Whenever I write about my mother I always define her as a great woman. I truly believe that the adjective is not exaggerated. And it is not because the deep love I feel for her leads me to exalt her virtues. I think anyone looking at her life from the outside would come to the same conclusion. She is one of those examples of what might be called self-made.
She was about four years old when she was orphaned by her mother, which for any child is a hard blow. For many years she knew more mistreatment than love, but that did not make her a weak person, rather it helped to form in her a great determination to walk through life.
At the age of sixteen she decided to go with her older sister to seek adventures in Caracas, far away from the towns where she had spent her childhood. There, in the hectic life of an unknown city, with a precarious education that barely reached the sixth grade, she began to make a living working at anything.
Soon she met my father, another adventurous young man like her, and for more than twenty years she devoted herself to raising their four children. But after so long things began to go wrong between the two of them. My mother felt that enough was enough for her and decided to separate.
From that moment on, she began another stage of her life in which she fearlessly reinvented herself completely. From a dedicated housewife, she became a skilled businesswoman, who has taken advantage of the opportunities of street vending to consolidate more stable businesses in the municipal markets of her city.
Until a few weeks ago, she regularly attended her sales stand in one of the markets of Barquisimeto. He is currently convalescing from a health problem, but he still has the desire and the spirit to return to his market stall as soon as possible.
At all stages of my life I have many memories of her. However, I like to emphasize her determination and determination so that we, her children, would study. For my mother that was a priority above anything else. Many times her determination had to prevail over my father's plans, who considered that the important thing was not to study but to learn a manual trade.
In all the years of our childhood we had to study in schools that were quite far from where we lived. Public transportation was scarce and most of the time it took us up to four hours to get to and from school.
A memory that has not faded from my memory is of her, my brother and me going to school during the rainy season. In those years the streets in the area where we lived were made of dirt. With the first rains those streets became a quagmire. There was no way to walk on them without getting muddy.
Every day, before leaving for school, my mother would prepare a backpack with our ironed uniforms, school shoes, a few bottles of water and cloths to dry ourselves.
We would all leave the house in flip-flops and shorts. We would walk up a small hill of one and a half kilometers to get to the main avenue where the public transportation passed.
When we got to the bus stop my mother would wash our feet, she was not dressed in school uniform, and we would wait for the bus. On the way back we would do the same thing, put our uniforms and shoes in our backpacks, put on our flip-flops and shorts and walk down the hill to the house. Before going inside we would wash our feet.
I don't remember my mother ever complaining about those trips, it was the right thing to do and it was done. If my brother or I got tired, she would tell us that we had to keep going. It was too important to her that we didn't miss a single day of school.
Thanks to that great determination, my brothers and I were able to go all the way to college. If it hadn't been for her determination we might not have made it. I will always be grateful to my mother for everything she did to give us an education.
I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in the forty five week. For more information click on the link.
Thanks for your time.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version).
Logo creado por @themanualbot