Memories with sauce

   As the water began to bowl, I opened the pasta packet and dropped it all inside. I was eating alone, but I felt hungry and also felt like not having to excuse myself if I wanted to eat a bit more than usual. I turned to the fridge and grabbed my favorite pasta sauce. I would mix it with vegetables and cheese, in order to turn my meal into a needed relaxing time. I really needed to stop thinking about all the things around me and just, for once, enjoy myself having a nice plate of hot and hearty food.

 The pasta softened fast and my sauce started boiling in no time as well. I had chopped onions, peppers, carrots and mushrooms, as well as a big eggplant that I had found in my fridge and didn’t remember buying at the store. It all went into the sauce and I decided to wait for everything to be just perfect. I grabbed my phone, and browsed through happy pictures of people, some traveling and some others with their children and getting married or celebrating something with, apparently, thousands of people somewhere nice.

 I rarely had any time to go on holidays, so I always wondered how the hell they did it, how was it that they earned a very decent living and, at the same time, had so much time to do nothing. Getting a job had taken me forever and it was not now that I would attempt to lose it only to go frolicking in the waves of some beach in an Asian country. I sure was jealous of what they had, but not at every single moment of my life. It was just when I browsed those stupid pictures and also when I felt not so high on myself.

 The pasta had to be ready then. I grabbed my plastic strainer and took all the water out from it. When it was good and dry, I put it back into the pot. No moment left to think, I grabbed the other pot with the sauce and pour it all over my pasta. Looking at those delicious chunks of deliciousness was enough to make me feel very happy again. I forgot about the stupid pictures I had seen and decided to only dedicate the rest of that day to the delicious food I was making and also going to eat.

 I stir it all good and even put on some butter on it, in order for the pasta not to stick to anything too much. As I moved my food around, the smell of it all reminded me of better times or at least easier ones. I remembered the food that was served to me in the cafeteria, at school. I especially remembered taco day. The tacos were not even that good but the rush of having such an uncommon food in school was enough to make me feel happy. It even made the food taste so much better. I would ask the lady for more and more, until she had to tell me that others also wanted to eat tacos.

 Fat was something I never really was but I did get a bit chunky in high school. I think it was because I would rather completely avoid any physical exercise. I ate like any kid does at that age, tacos were an exception. What I really hated was physical education and how the teachers were always so happy and positive in those courses. It was really unnerving how fucking happy they were to play anything or to make us run around the whole school. It was almost like some sort of boot camp, at least in their minds.

 As I served myself a big bowl of pasta, I realized I was smiling from ear to ear. Apparently, remembering school was causing me some kind of pleasure, which was very strange because I didn’t really have any nice memories from that time in my life. I was a very average student, I even had to do one year all over again. Making friends seemed like the world’s hardest task and I also felt it was just futile because I kept failing horribly when trying to get to know people, and kids are tough as nails when they want to be.

 I smiled though. I sat down on my two-seat dinner table and turned on the TV in order to feel some company in the apartment. It was one of those things most lonely people do in order not to feel they are going completely insane. I left it on some animal channel, were dogs seemed to be misbehaving and a man was trying to get them to be nicer. I didn’t pay much attention to it, preferring to get back to my teenage years and explain to myself why I had been smiling before. The answer was pretty simple.

 As strange as it may be, I realized I really liked myself back then. What I mean is that I love how I did some things in that time. Sometimes we recall are youth and have second thoughts about everything, but I had just realized I didn’t or at least not about that whole segment in my life. I loved that I had the balls to just not go to some of my PE classes, I’m glad I stood my ground and just pretended to go to the bathroom and instead sitting down on the library in order to enjoy myself in a more personal way.

 Yes, the teachers caught a couple of times and I got in trouble with my parents because of that but it was worth it. Because I was building myself, I was building this man and everything could have been different if I had forced myself to do the things I didn’t want to do. Some people don’t understand that doing things that you don’t like is only good when it makes sense and not when the only thinks that it causes is that just start disappearing, you stop being yourself and instead you become this copy, a bad one probably, of some else who’s not even that interesting to begin with.

 The dog show has ended and now it’s a cat show. Every single piece of vegetable in the sauce is just right, beautifully seasoned and with a taste that would make any Italian mother and grandmother proud. It fills my heart and my soul that I had the good idea to make something that delicious in a moment when I really needed to feel comforted. It cannot be all about responsibilities in life; we have to learn how to have fun and how to make ourselves feel good when we need to. That’s the only way we can survive.

 The only really bad thing about those times and my life in general, is that I never really had what it took to make friends or get to know people properly. Sure, I did call some people friends during high school and also in college. Even now, I call some of the people I work with “friends”. But I know the word is probably too big for our relationships. I know that friendships are built of much stronger materials and that they should at least last for a couple of years in order to be considered real friendships.

 So, in that sense, the amount of friends I have is alarmingly low. And again, I put the blame on me. I lack what it takes to be a really good friend and I have to confess I don’t really know what it is that makes you that. Even in high school, I failed horribly at trying to make connections with people. Sure, I had “friends” but once we parted ways after college started, people disappeared in seconds because we stopped having something in common. Only being in school made us feel similar and much more is needed.

 I think that is my only regret, not trying hard enough to be a better friend or just trying to figure out what people look for when they are looking for a friend. Well, for starters I guess people don’t really “look for” friends, they just happen to get some as any normal human being. Damn, I guess most people don’t put so much pressure on the whole business to start with. But, again, if I didn’t think too much about things, I just wouldn’t be me. And what would be the point then, if it’s not the real me looking for those friends?

 The past filled my soul and body. I learned the recipe from my mom and I thanked her for that later that day. But after eating, I sat there at the dinner table, thinking about my memories from school. The people I had hated for being so easy going, the likely friendships lost because of that.

 I grabbed my cellphone and look around some of the apps. I finally found the name I was looking for and started texting with him. After a few minutes, I asked if he could come by my house or if he wanted to have a drink. No idea if a friendship is possible there but at least I’m willing to try.

The place beyond the mountains

   Lakia ran in front of her owner and then waited for a bit. After all, Madame Greska was an elderly woman that needed a cane to support her weight. Even so, she liked to take a walk around the village every single day with her dog, as she had done for years and years. Her husband used to join them for the walk but he had died very recently and now a stroll around the fields was the only thing really making her feel alive. There was nothing more for her in this world, so she took what little she had around.

 And one of those things was the nature and beauty of her village’s surroundings. It was a very small town, deep into a very steep mountain range, so the modern world had been kept largely at bay. There was electricity and hot water but that was basically it. Very few people came but those who did chose the town precisely because it seemed to have been frozen in time. Madame Greska’s clothes were even the traditional attire for women of the region, something women did not wear anymore elsewhere.

 But in that place between the mountains, people lived a different kind of life. As she smelled the deep and beautiful smell of the lavender fields, the woman looked at how peaceful it all seemed, how untouched and perfect the countryside was and that could also have been said about the town itself. The homes had been built almost three hundred years ago by hand, stone by stone, and they had been kept in the same conditions since then. No major changes had ever been done.

 Even when electricity came, people came up with ways to install the whole thing without having to modify their homes or the general look of their town. And it was a success because no one would have ever thought those interventions had been made there. The town was made up of about twenty to thirty houses, all very similar, some of then containing the post office, the mayor’s office, the restaurant, the bar, the hotel and some other dependencies needed in the town’s daily life.

 They celebrated festivals in the summer as well as in the winter and they also had a small church on the outskirts to praise the Virgin Mary, the protector of the mountain towns. It was there that they prayed for days and days during the hard times, that had never come to the mountains but that had been looming around them for quite some time. The town was never in the middle of any historical occurrence but they had been very close in a number of times and only prayer and keeping their traditions had seemed to do the work and keep all the bad things at bay, away from their paradise.

 One of those bad things was war, both great wars in this case. During the first one, Madame Greska had not been alive yet. But her parents told her when she was young how they feared for their lives when a messenger arrived, having been sent by the royal house hold in order to announce all over the country that the war had begun. For them, it had been the announcement of a tragedy; something that they just knew would change their lives forever. So they prayed and prepared, and waited and waited.

 But the war never came to them. The small town stayed as it had been for hundreds of years and its people, although fearful, were able to live normal lives, plowing their fields and harvesting their crops. They had animals and even did a little bit of commerce between themselves and neighboring small towns. It was only in those opportunities when someone would come back, updating everyone about what was happening beyond the mountains. But somehow, all of it just seemed like a bedtime story.

 No soldiers ever came and those machines that people had invented to fly had been simply considered exaggerations. No one there ever saw a tank or even a rifle. They had no idea what mustard gas was and how it affected people. In time, many years after the end of the war, some travellers did tell them about what they had heard and seem. So the war did become a little bit more real but probably not real enough. For the people of such a small town, all those grandiose stories were just that, stories.

 Madame Greska grew up during the times between the wars and she remembered those days fondly. She remembered frolicking around the meadows in the spring, catching tadpoles with her sister and running after some dog, probably Lakia’s grandfather. Something she had always loved was when, in winter, they would offer her ice cones in the town’s festival. They were made out of ice collected in the mountains surrounding the town and they would then add some flavoring, most likely some kind of berry.

 Her parents her very caring people, the farmer type. They had a couple of cows and would sell the milk in the town’s market, every single day. Her mother was the one that had to do the heavy work and her father was in charge of selling the product. She never knew why her mother had to carry such heavy buckets and walk the cows to a prairie where they could eat. Her father didn’t seem to do that much at all. But he was such a nice and funny guy that, no one ever really seemed to be able to be mad at him. He was just the kind of person that would lift your spirits any day of the week.

 That was until the Second World War. The town was left untouched by that one too but they were more affected by it in ways very few people can understand. Again, no soldiers ever stepped on the stone streets of the small town nor they walked among the lavender fields. But it was people that heard about what was going on and how now it seemed to be worse than the last time. The atrocities people talked about were so heinous that some people even qualified them as fabrications and dismissed them completely.

 But by the end of the second year of the war, people noticed that it did seem like something completely different that before. More and more, people that had been beyond the mountains would tell everyone in town about the battles being fought and the threats being fulfilled. And those people would almost always come with some kind of proof, mostly in the shape of flyers and newspapers, which had become easier to find. They came with detailed stories and even with pictures of the horrors.

 This caused town to prepare once again. And even knowing the war would probably never get to them, they did try to cut off some ties with the outside world in order to prevent anything bad from coming to them. Some youngsters were even thinking about the bigger picture, what would happen if the enemy won the war and was able to take everything for themselves? They thought about it for a long time until one day, something happened that made them take a step that their families would regret for life.

 One night, a large group of planes passed over town. They were noisy and seemed to be flying really low. Most villagers thought their tie had come. But no, the planes continued for a bit and then started dropping their payload on a neighboring town, much larger than Madame Greska’s village. It was beyond the mountains but the explosions were so potent that they could be seen from afar. This event caused many young men to decide joining the army and fight for the freedom of the whole nation.

 None of them ever returned. Only letter with their uniform and a picture of their battalion would get to their families, who would mourn them forever. Brave young men that had decided that their ignored village was more than enough to be able to fight tyrants and monsters.

 Two of those men were Madame Greska’s brothers. And she was so affected by the tragedy that she was never able to have children. Her body was able to do it but somehow inside seemed to prevent any pregnancy. It seemed her soul had always been in mourning and would always be.

A dream of biology

  Mary drew the shape of the rhinoceros as fast as she could. The beast was not moving at all but she knew she had to be fast if she wanted to fill her sketchbook with drawings. She had already seen a zebra and also an elephant, from afar. She had also done some landscapes, although she was fed up of doing those. Back in school, that’s all they did. Just walks and walks to draw mountains and a prairie and homework like drawing what you could see from your bedroom window or from the kitchen or from the bathroom.

 Coming to Africa was a surprise from her father. She rarely saw him around, as he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in the country. He was always in some exotic location and he would often mail her beautiful handwritten letters with at least one curious thing inside. He would often mail her feathers from birds that no person in Europe had ever seen, but he would also encase in the envelope a couple of leaves from some rare plants or a complete flower, dried up from the journey on the plane.

 She had kept all of those treasures in a small shoebox in her closet. She would often look at all of it and just sigh, thinking both about her father and about the kinds of adventures she could have once she had graduated from a good university and then study even more. She knew very well how hard her parents had to work to achieve the milestones they had arrived to, but sometimes she hated to be so young and silly. Mary wanted to have all those grownup things right then and there, no more wait.

 Her mother had always been the patient kind. Her name was Debra and she was the one in charge of raising them properly. She also had a job though, so she left at the same time than the children in the mornings and she would return a couple of hours after the school bus had dropped at home She was a very kind woman that enabled them to explore the world and be open about everything. So open that when Mary’s little brother Devon said he liked one of his school friends who was a boy, she was understanding and supportive.

 No one knew if Devon’s crush for his friend was real or something that should be looked at, but that wasn’t the important part of the whole thing. The issue was that they had great parents that tried to make them see that the world was truly open to them and that they could do whatever they wanted, if they wanted to become better people and even help others be better too. That’s why both kids would often go camping in the summer and would be encouraged to join clubs at school. That didn’t make them the best students ever, but it made them curious and that was more than enough for their parents.

 The only thing that had always bothered Mary was the fact that his father had never wanted her or her brother to join him in one of his trips. Of course, she had only wanted to go to one of the shorter ones or maybe something in the summer. But no matter how long it took or where they would have to go, both their parents’ answers were two resounding “no”. Her brother, of course, was too young still to go and do those things. At eight, he barely knew what the world was really about. But Mary was seventeen and she had already decided that she wanted to be a biologist.

 He dream was to be able to discover many new animals and help classify them and protect them. That was her life plan and she had even discussed it with her parents, who had been very supportive up until she had requested for a spot in her father’s next trip to China. She felt she had been very close to convincing him but her mother’s last words, something about school and being a woman, made her father decide against it. She had been very mad with her mother that summer, so much so that they didn’t speak at all.

 Of course it was all related to her father. She was very aware that one of her reasons to go and explore with him was the fact that she felt she didn’t really knew him that well. He was a kind man and very intelligent too, but anyone that worked with him could say that. She wanted to know him properly, as people and not as an adult and a child. There was no real connection when he came and visited because, every time he was with them, it didn’t feel as if he lived there at all. He was just hanging around.

 They only had a couple of very deep conversations, all of them regarding animals and the trips his father had taken. She could hear him for hours, talking about the new creatures he saw and how they were careful enough to preserve every single shred of new things they encountered. He even told her about the other people on his explorations, must of which were always unknowns to her and her brother. They would visit sometimes but would always only talk to their parents, have coffee and then run back out.

 When the Africa trip came up, Mary couldn’t believe her ears. It was so shocking to her that she started laughing hysterically. Once things calmed down, her mother explained that they had been talking about her dream of becoming a biologist and they had concluded that it was necessary for her to have real life experience, on the field. Coincidentally, his father had some things to do in a national park in Botswana in the summer, so the whole family would be able to go with him and just enjoy a couple of weeks as if they were actually working with their patriarch.

Preparing for the journey had been a chore: clothes had to be bought, suitcases had to be taken out of the attic and caretakers for their pets had to be found. Once the two cats and the dog had someone to live with for the time they would be out, everyone got a bit less stressed. However, they had to be smart about what they would pack because, after all, they weren’t going to a beach or some beautiful city to walk and take selfies. They were going where the wild things were and it was necessary to be objective.

 Mary was the first one to have her suitcase ready. Her mother requested to check if everything was in order and she was not so surprised to see that her daughter was taking the trip very seriously. She was so proud of her that she took her to the mall in order to buy some supplies: a large sketchbook and a big box of colored pencils, as well as a smaller case with only normal pencils with different degrees of granite. It was the best gift Mary had ever received and she hugged her mother tight, which was a rare occurrence.

 They were not really one of those hugs and kisses families. They were the kind to remain together and respect each other, but physicality was not at all involved in their interactions. Mary’s hug was something spontaneous, out of sheer joy because everything she had always wanted was happening at the exact same time. It was fun and it was happy, so much so that she even helped her little brother packed and talked about his crush for a short while. It was nice to feel they were more than just siblings.

 The plane ride felt too long and strenuous. The moment they landed and met their father in the terminal, Mary knew it was the thing she had always waited for. From that moment on, she was always very perceptive of anything near her. She would carry a backpack with her sketchbook, pencils and camera, plus some other things that she needed in order to really prove herself on the field. Her father would check on her work at the end of each day and he would always nod and then kiss her goodnight.

 She needed much more from him but she had no idea how to ask him that. She couldn’t just do it because, by doing so, she would probably break the very fragile and interesting relationship they had. She wanted to build on top of what existed and not tear everything apart to try again.

However, she reminded herself every night that they were going to stay there for almost and entire month. She was going to have all the time she needed to really prove herself to be as good as her parents. She needed to do it but she also wanted to do it. She never put herself out of the equation.

She lived as herself

   Amanda had never been known for being kind to anyone, rather the opposite. She was normally vicious to every single one of the people that worked for her and she would never accept a negative answer from everyone. Amanda Carvey was the daughter of the owner of the company, a man that had died only a few years ago in a ski accident in the Alps. Amanda had to step up and take control, something that most members of the board were against. That was, until they were able to see who she really was.

 They didn’t care for a woman commanding the ship. But that was before they saw the kind of woman she was. Amanda ruled with an iron fist from her first day and wouldn’t let anyone tell her something different than what she wanted. She didn’t accept advice and, when addressing her, she would often remind others that she was now the head of the company and not her father. Maybe they had gotten use to him but that was the past. Her father was no longer there to captain the ship in such a careless way.

 In her mind, her father had been an idiot with all the family’s assets. He had not done his job of really taking care of the wealth of the family. It wasn’t like he had lost too much money or anything like that. Rather, he had been exceedingly cautious and the company had run stale, no generating interest of any kind, whether it was with its clients or with its partners. People saw it as a dinosaur that refused to die and Amanda had seen that ever since she was a teenager and she had taken an interest in the family’s business.

 She laid off a lot of people during her first week and forced all the remaining workers to double their efforts, making lunch hours very restricted and putting up a “points” scale in which workers of any type would get points for their mistakes in the eye of the new owner. Too many points would mean that the person could get kicked out at any moment, so everyone tried their best not to upset Amanda. And they stayed there because the salaries were still very good and very difficult to earn in the modern world.

 In her first year running the company, she earned almost double that what her father had earned in his last full year as chairman. She was so glad about it that she even authorized for the most loyal and hard working people in the company to receive a substantial bonus to their usual earnings. People thought, for a second, that it was because she was getting a bit softer and kinder but that wasn’t it at all. It was because she was happy to have made a much better job than her father, she had shut off all the criticism around her and now people trusted her to be the one to lead them.

 However, her abrasive personality took a really heavy toll on her personal life. Her mother distanced herself from everything that had to do with the company and would no let her daughter talk about it when she came in for visits at her countryside home. Beside the company, there was no real connection between mother and daughter. The first had sent the second to boarding school from a very young age, so they had no idea what the other liked or thought about. There was no relation ship or empathy.

 Their weekly dinners would largely consist of silences, only interrupted by the mother scolding the daughter when she pulled out her phone in order to check stocks or talk to someone at work. So those dinners were only about honouring the late father’s legacy and nothing more. They both wanted to show respect to someone that was never there, someone who had drifted through life without ever really making a proper impact.

 The father had always preferred to take the private plane to some far away place where he could use his latest yacht and enjoy the best foods. He would always invite some people to come with him, people that enjoyed his millions and his stupid comments about life that didn’t make any sense, because he had no sense of the real life. He didn’t know real people, not even his immediate family. And his company was the laughing stock of the rich society he inhabited in, he just didn’t know it.

 But Amanda did know. She had always known that her father was just a stupid clown to all other people and that, by extension; her family had been laugh at for a long time. That ended the day she took control of their assets and made her family even more powerful and rich, more respectable and a force to be reckoned with. Her mother was just one reminder of the past, who didn’t even care about anything. She only cared about her check being on time and that was it. She was practically out of reality.

 And yeah, Amanda had no boyfriend or girlfriend, and her friendships were non-existent, unless you count business associated. She knew some men tried to court her because of her success, but she disarmed them pretty fast, with only words. Sometimes, she did “good” things because she felt she could lure more people towards her goals, but there was nothing good or positive about her attitude. She only lived to torture the memory of her father and to prove to everyone else that they had underestimated her and her family for far too long. It was her time to rule and she was not going to leave space for anyone else, no matter what she had to do to achieve her goals.