A PERSONAL INVITATION

Life is the greatest school, I listed my priorities in wrong order, blew the candles before my birthday, I was a mother before I became a woman. I grew up with my children, and learned with them, and I was a mother, a good mother.

Maybe I act like a schoolgirl, or appear to be a bohemian, these things are normally lived at young age, as people call this fragment of life “First milestones”. The next twenty or some years following, my daily routine was this: Make breakfast, sending children to school, go to work. In the afternoon I picked up children from school, make dinner, put a wash load, and then put it to dry. Although the washing machine is the independence of women from hand washing, it just takes as much time sorting away colors, put the clothes in the machine, get it out to dry, then remove it again, fold and store). In this busy routine I had to find time to make appointments to the doctor, dentist, go to the market (more often than I would have liked), make phone calls to loved ones, order cakes, because when there is a large family, there are birthday parties every month. Finally at nightfall I cleaned my house and scrubbed the kitchen floor by hands and knees. Practically, that was my duty as a mother, but wife duties? That’s another roll that I don’t dare to explain.

As my mother used to say, "There is not evil that lasts one hundred years, or body that could out live it”, between school and baseball games, the children were maturing as apples off the tree, like birds they feathered, with large and strong wings to fly high.

Books have always being my predilection, although my reading time was minimal, I always kept the newly acquired in the bathroom. I was juggling with time; I was a mother, wife, student and worker, all at once. I went to college at night. I enjoyed the recess because it made me felt like a single person.

I am at the third age (between forty and sixty). For many women who did not mixed up the order of their priorities, who studied a career before marrying, or being mothers, maybe they don’t have grandchildren yet, nor do I imply that what I did was right, or that I missed to live my best years, or that I put my life on hold. I wasn’t born to be a martyr, I always knew that there was a force within me that prompted me to do anything I set out to, and did it well. Time was my best friend; I took advantage of it every minute. After all of those stressful years, I accept with the utmost sincerity, I feel old, but that old age which mates with antiques; while maintaining its originality and nature, their value increases every day. Only the well-traveled life can give you that taste of satisfaction to remember, as if you were eating the most exquisite dessert.

Today, my house is still full of books, if I want to, I can read three hundred pages from six in the morning to six in the evening, and not one prevents me from doing it.
Today I have time to observe that little creature that carries a leaf on its back to feed in the winter, and like the ant, without haste, I follow her with my eyesight until it disappears into its burrow.

Today, my gaze is lost in the horizon, and is now when I realize that even in the bustle of daily living; I can find peace in the silence. Today I know there is not tomorrow, because every day at dawn awakening, tomorrow becomes today.

Today I rather have a year full of small satisfactions than having a life of regrets. Maybe I act like a schoolgirl, or might appear to be a bohemian, ha! I invite you to grow old.

LaMore.