Almost 25 years ago, in
I come from a family of very strong women. My mother has always been the one who makes the rules in the house. She wasn’t very strict but she was determined. When she said no, it was no, and there was no way to convince her to change her mind.
Since we were little, she showed us the right path, and then she let us make our own decisions. The main rule in the house was “school is first.” She used to tell us “your only job is to study, so do it well.” If we followed that simple rule, she let us go play and bought us anything we wanted.
My mom was a lot of fun as well as creative. She used to read us poetry, and tell us stories where we were the main characters. She rarely got mad or grounded us but when she did, we all knew it was something serious.
As a child, I didn’t get along with my oldest sister Ely, so I used to play alone. I loved to read fairy tales and imagine I was a princess. I also liked to write songs and sing them on my own invented TV shows. I wasn’t a very good singer, actually I was very bad, but I still remember some of the songs I wrote.
I was also very independent. I didn’t like to ask help. Even when it was very hard, I used to do my homework by myself. I liked to explore and analyze things rather than ask how it worked, that way I felt more satisfied.
The only one I loved to be with was my mom. Between the ages of one and three; she had to carry me wherever she went. I cried like crazy if she left me for a second. She had to do everything with me, even the house chores. My grandma said that it was because I was the one who loved her the most; I think she was right, although I also think I was a little spoiled.
I lived a very fun childhood; I was happy, I enjoyed every second of it, with its respective ups and downs, and I have many stories from where I learned many things. One I especially remember happened when I was about 4 years old. I used to fight with my older sister a lot. We were always messing with each other and pulling each other’s hair. One day we were literally wrestling on the floor when my mother came in. She was very tired of trying to make us get along with each other, and that day we got on her nerves. She then decided to ground us in a very special way. She made us sit on a chair; put both chairs back to back and tied us to each other. She put us by the front door and hung a sign that said “ask us why we are tied up”. When people passed by, we had to tell them that was the only way we could be together without fighting.
After about 30 minutes and much gossip, she untied us and made us promise we would never fight again. After that my sister and I learned to behave and stopped fighting; until adolescence came, but that is another story…
