Granny...

A story is a story. My grandmother used to tell us stories that she, in turn, listened from his father. Other stories, I believed she invent those like the one about "Pedro Ardimales", she gave the character that name, a very well known character in the past. I enjoyed her stories, listening her talking about her memories of her childhood and youth, her games in the neighborhood under the moonlight with her grandma telling them to go to sleep at six in the afternoon, believing it was already midnight.

I don't know when our relationship changed so drastically. Perhaps it happened at the beginning of my turbulent adolescence. Perhaps happened during those cruel sessions when she fought to repress my growing bosoms that seemed to have appeared before the proper time and which won the battle against the cold iron, which sought to constrain the nature. Or maybe it happened when her old-fashioned advice filled with fear my mother's mind, fear of what might happen to her daughter if left alone too much time. Those were hard times, years of internal and external fights until the day came in which the three generations signed a peace treaty.

Despite my liberal education and my education in and out the university, I still enjoy talking with my grandmother. Through her I have discovered both a sad and fascinating world, a world where women's life was not that different of ours. I have discovered a past so attached to us that it seems to be blocking our advance. A story full of wisdom, a suffering wisdom.

How many of those stories are our own, repeating themselves over and over. We want to pretend we have already evolved but we continue making the same mistakes our ancestors made.