Celebrating a Family Story

Each day I resemble my mother more and more, physically and in character. It worries me that my sense of humour might be quite similar. We have in common that we both are jokey, but very often we are the only ones that laugh at the jokes. It is surprisingly easy to get used to not getting a reaction from people.

My mum’s jokes are not memorable to me, as mine will not be to others, but there is a story that my mum has told repeatedly all throughout her life and it has become ingrained in me. I can’t think when I heard it for the first time. Through the years at every family celebration my mum has told this story again and again. The funny thing is that it was not a remarkable story by any means, more an anecdote. As happened with her jokes it did not grab people’s attention. We could not understand its significance, and we became desensitised because of all the times we have previously heard it.

The story goes that my mother managed to make a friend in a foreign country despite niether of them speaking each other's language. They never became close friends, I don't think, but they were close enough that she visited my mother frequently and even trusted her with her young kids.

But her tale was always worth telling if we would have listened properly. The amazing thing behind the story was that my mum was willing to move to a country like Canada, so far and so different from her native Spain, even when she did not speak the language. Despite that, she was always confident of her abilities to survive in a foreign land. My father had a good knowledge of French, so his experience of the country was not comparable to that of my mum’s.

My parents emigrated mainly out of a spirit of adventure that all their sons and daughters have inherited. They left Spain when they were in their late thirties and parents to four young kids. I was the youngest. To move to Canada, my father left his stable job in a bank, the place where he had been working since he was 18. They took the decision to move there partly encouraged by one of my uncles, who had been living in the city of Montreal since leaving the Spanish Civil War as his life was at risk.

It seems that of our life in Canada, the best memory of my mum’s time there, was getting to know her neighbour who tried to speak with her no matter how challenging it was. My dad sometimes played the role of translator, but most often he was not there. This lady, Madame Ponce, used to bring to our home one of her daughters, Isobel, to play with my brother, because they were of a similar age. And even when we moved neighbourhoods, she came looking for my mum. This simple relationship must have made my mum feel happy.

It was because of my mum that after two years of living in Montreal, we returned to Spain. However, my mum was never negative about her experience in that part of the world. She found the place extremely cold and possibly, although she did not complain, felt very isolated because of the lack of language skills and social life. The cold was stuck in her head. She even kept for a very long time an article with a shocking photo of a fire in a house not far from ours. The firemen in the photo were fighting a fire, and the ice, the water from the hoses kept freezing. Looking at that photo you could almost feel the chill. My mum had actually passed by the house on fire that day.

Many times, my mum was amazed that I had no recollections of having been in Canada. She always thought it strange that I did not remember at least how cold it was, or that many months were white. The truth is that I was only a baby, a toddler. The very little I imagine I might remember is probably because of photos or having heard stories from my parents or from my sister and brothers. Halloween sounds like a seriously fun event in the life of a kid, and they do all have great memories of it. They can even describe the fancy dresses they wore.

At some point I realised I did have a very vague memory of when I was a young toddler. It is a pleasant memory of playing with a baby and being looked after by a lady that was not my mum. She could only have been our neighbour, Madame Ponce, and her young baby daughter, Barbara. I hope that when my mum was free of the obligation of looking after me, she was able to enjoy herself. I like imagining her exploring the big city and that she felt a thrill while taking advantage of her freedom.

So, repeating her example, I continue telling bad jokes that nobody finds funny apart from me. I love cities and travelling, and if I have learnt something from her it is to value my friends, and to be grateful for the pleasures of having good company. And now that talking to my mum is not what it used to be, I find myself surprisingly retelling her the story she told so many times before. The story of her friend and how they managed to communicate in two languages that they did not share. I am not sure how much she understands, but at least she answers in an animated tone, 'Yes, yes, I know.'

I wonder what story I will repeat to myself and others.