Grandmother
Her baroness forehead, her noble profile, and her sharp look
From time to time, my grandmother took off the gold-rimmed thin glasses that were always on the tip of her nose. At the same time, sitting on her bed, she seemed to make an immense effort to reach her left foot. The thin white fingers of her hand lengthened even more and her lips tightened, pursing her mouth, which indicated that she finally reached and clutched her foot with her leg stretched out on the bed. Her forehead was also furrowed in a thousand lines.
My grandmother had an itchy wound, like those wrapped in kilometer gases. Then she started to massage her foot with smooth and long movements, back and forth, until everything was calm. She returned to her glasses and the prayer book, with a black cover and with a very fine gold on the edge of each page, which made a single gold, thick and imposing.
And there was my grandmother, in a stillness of saints, learning the way of perfection and in peace from older people who no longer need to run. In a little while, she was scratching her foot again.
I watched everything enchanted because I was still a child, and children know how to get enchantment from everything, even from a grandmother who scratches her foot wound. Her image sitting on the bed, with her lean leg stretched out, doesn’t come out of my fondest memories. Her straight, white hair, pulled back and and held in place by two small hairpins, her baroness forehead, her noble profile, and her sharp look.
Is there anything in the world more beautiful and tender to remember?
