RWC tutor Daniela Gutierrez shares a piece of original creative writing.
Like everyone, I awake half asleep and conscious to commence another day and leave the affable comfort and warmth of my bed. As I make my way to work, I oversee the mountaintops covered in snow over a tepid, gray canvas. The scarcity of sunrays and the overcast skies make me reminisce of a different world–a world where the sun unabashedly exerts its warmth on its residents. A world where Winter’s icy touch faintly brushes on by like a chill across your spine and leaves with no trace except for its ephemeral memory. There are no tangible traces that Winter was here–neither the land was barren nor the skies solemn. My mind’s eye runs along the vast and boundless canvas stretched over a cyan sky and its indigo majesty, the mountain, overlooking the empty canal. Beyond the mountain’s sovereignty, generations of families and communities of people have settled on many ranches. This world is archaic, teeming with stories, carried on by the people’s chatter and whispers over a flame.
In such a world, my grandfather gently rises to greet a new dawn, while my grandmother slowly follows his lead. Gripping a steel bucket, he sits on a plastic “stool,” and his daily routine of milking his goats and single cow commences. Meanwhile, my grandma pats a small ball of dough in her hands repeatedly before she places it on the press; the open fire of a comal, hotplate, provides her warmth in the morning’s crisp weather.
Soon, breakfast with a cup of hot chocolate or coffee
with goat’s milk is served. By then, Huitzilopochtli, the sun,
had triumphantly risen over her majesty, the indigo mountain. Alas,
the day has only begun, and as such, my grandfather sojourns over the canal
and its fields with his flock of goats. Tirelessly, in his torn boots and with a machete by his side, he serenely lets the hours pass him by as so many years have. In the same breath, kilometers away, my days are filled with strangers passing me by, seeking refuge from the rain or shelter from the cold.
When Winter’s touch has crept into my heart, my mind seeks sanctuary in my grandparents’ home. Their home is a sanctuary where all my fears hide, and love abides. On top of a small wooden closet, a candle is lit next to a saint from morning to night, and a picture from my childhood rests. I trace the vastness of the land like the palm of my hand, holding its memory dearly. A world with sunny Winter days, of such a world, I belong to.