Three acre

All springs are the same and different. Different because each year that your eyes pass have aged three hundred and sixty-one days. The same because the breeze, colour, aroma and light of this moment were repeated last year and the previous one and will be repeated next year and the next.

My family had three acres to sow, and every morning I took the mare in order to put the harness on her, and went to the field to plough until nightfall. Of course, I had a little break at noon to take some bread or cheese with milk.

When my grandfather asked me how the plough had gone, I showed him the hands that were `blistered to buggery´. He laughed and told me that I was the strongest girl in the family. That always told me when we were alone and my sisters could not find out. Fifty years ago.

Early this morning, through the window, I saw the men marching to the field. They go with their cars —after drinking the inexcusable zalamea— to where they have the tractors and start the day.

Dear Fran, what I am going to tell you I knew from my nephew. Our lands, a potentate came from the city and he bought them. He bought ours and all those that extend from our house to beyond the house where I was serving. When my father died and we all dispersed, my mother sold what little we had, the field, the mare, the cows... She got rid of everything but the house; she said she had enough to live and she did it for two and a half years. Then she died.

Y. a.

Mary