Three years ago we received 2023 in the fifth. The family: adults, an almost adolescent boy, a girl, the grandmother. On the 1st at noon, a rat He walked through our beautiful yard, ran through the kitchen, and hid in the bathroom while we screamed. The small bathroom at the reception.
We held a meeting in the living room. Enter with a broom? A poison pill and wait? Cancel the bathroom until someone could take over? Until it appeared from behind Chicitawith a towel in hand. He opened the door, closed the door and when he opened it again he had the rat – now a small rat – on the dressing table. He took a few steps, went to the fence and threw the little animal onto the field. Ready.
A few days ago, now, Chichita Strien was 101 years old. The fact that she, the one with the little rat, was 98 years old at the time was not an obstacle to her being the most determined of all of us, but rather, I think, the opposite. He had been born in a place and a time when such things were unafraid. Or had he learned to overcome those little fears and take responsibility, because who else would? It had become powerful and still is today when the body takes its toll. He never says it hurts, even if it hurts. He recites that he is at peace with life. Sings.
Chicitamy mother-in-law, was born in a town in Corrientes, long before the Wall Street crash, long before the first coup against Yrigoyen in Argentina, long before Adolf Hitler came to power. When World War II ended, she was already teaching at a rural school and going out into the fields to collect the children, who their parents often took with them to harvest.
Convinced that education saves, that education would take these children to other places and this country to other places, he persisted his secret desire to study medicine in the city and taught and taught and taught. The teachers lived there, in that place, and on oppressive nights or in storms she learned to face it all and, with her students, to decipher the letters and the animals, to clarify equations and the space in which they had to eat and learn, to draw the boundaries of the land and those of the vast field that could not be crossed.
In the beautiful villa, with a beautiful pool, frankly built in old age, Chicita He knew how to slowly enter the water, take a pull and settle into the lounge chair before leaving us stunned with the towel and the peace. But she was, with the consciousness of a useful life beyond consumption and as part of history.
Because history can’t leave you alone. It touched her in the solitude of Corrientes when she had to climb on the sulky and drive from ranch to ranch registering women so they could vote for the first time. And he touched it with a serrated saw dictatorship He kidnapped his three beloved nephews in a single night, forever.
This meant breaking a deep conviction: that of the good army of San Martín, which fought for our liberation. But all that destroyed this criminal dictatorship was not the belief that education must be done. He was already almost 80 years old when the country exploded in December 2001 and Buenos Aires, where he lived at the time, was full of gatherings and places where many people met for meals, where they could eat, but also do something together, plan and learn.
So, Chicita He took on the task of teaching reading to those who could not read – yes, boys, year 2001, adults in the city of Buenos Aires who could not read – and strengthening the youngest so that they could easily complete primary school or go to secondary school. She came by bus from a neighborhood more than half an hour away, laden with books and candy. He did this in 2002, 2003, 2004. And several of his students, children of unemployed people living in tenements, attended demanding schools like Otto Krause or Nacional Buenos Aires. Or they have graduated as teachers themselves: There is the proud photo with Chichita.
When the pandemic hit, I was living alone. What can you do all day? Well, he’s learned to get the most out of his phone. He bought a tablet and found relatives who lived far away on Facebook. It started with literature courses through meet, which it continued until a year ago. Always in life, in control of life.
I saw her cross the river one summer in the delta full of mobility. And we traveled there, in July, shivering, lying in the bottom of a boat and covered in blankets when I needed her to accompany me to stay silently by my side while I wrote a difficult book about cancer.
Sorry for the mess: a few days ago Chichita lived to be 101 years old and she greeted us with a poem that somewhat evaluates a life the way she likes it: ““I dug the well with my own hands,/I planted the cedar with my own hands.” wrote Mario Bravo. “And the years and years will pass/And the cedar will continue to grow./And the years and years will pass./And the cedar will be young and I will be old.
He finds it difficult to walk now and sometimes he doesn’t remember what happened a while ago. But if you ask him if he can do it – if he can help you with a few geographical facts, if he can feed the cat, if he can climb those five damn steps at the entrance – he will always say yes. Because she has power.
Maybe that’s why he looks at his phone and records: “And years and years will pass./And “someone” might repeat in his memory:/“He dug the well with his own hands…”/“He planted the cedar with his own hands.”
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