Salutations, fiction-lovers.
Today, I’m very excited to bring you
.When Rolando is not working as a psychotherapist, he’s writing
, where he shares essays about emotions, thoughts and the behaviours that make the world move.Here Rolando shares with us a charming vignette that may or may not take a dark turn… Enjoy!
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A salty breeze that stimulates the nostrils, hinting at the wave of foam generated by the water. A boy chases a ball, which rolls like a leaf blown by the wind. In the distance, the fury of the waves makes a child disappear.
Covering the white wooden house with thin vertical blue stripes, a roof that resembles an inverted V announces the harsh winter rain. The blue of the stripes reminds him of the smock they used to dress him in when he went to school.
That day, his father's hand holding his as they went up the stairs symbolized the solemnity of the first day of school, when he felt a chill coming from his stomach down to his toenails, as if it were a kind of silent scream:
Please don't let go of me, she thought.
When she returned from school, the small wooden fence surrounding the house didn't serve as a prison for her. On the contrary, those were the bars that allowed her to be free while she built sandcastles in the small courtyard bordered by the wooden fence.
Against her mother's wishes, her father never wanted to replace the sand in the courtyard with stones, as he knew they would eventually limit his restless and freedom-loving daughter, Maria. He believed that she would end up wanting to jump over the wooden enclosure that allowed her to play freely. Without stones constraining her, Maria played freely and spontaneously, without the constraining supervision of an adult.
The house should be the little kingdom of freedom for those who live there- said the father, who left every morning to teach, always dressed in a suit and with a book under his arm.
Maria remembered well the evenings of reading with her father, accompanied by the sound of the sea waves. The lenses of her father's glasses reflected the yellow light of the kitchen. In the air, there was the smell of her mother's food, seasoned with the scent of salt coming in through the slightly open windows.
His father always came home when the sun and the sea became one. At that specific time of day, the orange of the sky gilded the walls of the sandcastle that Maria had built with her small hands inside the white-painted wooden fence that marked the boundaries of her kingdom of freedom.
When it was already night, the three of them sat at the round wooden table in the center of the room. While eating, Maria thought that one day she would build her own castle by the seaside.
Aware that we only know from the future what History tell us, Maria moved with her husband to the wooden house with vertical blue stripes, built in the sand by her father.
Coming from the sea, the scent of salt brought by the wind had the same smell of freedom she felt when she was a child. Maria wished that her son, a tall and slender child but not fragile at all, could feel that this house was his realm of freedom, fantasy, and hope.
The boy quickly learned to build sandcastles, the kind constructed with fingers filled with fine sand moistened by the salty sea water. The small fence surrounding the house protected the boy, while making him the master of his own little beach kingdom.
This setting was everything Maria had wished for. When she watched her son, she felt happy, just like when she, as a child, used to show her good school grades to her father.
To be free, you must build your own future- Â her father used to say while looking over her school results.
One day, as the sun painted the horizon orange, Maria approached the boy who was playing. She shook the sand off his hands as she sat him on her lap.
The past has flowed into this kingdom of freedom that your grandfather built.
The boy, with dark hair, had a zest for life that made him agile and quick. The other children admired his energy and physical strength, cultivated over 6 years of barefoot play in the sand. This infectious energy was like a kind of hope that fueled his dreams of becoming a footballer. Now, the wooden fence defined the boundaries of his imaginary stadium. In it, the boy's sandy feet drew feints, dribbles, and shots. He and his ball were like a dream of freedom.
One day, imitating the gestures of his idols, he kicked the ball with all his might. The ball rolled towards the sea. The boy's dreams of being a footballer chased after it. In the air, the intense smell of salt, the penetrating humidity, and the sound resembling thunder were the prelude to the violence of the sea.
Now the boy and his dreams were swallowed by the waves. Now the boy and his dreams swallowed by the waves. Maria, who tried to free the boy from the fury of the sea, is now adrift in the water that has always been the beacon of her freedom.
Mother and son dissolved in the waves forever, fragments of the vastness of the sea that made them dream. Their childhood dreams transformed into the foam of times called memory, reminding her of what her father had told her,
We only know if we are free when freedom tests us.
The wooden house with vertical blue stripes marks a kind of absence, which at the same time makes mother and son eternally present, like wise navigators of the sea of freedom they had become.
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Nicely done Rolando.
Very well written! I felt as if I was sitting beside the characters and could touch them.