07:00 • 12 jul. 2021
Claudia is like a twenty-eight-month-old doll who never lets a tender smile escape her beautiful face that reveals her childish pearly teeth. In the shadow of her abundant hair skein of golden curls, my nice niece has discovered the sea, although last summer she received her baptism of water and sand. Days ago, when at the hands of her mother Claudia opened her eyes on the beach of San José, she outlined a gesture of astonishment and blurted out: Mom, what a big pool!. The naive spontaneity of the little girl has removed the silos of her own and other people’s memory about the first time, the first beach, the first sea, the distant sensation of an unforgettable experience that with little dose of sensitivity that we all have to preserve – with varied casuistry – in the armored chambers of our past.
Some of these indelible experiences have determined in certain cases the last relationship with water and the sea. This has happened with my friend and old colleague Tista, whom his upbringing in the Land of Bread and Wine kept him in his early childhood, by decree of his grandmother, at bay with the waters of Rionegro, the largest body of water within reach. of his eyes of little more than six years. The most accessible hydric landscape of the small Tista was limited to the Villafáfila Lagoons, which in summer were reduced to a nested wetland of migratory birds. The boy’s restless temperament and his innate attachment to adventure led him to take advantage of the neighborhood’s attendance at Sunday mass to escape together with his friend Nazario, another pro adventurer, to the lagoon wetlands with the evil intention of rummaging among the vegetation and the reeds to look for nests and hunt the chicks of the settled species, as well as to cut the “pure” of the cane bracers.
Given his daring nature, once in the Tista lagoon he entered the waters into the deepest part of the pools. The recklessness and ignorance of the aqueous medium caused the improvised bather to sink, who without being able to avoid it was imprisoned by the mud up to the waist. Scared and fearful, Nazario ran and stood in the middle of the mass shouting “Tista is sinking, Tista is drowning!” Alarmed and haphazard, the parishioners and the officiant began a fast race to the lagoon, where Ángelito, the son of “Ángel el frutero”, He did not think twice and went into the mud until he reached where Tista was immobilized, who with the help of other neighbors was rescued from the quagmire. That first aquifer adventure for my friend Tista ended with a prolonged scolding and a double spanking, one for each parent. Already in Andalusian lands, with more than a dozen years, the waters of the Castillo pool, in Lanjarón, seemed like a real lagoon, to Tista -Juan since- who was shocked when he accompanied his friend José Zorrilla and family to the beaches from the Granada coast. The sinuous descent towards the coast revealed the blue horizon of the Alboran Sea, a vision that confined the boy between the seats of the car. When the little old Castilian faced the Andalusian sea, he was shocked and overwhelmed. I had never been able to imagine such an amount of water together. The invitation of their hosts to ride a scooter on the surface of the water was useless, an element, since then, of the utmost respect for our protagonist.
More serene but no less impressive was the experience of Rosa Serrano, “La Serrana”, for whom knowing the sea was not one of her priorities. Despite growing up and living just over fifty kilometers from the coast, Rosa had never known the sea. With almost ninety years his first time arrived, his first sea. It was at the end of the eighties of last century when, after a long and tiring journey of more than five hours, he arrived in Cartagena to visit his grandson Manuel, who had just joined his first assignment as a tenured teacher. After the family reunion on the beach, affectionate and explosive, “La Serrana” moved a few meters and looking out to sea exclaimed: Jesus, how much water! Then he was silent for some time with his gaze fixed on the horizon.
Much more advanced was his daughter, Rosa Ibáñez. Her father’s boss at the factory where he worked wanted to celebrate his anniversary with a family beach day, a celebration that included an invitation to Rosa, who, in addition to being a neighbor, was an inseparable playmate of the businessman’s daughter. Little Rosa was eight years old and had to wait for her first communion dress – the only acceptable one for the occasion – to dry, which was soon ready, since it was July and it was hot. Rosa did not forget the games in the sand and the laughter with her friend. The sea remained as a fuzzy memory in his nonagenarian mind when, shortly before he died, he related this experience to his son, the journalist Francisco Terrón.
They are impressions and astonishment of the sea. The sea with the eyes of children, the sea with the eyes of yesterday and today.
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