexpected plot twists do exist, for better and for worse. However, I note now, life also changes on a specific, unmovable date, and a scheduled Caesarean section, with its particular countdown —the last weekend, the last Monday, the last breakfast, the last afternoon— is the closest you can get to knowing the precise moment when the world, your world, definitively slides into another place.
But no one warned me about the last day. With no work now, all errands and calls finished, the endless list of the basket finally complete, I opened her closet again and again, stopping at all those new clothes. In that child’s closet—narrow, still without handles, with its immaculate white interior—she had hung her first things and all of them—the pajamas, the leggings, the hats in size 0.0—were still there, waiting for someone they didn’t know. And none of us—not the pajamas, the leggings, the hats in size 0.0, not even the one who was to be her mother—could imagine how she would come to fill them with her shapes and movements. Because objects come before and after. They evoke worlds that no longer exist—through memories, through memory—but they also refer to everything that is not yet, to the future.
Worried by the epic nature of the story, I tried to come up with a memorable last afternoon, not knowing, of course, what the hell to do with those remaining hours. I was brought out of that uncertainty by a providential call: on the other end of the line, my interlocutor informed me that the ham shoulder I had left to be cut and packaged was ready. Excited—I finally had a plan—I headed to the Mercat del Ninot. I spent almost two hours among its stalls, delaying the moment of going down to the supermarket to pick up the order: “Iberian cebo, machine-cut,” it said on the transparent envelopes. So, if one day my daughter decides to ask me, I will have to tell her that that last afternoon before she was born I went to Mercadona to look for ham.
The next day she arrived punctually, at 12:08, and later, in her transparent crib, under that label on which I saw her name written for the first time, she moved around until her head reached the top corner, wanting, I think, a mooring, a point of support with which to certify the limits between her body and the world. And it was that same position that she later maintained, throughout the first days, weeks, months, inside that carrycot with which I took her to discover this city, mine, which is now also hers.
In Matrescencea powerful essay by journalist Lucy Jones, I read that upon the arrival of a baby, the tikopias, in that remote Pacific archipelago that is the Solomon Islands, are not announced as “a child has been born” but rather as “a woman has given birth.” Because pregnancy has a dramatic and lasting impact on the human brain, comparable to that of adolescence or menopause, but matrescence, the process of becoming a mother, has been a largely ignored topic in the medical community. The focus, rather than on the identity transition of the mother, has fallen almost exclusively on the newborn.
The brain changes quickly, and it does so at the speed with which the foundations of the ancient city crack. Over these months, pushing a stroller with a little girl holding her head in a strap, the routes of Barcelona have also been transformed. Now, in this inclement summer, I move looking for the shadows, away from the dangers of scaffolding, longing for the green, in search of the increasingly rare streets free of people and so many tourists, wanting to protect her, I tell myself, while I too hold on tightly to the handlebars of the stroller. The callby Leila Guerriero, a book that has accompanied me in these times, I remember that a character says: “People who have children mistakenly believe that they protect their children. And the first thing that someone who has children has to do is be honest: children protect you. (…) They protect you from the risk of not being tied down. They are tied to life, tied to the mooring. When I have a child, I am missing.”
The ham came out bad. Too salty. I threw it away a few days ago. For six months, the packets have stared at me resignedly from the shelf, next to the yogurts. They were a kind of probe. Voyagerthe map of my old city. Throwing them away —they’re not even good for making croquettes, my mother said— meant getting rid of one last vestige before finally embracing the mystery of these new streets, of this new skin in which I live.
Laura Ferrero is a writer and screenwriter. Her latest novel is ‘The astronauts’ (Alfaguara), and his latest film, ‘A love’by Isabel Coixet.
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#afternoon #Mercadona