The Promise

Our seemingly normal family of five got in the car that day knowing that it would be another difficult ride to school. Juan, my stepdad, must have hated his life to extremes I’d never understood, as it didn’t matter what day it was, every morning he’d wake up shouting and finding something to complain about. Sometimes it was about his shirts not being ironed properly. Or the breakfast not being to his standard. Or the news. Or the weather. Or me. Mainly me if we are being honest. Once he was so upset that I was having breakfast next to him with dirty nails, that he crushed his cup on the wall and asked me to leave the house. Little did he know that all my dreams were about me walking out that door and never returning.

We got in the car that day, and I had already started crying, which was not unusual. Juan’s miserable life translated to constant anger. My miserable life translated to constant tears and stuttering. That sunny January morning he wouldn’t take my crying.

"Stop breathing like that or I am going to punch you in the face" he shouted at me from the driver’s seat.

Side note: if you ever demand someone to stop crying, chances are they’ll cry harder. He knew that, I knew that. So when I started hyperventilating, the punch that followed was somewhat expected.

I stopped crying, and I learned, at the precise moment, that the adrenaline you can get from shock is an incredibly powerful and comforting painkiller. For what seems like an endless second, you are left just there, staring at nothing, ears pitching. All of a sudden, my heart didn’t hurt. I was locked so deep into a subconscious state, that the cries of my young heart were unheard.

I was eight years old, but I had heartbreaks for an entire lifetime. Every time my stepdad shouted at me. Every time he hit me. Every ‘No one is going to love you, Laura, you better get used to the idea now that you are young’. God bless every man trying to get close to the mess that I would be for the years to come. ‘I hope they keep coming’ I’d think to myself after scaring yet another one away.

My heart would also break at my mum’s unwillingness to save me. Years later I would learn what psychological abuse was, and how my mum was also a victim, and even though that was useful for forgiveness, I knew deep down in my shattered heart that I would never let a man control me. I remember being eleven and writing post-it notes that I burnt at the beach with the sentence ‘I will always be stronger than any man’.

But this story isn’t about me, my stepdad, or my mum. This story is about Marisa, my very own personification of a goddess, a queen, a ruler. The woman who knew which buttons to touch every single time I would have rather been dead. The woman who forced my dreams to reach so far that I couldn't follow with my head.

My grandma was an actress, a mother of seven, a grandmother of sixteen, a wife to a high ranking Marine, and a hero to me. She was untamed. She smoked two packets of Marlboro a day, and she was addicted to playing bingo and the lottery. She had no filter and would always tell you what she was thinking. My grandad always expected more class from her, to which she would reply with mockery and the middle finger. She was always laughing out loud, dancing and singing, and hiding fifty euro notes in the most random corners of the house as she didn’t want my grandad to know that she had secret money for extra lottery tickets. She always wanted to be a millionaire. She wanted a mansion in Marbella and to lie under the sun for eight hours a day with an Aperol Spritz. She was probably also a bit of an alcoholic.

One of the first memories I have with her lies in her kitchen, I must have been three or four, and she had picked me up and sat me down on the oily kitchen counter. She had a cigarette in her mouth and was about to flip the Spanish omelet she was making.

-Laura, remember my words like they are gold, -she said to me as the ash from her cigarette fell on the floor- you are my favorite grandchild. You are my favorite human in the whole wide world, and I am not ashamed to tell you. If any of your cousins have a problem with that, they can come to me.

My grandma demanded that I spent the weekends and the summers with her. She didn’t ask questions about my situation at home, she never was the kind of person to speak about anything dramatic, she was more practical that way. If she thought you were sad, she would just give you a happy story. If you were crying, she would put a vinyl on and urged you to dance your tears away. If you were bored, she would give you a script and make you play it out with her.

There was a Sunday morning when I woke up before my grandparents. I ran to their bed with tears in my eyes and jumped on them, shouting that I didn’t want to go back to my mum’s. My grandma lifted the duvet and allowed me to go in between them.

"Do I sense storytime?" she whispered with a romantic tone.

I nodded. I cuddled her while my grandad, still sleepy, put his arm around me and kissed my head.

"It was a rainy morning in La Plaza del Sol. It was late October of the year 1940, just a little after the civil war ended, and I was at a Caritas charity stand, giving out Lilies and collecting donations for those affected by the war when the most beautiful man to walk this earth stood up in front of me, and smiled"

She took a breath in and sighted at how romantic that moment was to remember.

"He looked me in the eyes and laughed, so young, so shy, yet so determined. He grabbed a Lily off my paralyzed hand, smelled it, and asked if we could go for a hot chocolate. I knew then that I had met my soulmate" she smiled and squeezed me extra hard.

"You were wearing that owl brooch weren’t you?" my grandpa moaned, still half asleep.

My grandma moved me away sweetly and opened the drawer of her bedside table with excitement. She grabbed something and placed it in my hand while holding it with tenderness and warmth. She asked me to hold on to this owl brooch as if my life depended on it, as it would bring me closer to my dreams.

On the car drive back to my mum’s place I looked through the window and onto the sea. There was a storm coming and the water knew it. The calmness of the shore, the warm visible feeling of the wind, and the dust on the car windows gave it away. I squeezed the brooch tightly with my right hand and closed my eyes while dreaming of an adult Laura, who’d travel the world on a boat with her soulmate and look at the stars every night, to then swim with the dolphins every day. ‘Sailing towards the sunset, sailing towards the sunset’, I’d repeat to myself.

"You know Laura, I think we suffer from the same condition" my grandma started saying from the co-pilot’s seat " Yes I think you have it too. My mum had it as well, your mum missed it, sadly for her"

"What is the condition?" I dared ask.

"You suffer from an overly sized heart, dear. It means that your heart is bigger than your chest, so sometimes it feels really painful and a little bit suffocating"

"What do I do for it, grandma?" I listened carefully.

"Well, there is no cure. But what I suggest you do, is to love as much as you can. As fiercely as you can imagine so that the muscles around your heart get used to the intensity of your soul. And when the pain becomes unbearable, you go outside, you stretch your arms as far wide as possible, and you move your chest by breathing in and out so that you can give your heart some room again"

Years later, when I was a very troubled and depressed teenager, I went to visit her in the hospital. I knew that was going to be a goodbye, but I still took my owl brooch with me intending to give it back to her hoping she would heal. She looked very fragile and with barely any life left on her skin but I could still feel her soul right there, with the strong presence it always had. I placed the brooch on her hand and squeezed it hard.

She opened her eyes and smiled at my sight and my touch.

"Oh my Laura. You are for sure what I am going to miss the most. Promise me you’ll love harder than your heart beats" she whispered so slowly and weakly I could barely hear her.

"I promise grandma" I managed to say with tears racing down my face, smiling at the memory of her saying I had one of the strongest heartbeats she had ever heard.