First postcard to mom

One Friday the teacher greeted saying: Do you already have the gift for mom? How, but mom isn’t the one who gives the gift? My mind entered a cloud of musings. Friends described their sumptuous presents in boxes festooned with party paper. I shrugged hearing those gifts and focused my gaze on the dainty scribbles on the table.

My reaction, shared with many, revealed that I didn’t have, well, we didn’t have any gifts.

Do you know where the Post Office is? says the teacher.

Post Office?

That sounded so high-sounding, so of older people, of those who speak when we were silent. That day he authorized, what was prohibited, the little group that still did not have a gift from mom to go out during recess time.

You don’t think twice. The purchase of two-peso matahambres was suspended. The Yu-Gi-Oh cards stayed in the backpack, at that recess there was no dueling.

I started doing things for big people, I had a new responsibility: getting the gift.

Willing to buy not one, but four, for mom, the grandmothers and the teacher, I walk the stretch that is necessary (four blocks, at the age of 6 it seems like a trip to the Center of the Earth, quite an adventure to narrate in the victorious return).

When the teacher sees from the central corridor the herd of children who are leaving through the school gate, she shouts: «Kids, wait there», we stop dead, «I’m going with you, there are many».

The excursion begins. As you turn the corner, you run into two peasants with giant hats and riding bicycles. They proclaim jasmine, lilies and roses, with the art that taxi drivers do not enjoy, the boatmen, yes, who reiterate the word: taxi, without cadences, or rising tones. «Boys, buy flowers,» the vase interrupts his string of cries.

The teacher takes out her huge purse and puts 5 pesos each in our hands. With those few years, you don’t question the teacher spending her money on you. For you, the peso is the paper with heroes for which you receive rich things and the CUC, were the precious bills that you exchanged for even richer things. I chose a black prince by flower, I remember that I selected him by name, I found it funny, he wasn’t a prince, he wasn’t black.

We arrived at the Cuban Post Office, some with a red dot on their fingertips, the treacherous thorns. The saleswoman knew what that entourage of blue scarves was coming for.

«Let’s go cute, one behind the other. How cute!», he said to each one in his turn to buy»

I got some postcards with photos of four cute puppies, it seemed to me that delivering postcards with drawings of flowers next to a flower, was redundant, although I was not even aware of the existence of that word.

Now that I think about it, it was all a plan by teacher Deysi so that no one would stop entertaining their mothers, that, or they would go halfway in the profit from the sales of the postcards with the clerk.

That day I spent 9 pesos in total, five from the teacher. I gave the postcard to Mom at 4:30 in the afternoon that same day. Her glowing countenance upon receiving the postcard and the flower constitutes one of the most beautiful memories of my childhood.

In these times the flowers cost around one hundred pesos and the postcards, the truth is, I don’t know if they can find them. So children, exploit your manual skills, and kiss your mothers, after all, it is what you enjoy the most.

Today, the postcard remains half-open on the living room shelf, recalling that the son gave the first gift to the mother, the one who is always there, the one who unfolded her body to engender size and life. (ALH)

Translated by Casterman Medina de Leon