We reopened the book at the page where we left it
Elenita, Lola and a night in Córdoba when our children also began to get to know one another
There are people with whom, one day, you board the same train of life.
For a while, you share a carriage, conversations, dreams and youth.
Then a station comes along, and everyone goes their own way.
One starts a family.
Another moves to a different country.
The years go by.
And that train seems so far away.
Until one day you hear a familiar voice again and discover that, through some strange coincidence of life, you have met again at the same station.
Elenita and Lola belong to one of those chapters of my life.
I met them when I was young, during a few years connected with an academy in Córdoba. From that time, I prefer to hold on to what truly matters: the wonderful people I met and some friendships that, many years later, are still part of my life.
Then life did what it usually does.
It took us to different places.
I ended up in Japan. Along came jobs, families, responsibilities, children and all those little and big events that fill the years almost without us noticing.
But there are people who, even when they are no longer part of our everyday lives, never disappear completely.
Elenita and Lola are those kinds of people.
— ◆ —
At the same station again
During this trip to Spain, they called me, and we managed to arrange an evening to meet in Córdoba.
This time, we were no longer just those young people from so many years ago.
Their husbands were there.
Their children were there.
Teo was there.
And so was I.
We had arranged to meet just for a drink.
Besides, I knew it would have to be a short evening. The following morning, I needed to get up very early because I had to leave for Málaga with my mother and Teo at around eight.
In theory, it was perfect.
We meet, chat for a while and leave early.
But some nights do not pay much attention to theories.
The conversations began, the memories, the laughter, the questions about everything we had lived through over these years.
And the clock kept moving without asking permission.
— ◆ —
Some looks never change
Something curious happened to me while we were talking.
I looked at Elenita, Lola and their husbands and felt that, behind everything the years had added to our lives, I could still recognise something of those young people I had known.
The years change our bodies.
They change our jobs.
They change our responsibilities.
They make us fathers, mothers, professionals, people with worries we could not even have imagined before.
But there are looks we still recognise just as we always did.
There was a sincerity in their eyes, a sparkle, something hard to explain that took me back to that time for a few seconds.
Not because nothing has changed.
So much has changed.
That was precisely why it was so lovely to discover that some things were still there.
— ◆ —
And then our children came into the picture
But what surprised me most that night happened just a few metres away from us.
The children wanted to sit with Teo.
My first reaction was quite logical:
But how are they going to talk?
Teo barely speaks Spanish, and they do not speak Japanese.
I could see a fairly obvious problem.
Fortunately, they did not see it that way.
They sat together.
They started trying.
A word here.
A gesture there.
An expression.
A laugh.
And somehow they began to understand one another.
I do not know exactly what they talked about all that time.
And I do not think it matters very much, either.
Because what was lovely was seeing that they wanted to be together.
In the end, language was the least important thing.
During this trip, I keep discovering something that seems very simple, but that perhaps we adults make far too complicated:
affection, curiosity and the wish to get closer to another person often need no translation.
— ◆ —
A new story was beginning beside us
There was a moment when I looked at our table and then at theirs.
And I understood how extraordinary that scene was.
While we were remembering the pages we had written so many years ago, a few metres away our children were beginning to write the first lines of their own.
That moved me especially deeply.
Who could have told us when we were young that one day we would be together until three in the morning, watching our children laugh and try to understand one another across Spanish and Japanese?
We had spent years apart.
We had built different lives.
And yet our stories had crossed paths again.
But this time there was something new.
It was no longer just us.
There was now a second generation around that friendship.
Perhaps that night does not mean anything special to them yet.
Perhaps many years from now they will not even remember all the details.
Or perhaps they will.
Who knows.
But that night they began to get to know one another.
And that is already part of our story.
— ◆ —
Nobody wanted to close the book
The clock kept moving.
Twelve.
One.
Two.
And we were still talking.
Every so often, someone would remember that we had to be up early the next day.
But then another conversation would come along.
Another memory.
Another laugh.
Something else that had gone untold for so many years.
Until, at around three in the morning, it was finally time to say goodbye.
We had to get up just a few hours later, but it seemed that nobody wanted to be the one to close the book again.
And perhaps that is why that night ended up meaning so much.
Because when you have spent many years far from certain people, you begin to understand that time spent together has a different value.
You do not know when you will meet again.
You do not know at which station.
Or how many stops you will be able to travel together next time.
You only know that, for a few hours, you have been travelling in the same carriage again.
I love them.
They are my friends.
And yesterday I understood once again that time does not always destroy relationships.
Some friendships work like a book.
We can close it for years.
It can gather dust while each of us writes other stories in other places.
But when we meet again, all we have to do is open it.
And the story continues on the very page where we left it.
This time, too, while we were picking up our story again, our children may have been beginning their own.
— ◆ —
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