Everyday stories #5

Medium Before Christmas

The blank page of a new story

I look out the window. My favorite cup in my hands to warm them. Christmas is close.

Peace in the world it is always one step away. Hope is indelible. In some alley of time Joe Strummer hums softly Redemption Song.

It’s snowing. Even better, the snow has already covered everything. It smells of nothing. Of resin. Emotions. Distance, walnuts, mandarins.

Sorry. It is not so. There is no snow.

The apartment is full of relatives and friends. They are making coffee, the desserts are all ordered on the red tablecloth. Children play, make noise, make hearts happy. Just be careful not to out of tune my guitars.

Sorry. It is not so. Not allowed. Everyone stays in their own home.

I look out the window. On Medium the blank page of a new story.

The stories of others, they are lights on in the windows of the houses. They let us glimpse bits of life.

I am a shy and curious child, almost certainly disheveled. At least this is true.

Good memories come close to me, like elves of the house, they huddle around me.

My grandfather is a carpenter. He didn’t have the chance to travel. Only during the war, he was dragged here and there along with other soldiers.

Therefore, by the fireplace, with the bread on the embers, he loves to browse the geographic atlas. From Patagonia to the Himalayas, his forefinger slowly scrolls the page and he learns the world.

My father is a shoemaker. He didn’t have the chance to travel. Just for the honeymoon with my mother, a FIAT 500 and the suitcase of youth, he chased the horizons beyond the hills.

Therefore, in the garret of blue summer nights, he loves talking to his “Geloso” amateur radio transceiver. Fox ears, hare ears, lurking in the white noise of the ionosphere. A knob to capture a signal, a second to transform it in words with people around the world.

I look out the window.

I am a shy and curious child, almost certainly disheveled.

I’m not that different from my father. I’m not that different from my grandfather.

And no one is that different from anyone.

There is a box on the street where everyone leaves their four passport photos. There is a sidewalk along which lost in thought walk our dreams. There is a sweetness, right here, that nothing and nobody can erase forever.

The heart it’s a hard-wearing pilgrim’s saddlebag where to keep stories.

I walk. The stories shuffle.

And joys mitigate pains, sadness turns into patience, the night is a part of the day. And the weight of existence, all the weight of existence, suddenly it is that of a newborn baby.

Christmas is close.

We trade each other a peck on the cheek, a wet handkerchief, an old black vinyl record, a damn bottle, a peeling wall, your own blood, the light of a candle, an empty chair, the certainty of not being alone.

On Medium the blank pages of everyone’s story. Like lights in the windows.

We have our faults, our mistakes, our nights spent in hospitals.

We have a sweetness, right here, that nothing and nobody can erase forever.

And Christmas is close. To Eveyone.

Thank you, Thomas Gaudex, for welcoming me so warmly to Scribe, for your commitment, your sensibility, and for the wonderful surprise you gave me!

Thank you, Trisha Traughber, for sharing my stories on Vagabond Voices!

Thank you all for reading and may it really be a Christmas to start over…