“My grandmother taught me to read.
My grandmother taught me about books and transferred her love for them to me.
I had no choice; it was the inheritance she left me. My grandmother told me that with books, I would never be alone.
She taught me to take care of my eyes as the most precious, the sharpest place. She explained that if my ears would ever failed me, it would not be so serious, I would miss little, all that was worth listening to had been written, and I could recover it with my eyes.
She said that if my voice ever failed me, it would not be the end. I would receive the external sounds without returning them, and no-one would miss them, let alone me. Words existed in order to be executed: through my ears, those already conceived; by my hands, any that I wanted to invent. At the end, without mentioning even other deficiencies of even smell or taste, my grandmother told me to ignore deafness and muteness, if they ever threatened me, that the only absolute failing was blindness.
To take care of my eyes. Only they would let me read. Only they would save me from loneliness.”
Marcela Serrano
©️Translated from Spanish into English by Isabel Guevara