Juan Moisés De La Serna - A Touch Of Happiness

-Don’t worry, it’s a blessing, we waited for it so long and it never came. If I had had at least one, I’m sure that my life would have been very different.

That saddened me, because it is true that many couples, for one reason or another, even wishing to have them they can’t have children, instead, me without expecting it I was going to have a new being in my arms, which at first had seemed sad for me but now I was very happy to see how it was something positive and desired by others.

-Well, tell me, girl, have you already given her a name?

- No, ma’am, I just found out I am pregnant and I still do not know if it’s a boy or a girl.

I had not think about it, I have been too worried waiting for other people’s reaction, my parents and my partner, that I had not taken time to think about the baby, which after all was going to be the most important thing in my life for the next nine months and in the following years.

-I don’t know, it looks like she’s a girl, a beautiful girl, the older woman told me.

-How do you know? I asked, stunned by her comment.

-You know a lot of things at my age, it shows on your face- she replied with a wink.

I did not know how that woman whom I would have seen many times, but have spoken to her only once or twice in my life, now knew so much about me, maybe as she said it was all written on my face, and only those that knew how to read it would know. We got downstairs and the old lady came out saying

-Take care of him, for you have received a blessing, give him all the love you can for he will give it back to you back times ten.

That been said, I went with the dog to the park, the truth is that I felt good, that little girl had given me a great joy, because she looked so clean and innocent.

I would have wanted to be like her when I got married, but those were diffi-cult times of economic crisis when we had no luxury and I think that was why we didn’t have any children.

My husband and I were always talking about the same thing, about how expen-sive it would be to have a child in such a difficult time, we would talk about the expenses that it would generate us and especially about how we would see the child, very little as we both were working.

I think that was why we did not have a child, neither of us were willing to give up a part of our lives to have a little time and dedicate it to caring for a new member in the family.

At that time I had no dog, neither the means to take care of it, because I would wake up very early, even more than my husband, I would prepare his clothes and make breakfast, we had breakfast together and then he went to work at the factory and I to the hairdressers.

The amount of hairs that I had cut, unraveled curls and dyed wicks, this despi-te occupying a large part of the day made me happy, because that was where I would talk to my friends, also when I was fortunate of having a cheerful cus-tomer that made the hours shorter.

This is how I learnt how to find out people’s secrets by their faces, since this after all is a reflection of who we are, what we want and also what we hide.

So many hours listening to the customers, observing their faces in the mirror to see if I made a straight cut, that it made it easier for me later to guess if they had a good or bad day as soon as they entered the door.

Later on, my subtlety increased and I could know without her telling me anything, if she had quarrelled with her husband or son, if she had a new love or if he had left her.

It’s so much that my colleagues named me little witch and it was me who so-me customers came looking for, even if they had a beautiful hair, they wanted me to take care of their hair and thus use the opportunity to tell me about their lives.

Little by little I acquired that skill also on the street, although I never wanted to ask people if what I saw in them was true.

In spite of that, it has given me great joy to know that it still worked for me, to be able to know what was going on with this girl that I crossed in the elevator and that she later confirmed.

To tell the truth, at first I did not expect someone so young could be, but I had seen it so clear, I am truly happy for her.

With this joy in my body I kept walking my dog , focused in my thoughts, when it finished running around a bit and doing it’s business, I tied him again and we went up to the apartment. The dog despite being small made me feel quite big, though sometimes I had wanted to move and leave this place, I thought it was more about cowardness than a necessity.

I knew that in any other place I would find myself better than where I was now, but I also knew that I would miss it so much that I didn’t want to live far away.

It was the house that we had when we got married, the only one we have ever lived in after leaving my parents’ house, I had always wanted to travel and know the world before getting married, studying and having a good job were my goals in life, but circumstances ruled and they were very different from what I wanted.

A good man one day came to me after mass, he told me that he had been wat-ching me and that he wanted to meet my parents. In spite of how unusual that was it did not bother me, so I introduced him to them, the man after making himself known, said he was interested in me and asked for permission to talk to me.

That was a great joy me, because although I had fantasied a lot and flirt around with one boy or the other, never before had a man noticed me as a partner.

My parents, at first suspicious of his young age, asked him about his studies and his family. As best as he could, he got out of that trap and did it quite well, as he was then given permission to see me.

Those were difficult times for a relationship, not like now that you just agree to meet and that is it, then, a family member or a friend had to join us so that we would not be alone and so we would not misbehave.

But after seeing each other two or three times, we figured out a way to be out alone, he brought a family member and I brought a friend as companions and they fit and got along so well that one day we told them,

-If you like we can give you time to be alone while we leave.

And that’s how we got to have our first moments alone, by the way, my friend and her husband are happily married, although it’s been long I heard of them since they moved out of town, but last time we saw them, they had two pre-cious children.

I went to the kitchen to get something to eat, the truth is that I hardly ever felt like eating anything, despite forcing myself every day, because on more than one occasion I had to be hospitalised as a result of anaemia.

After having dinner while watching the television, I put on the radio for a whi-le, although I did not listen to it too much because I was not interested in what was said, it serve me as a company.

It was nice to hear human voice in that house, although I did not get to do as others did, talk and reply the radio announcer as if he were there.

We shared many years and also much suffering here was contained, some of my friends told me it was like a mausoleum, because I kept almost everything just like when my husband was still alive, but what they did not know is that in one way or the other I was still waiting for him.

After the car accident and the subsequent rehabilitation, my husband had been affected by a concussion, from time to time he had memory gaps, as the doc-tors said, and he did not remember the past, but the most serious thing was when the time lapse started in the present, he forgot where he was or who he was with.

That was very hard, because it was a daily struggle for him to remember me, renewing the love with someone who barely recognised me.

I suffered a lot in silence, thanking God for the luck of having him by my side despite his sickness, but one day he did not return. He walked out the door one weekend when we were about to eat and I didn’t hear anymore of him, a few hours later I called his friends and nobody knew where he could be and I be-come afraid, I called the police, hospitals and all the places that occurred to me but nobody knew anything about him.