I remember the time that my mother invited me to go to Lebu in the school summer holidays, to the town where she grew up until her move to Concepcion where she meet my father. Lebú is the capital of the Arauco Province in the region of Bio Bio, located to the south of Concepcion. She described that place as the windy city where the winters are gray pass slowly.
That year we traveled together with my grandmother and the day we arrived, the city didn’t seem dark, the sun was bright giving the street an intense white colour. There was just one four story buildings and the rest of the houses wooden.
We slept in the old town hotel which still kept some original decorative details that revealed the beauty of its glorious past.
all wall around the room I could slept.
I must to admit that I’m a little bit to scared of spiders and mice. Therefore after I looked around I could breathe.
The next morning I asked my mom about the leprosy colony that she had mentioned many times in her stories when I was a child. It was located far away from the city. She used to go there to see the sick people. I instantly I asked her again about the suicide tree and slowly she answered… that the tree was cut and she also told me that she had already forgotten the route to the Leprosy colony.
The only thing that was still in the same place of her memories was the submarine, which had ran aground in long forgotten times .
We spent many hours sitting in the town’s only square. I tried to transport to myself to my mother’s childhood. My grandmother was remembering that French man who arrived into her life to marry her and with whom she had four children and my mom was thinking in the letter that she sent to first love when she was 9 years old.
mother was thinking about the letter that she sent to her first love when she was nine years old.
