Narrative 8:

The field behind the house:

I remember being young there was behind our house a huge field of perhaps half a mile long until a dense forest not really inviting.

I played very often in this field. Alone, with friends or with my sister M. There’s a picture of her with Grandma G. immortalized standing in this large field with grass up to his thighs for my grandmother, to the neck for my sister.

I loved walking in this field.

I loved running in this field.

Sometimes I lay in the grass and watched the sky. Sometimes, after the rain, when there was a rainbow in the sky, I ran with a friend to reach it and we would go so near the end of the field, very close to the dense forest. I then turned back walking backwards to avoid having my back to the forest.

I always had a great sense of freedom in this field, like in a movie cliché or in a novel’s stereotype.

Nothing untoward happened in this field filled with ordinary grass, wild flowers and fireflies some summer evenings.

In the morning when I looked out the kitchen window, I embraced it. At night just before the darkness, I threw a last glance of tenderness and a desire to join it.

I liked this field as one loves a person.

Thank you my friend...

Narrative 6

Grandma B.’s myopia: 

I remember my grandmother B., my mother’s mother, was very, very, very shortsighted. I always wondered how she managed to do her daily chores with disabilities like that.

I never knew what color her eyes were and even what was like her look without her glasses.

I also remember my uncle Ti-P, when he played cards with my grandmother, took advantage of it to cheat because my grandmother did not see the cards we put on the table: we had to tell her what was played.

Because of his extreme myopia, my grandmother has always been someone special to me, fascinating. She seemed very sweet and very docile. But in reality… -I learnt it many years later after she died- she was very dominant, strong-willed, tough and often controlling- castrating! The "granny" I imagined was, indeed, a fierce lioness with gentle eyes. What thwart all its prey!

It was said that my grandfather was the eyes of my grandmother, and my grandmother was his legs. But that's another story...