A Love Story I

Summer afternoons in Seville were very hard for a child. At home, it was compulsory being quiet, keeping silence after eating while my father was having a doze and my mother was watching television, listening to the radio or doing the ironing. However, it was the best moment for me, I knew I could spend the whole afternoon in that room. . .

In my father´s study, in that room there were many people, there were many friends waiting for me. Suddenly, I was sailing with Jack Aubrey or I was looking for a trail next to Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes I had to sing with Long John Silver and other times I had to run with “The Five”, but after running I could always rest in the Ivanhoe´s tent. Although I have to admit there were awful days, specially when Bertha Mason began to scream and Gulliver was too far from home and he could not help me.

Nevertheless, in the worst moment an overwhelming force came to save me. William Bligh, on board the Bounty expelled Mason from my mind and a few moments later, the ship tied up at a strange dock. The dock was in an lonely island where Robinson was waiting for me, he wanted tell me wonderful stories about other island, a remote island where people spoke in a language I did not know. He told me that in that remote island were born all my friends that now were living in my father´s study. An island where had been built all the ships I had in my books.

One day, when afternoon became evening my neighborhood friends came at home, we were going to play a football match. I ask my mother for my red shirt and when she gave me it . . . I realized she had sewn three letters, three capital letters near the place where the shirt and my heart had to crash, only three letters “LFC”.

These three letters came from that remote island. I went to play my football match with only one aim: I wanted to learn that language in which Defoe had written. I wanted to understand what “You will never walk alone” meant.

 

Although, that is another story. . . another love story.