The General’s granddaughter

Among all the grandchildren, she had been the General’s favorite. Perhaps it was because she was the firstborn, or perhaps because, in her clear gaze and perfect ringlets, he sensed the beginning of something new — a life born free from the shadows of the past. In that serene child of light, he found the full stop and new paragraph of his own story. She embodied the living proof of life’s resilience and the transforming power of time — time that flows and slowly erases the traces of wounded memory.

That little girl became the resting place for his weary eyes, longing for new sensations and new good mornings.

The girl grew, and with the years, she learned the strange vertigo of difference — those small nuances that once made her stand out among the grandchildren and later would set her apart even from her own siblings. Week after week, she would lose herself in the numerical mazes her father devised as games for the delight of her brothers, who would leap in excitement each time one of them claimed the prize. And since vanity for being the favorite nor envy for another’s success ever dwelled in her nature, she learned to glide into the calm waters where each rows to their own rhythm.

And so it was that the magical, sensitive girl with the clear, liquid gaze became the full stop and new paragraph of the family’s memory. She matured, absorbing into her large and generous heart other visions and dialectics that gradually lifted her, like a gas balloon, away from the family’s core — convinced that true strength lies in the bonds we choose, and that her way of feeling and seeing would guide her to the place where poets think and feel — those who lean and suffer beside the window that looks out to the sea.

CFC