Tía María

«His name was Maria. She was the second wife of my father's uncle.

Yesterday I went to see her as I used to do since she became widowed by my father's uncle.

The first time I went to Cortegana I was seventeen and it was the first time too that my father got holiday, I don´t remember if it were four or five days. The journey lasted nearly three hours because the road was very narrow, plenty of bends and we had to stop in each village. So much time on the bus and the change of landscapes made me think I would be very, very far from home, when we had actually travelled a little over one hundred kilometres. This journey one can do it in an hour nowadays.

At that time uncle Juan José was married to Ana, his first wife and they offered us (to father, mother, sister and me) one of the two houses they had; the uncle´s one when he was single, beside a stone wall belonging to an immense finca of a couple from Seville. It's more than forty years ago. I´ve often visited the village since then but yesterday that experience ended. The next time I go there it won´t be to be a little while with her.

Tía María was a very loving, serene and intelligent woman who was a dressmaker and an embroiderer with a workshop where she taught her craftsmanship to the girls from village. She started to do housework in my father´s uncle´s house when the latter lost his wife and, in a short time, to avoid the bad tongues of the people-after all, they were a man and a woman-they decided to get married.

When Uncle Juan José was buried, it was a gray, rainy and warm day. From his house to the cemetery we went (my father, my uncle Joaquin and I) in silence - silence that from time to time broke because my uncle made some comment because he was not able to keep his mouth closed for a long time.

Each year, on September, after the first rains I approached to the Cabezuelo Street and my aunt gave me a very warm welcome and, as soon as I sat, she made a thick Portuguese coffee with flores de miel or other cake. Then when my children born, at the age of eight or nine, I took them with me and she got very happy and always gave them something to say goodbye.

Cortegana is full of chestnut trees, cork trees, arbutus, olive trees and a lot of orchards with apples, khakis, peaches and dark crimson pomegranates. This landscape for someone customary to see flat fields, wheat fields, barley fields, yellow fields or cotton meant incredible discoveries.

The aunt´s house had a rear courtyard, past the kitchen, with a window and a glass large gate through one could see a little garden surrounded by a garden wall and, over the wall, in the distance, I could see the road to Rosal de la Frontera and the hillocks shared by Spaniards and Portuguese.

Every time I went to his house the door was open. No yesterday. It was a niece of her who lives upstairs who confirmed me my bad omen.  She died last Friday. »

I want to share with you a letter I received from my friend Godoy a few days ago.

Y. a.

Mary