There are sensations that reach their fullness in childhood, which later only repeat as a reflection, as a simulation or as a farce: the joyful shame of running into a teacher on the street, the nerves on the night of Epiphany, the certainty of having found a soulmate in the park, or the genuine curiosity to know what happens in the morning, Monday to Friday, beyond the school gates.
Read more Trump pollutes, the left revives
The few times that, as a child, I was able to make morning excursions outside the walls, because I had to get vaccinated or get my ID, I saw the world with new eyes. People were different, the landscape was different, and even time seemed to pass differently, so for years I wanted to be an adult to enjoy those free mornings that were denied to children. Innocent me, I didn’t know that was a pleasure reserved for retirees and rentiers, and that in my twenties, when I started working, I would feel something very similar on vacation days when I had to go to the doctor or run some errands. It wasn’t until my maternity leave and after that until becoming self-employed and working odd hours that I could enjoy them.
And on one of those mornings, today, I saw a child being born. I was leaving breakfast at the bar when I found two ambulances, a police car with several officers diverting traffic, and a crowd of people looking at a car, so the first thing I thought was an accident. But I soon realized that some of those near the car were smiling, and that in the front line there was a girl about seven or eight years old. A couple passing by my side, who must have noticed my confusion, clarified it for me: “a baby is being born.” That child whose first lullaby was a golden thermal blanket and that mother who came out of the car trembling, half scared and half happy, would have a story forever. And the fools who started applauding when they put them on the stretcher would forever be part of it.
This morning I told everyone I met that I had seen a child born at the door of the Aranjuez Market. As soon as I got on the train, because I was working in Valencia in the afternoon, I started writing this column, knowing I wouldn’t find words that did justice to that feat that is being born. Being born on the corner of Gobernador street with the Andalucía road.
Read more Interview with Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia
I finish it on the return train, having witnessed an even greater one. At the university where I went to work, Marta, a very beautiful and very cheerful girl, welcomed me, and we immediately started talking about children. The one I saw born, my children, and hers, who is three years old and has Down syndrome. I don’t know how I looked at her when she told me, but surely with some of that stupid compassion of someone who believes there are lives worth living more than others. When I asked her the girl’s name and she told me, she added that she didn’t choose it, that her daughter is adopted: she met her while volunteering at Mamás en Acción, an association dedicated to accompanying children who are alone in hospitals.
And she told me as if it were nothing, as if her dedication and generosity were normal. As if not only welcoming but choosing the different wasn’t revolutionary at a time and place where what is sold to us as sensible is not to bring them into the world. Marta tells me her story with the same naturalness with which the child I saw born today will tell in a few years that he came into the world in a car. Without being aware of starring in a small miracle.
Read more The petromachos
