“Well, God loves you like that,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
“Whaaat? If God doesn’t know me, how is he going to love me?” I said bewildered.
“How can that be? How do you know that?” my grandfather asked me.
“I don’t know, that’s what I’ve asked myself many times, if God really exists.”
“Of course He does son, and He’s like a patient Father who’s there looking after His children, even if they don’t realize it.”
He was telling me in a way that, I don’t know… that was so sweet. I had never heard my grandfather speak that way before.
“But how do you know, Grandpa?” I asked curious.
“Look, the little one doesn’t know if his father is next to the crib, but haven’t you seen your father when Chelito was little? He would go over to put on her little baby clothes.”
“Yes, of course, Dad would stand there and watch her, very quietly, I think so as not to wake her up.”
“Well, imagine your father being nothing more than a man and taking care of his little daughter, and surely inside he was thinking and saying, ‘Little one, be at peace, I’m here and nothing’s going to happen to you.’”
“Yes, he’d say something like that, because I would approach slowly to see her and my father wouldn’t see me because I was hidden behind him, but I would hear him saying things like that, and I would also say, ‘And I’m going to take care of you too,’ but I would say it very quietly so that Dad wouldn’t realize I was there.”
“You see? We all have feelings inside us that make us love others. Sometimes siblings, sometimes grandparents,” he was telling me.
“Yes, and parents too,” I said, interrupting him.
“Of course, parents too, because if God has created us in His own image, how is He not going to love us?” he asked me softly, as if he were reflecting upon it himself.
“But Grandpa…” I began to say.
“No, Manu, I want you to think about all of this, I don’t want to convince you of anything, just to tell you that He loves you and cares for you, even if you don’t know who He is, or where He is.”
The conversation ended and my father said:
“Thanks Dad, I couldn’t have done it that well, he wouldn’t have listened to me.”
“I know son! Children don’t listen to their parents, that’s a generational thing, it’s no one’s fault, but relax, the seed has been sown, it’ll blossom in the spring.”
“What are you talking about Grandpa?” I said, because I didn’t understand anything. “What does a seed have to do with all that?”
“You pipe down, you want to know everything. This is between your father and me.” He did not say any more and then exclaimed: “Here comes your grandmother!”
At that moment, we heard the key in the lock and I made my way quickly to the door. In truth, my intention was to hide and give her a scare, but when I got there I told myself, “No! It might be bad for her,” and before she came in I said:
“Grandma, what are you doing outside your own house?”
She finished opening the door and said:
“What are you doing here? What a surprise!” I wrapped my arms around her neck and told her:
“I love you so much Nana!”
“Charmer!” she said smiling. “You’ve come to have a snack, right? Just give me a minute to change my shoes, and put on my slippers, my feet are frozen.”
After a while, now that “she had gotten comfortable,” as she put it, in her housecoat, which according to her was “warmer than her actual coat,” she went into the kitchen and in no time at all, she brought me one of those delicious sandwiches that she used to make me on cold days. Then she brought me an omelet which she had “Stumbled across,” as she liked to claim, with little chunks of chorizo through it, which were so delicious, and then she also brought me a glass of warm milk, and she asked me:
“What about your assignment? How is it going?”
“I haven’t done it yet,” I said jokingly.
“If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have given you anything. You haven’t earned it,” she told me, turning very serious with an irritated face.
“Nana, I’m only joking,” I said, “of course I’ve done it all.”
“Don’t ever stop doing what your teacher tells you to,” she told me.
<<<<< >>>>>
I remember that first time I went to Fatima so long ago. I was overwhelmed by feelings; curiosity, fear, hope, what did I hope to find? What would that place that I thought I knew through my reading really be like?
I had searched everywhere, and I had read everything I’d found about the events that had taken place there, but I wanted to see it all with my own eyes.
I left Santiago de Compostela one morning at dawn. I had a long journey of over 400 kilometers in front of me. It was raining, and boy was it raining. “That rain was certainly not normal,” I was saying to myself, while the car’s windscreen wipers were moving ceaselessly from one side to the other.
I almost couldn’t believe it, I was driving. I had recently taken my driving test and gotten my license, and I still remember how the urge to drive started.
“Look, Manu, maybe you won’t ever need it, but that way, you’ll have it,” my friend told me on the day he suggested it to me.
He was very excited, he had gotten his license to help his father, who’d had an accident and couldn’t drive now because he had broken his leg in a fall and had had to get a cast. As he could not take time off work, his son had to take him there and bring him home every day in the car.
Santiago, the friend in question, encouraged me. He was the only person in my generation I knew who had a driving license.
Up to that point, it had only been something that our fathers did, and not even all of them, only those who needed it for their jobs like mine, who had to go to La Coruña or Madrid now and again, and they’d had to buy one for that reason. The truth is though that he didn’t really like driving, and the car spent the vast majority of its time sitting parked outside, next to the door of the house, getting wet.
“Manuel, the car spends so much time in the rain that someday it’ll start sprouting branches,” my mother would say to my father from time to time.
“Well, let’s see if a tomato plant grows and we can have tomatoes for salad,” he joked.
One Saturday afternoon, I went with Santiago for a drive as we didn’t have class, and he let me take the wheel so I could see that there was nothing to it. I started to like it and that made me decide to learn, out of curiosity more than anything else, to see how I would do.
When I had it “Mastered,” as Santi put it, I decided to tell my family, even though I was pretty certain they were going to say no, and ask me why I wanted to.
“Dad, I want to get a driver’s license,” I said one day when we were all sitting at the table.
“Are you going to buy a car?” Chelito asked immediately. “With what money? What do you want it for?”
“Hold on a minute,” said Mom, “what’s brought this on son? Why do you want a car? What you have to do is just think about your studies, that’s your most important business for now.”
“Mom, it’s to ride around with his girlfriend,” Tono immediately said mockingly.
