Hormiguitas construyendo un sueño||Little ants building a dream

English

They say that time softens and sweetens that heterogeneous mixture we call memories. Memories are always there, clear or distorted, pleasurable or lurid, near or far, they jump like a spring at any stimulus, then we can let them pass or stop to browse through that part of the lived history that, perhaps rummaging with delicacy and attention, we will discover many "truths" that make us who we are.

Rummaging through memories can be a delicate subject because if the memory is beautiful, joyful and well lived, we feel pleased at first and a smile lights up our face, but as Eckhart Tolle says, if we stay there for too long it is easy to fall into nostalgia and from there jump to sadness.

If the memory, at first, is sad, bitter or painful, then possibly we will remove and retake the low vibrational emotions that at the time caused us, however, there is also the possibility of seeing them with indifference, as something overcome and that is wonderful because we have healed a wound.

The truth is that memories are ours and they speak of us, of the people with whom we have shared our lives, events that leave soft and deep traces and the best thing is that we are filling this album of cards moment by moment, so it is good to try not to have many repeated cards and if in the package came one with ugly images, try not to stick it so that when the wind blows it away.

It is an exciting topic this of the memories that everyone keeps and that today the charismatic friend @angelica7 proposes us to talk about in her program "Encuentro de Talentos" (Talent Encounter). A program that every Tuesday brings us together in the Discord of Palnet at 8 p.m. where talking, sharing, singing and laughing is the feeling. Write your post and share it, we will gladly listen to you. I take this opportunity to invite @irvinc, @charjaim and @doriscova8 to join this rewarding get-together. Here is one of my distant memories.

Imagine for a moment four girls-teenagers between 9 and 13 years old approximately, who together with their mom spend their afternoons and weekends collecting stones, filling up tobas with the purpose of filling a large space of what would be their house.

At first glance and from the outside, nowadays anyone would jump up and down pointing out child exploitation, or perhaps a child, one of those who have "deeply" internalized their rights, would accuse the mother under the LOPNA (Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents), but a closer and deeper look might let us see the other side of the same coin. Let's look through the crack and see what we find.

Gladys is the mother of these four girls, plus one boy, the oldest, who is currently studying at a boarding school. The five of them live, as they say "arrimadas" in their grandmother's house. She has been a widow for about 7 years and for about two years she decided to sell the apartment she had in Caracas to come to a city in the interior of the country, Maracay, where her family lives.

From the beginning she came with a big dream, to build a house to live with her five children, with the sale of the apartment she bought a big lot and started the construction. Once the foundations were ready, it was necessary to make a strong fill, because the slope of the land was very steep and she did not want her house with many steps, having limited resources, she could not afford to buy fill and having the land with many stones, she decided that they and her daughters would fill the space.

That was how she put together her little ants and for a while every afternoon, when she left work, she spent them searching and between the two or three hours of natural light that remained, the group collected stones, filled the buckets and emptied them in what would someday be the living room or a room.

I remember her with a pickaxe in her hands loosening stones, some of my sisters filling buckets and the others carrying them, a job that was rotated so as not to tire us so much. Yesterday afternoon I asked one of my sisters how she lived that stage, how she remembered it emotionally. She answered me that it was a beautiful stage, full of illusion and hope.

That is how I remember it and I think that if I ask the other two sisters they would answer the same, because it was a time of much affection, of having and sharing my mother's great dream, full of illusion, companionship and faith that things would get better when we had our own house. There we learned to love that space, to feel it as ours and we also learned that we could achieve great things with perseverance and hard work.

My mother has never been a woman of great speeches, but with her work she filled us with values that live in us and a challenging attitude towards life that I thank her with my soul: dreams can be achieved when you work for them. Thank you mom, thank you.