Little Things

Rosalia is a Peruvian I know from my French class. Short of stature, with delicate features, and small hands, she is -- I imagine -- a typical representative of a Peruvian woman. When she speaks, her French is soaked in Spanish, she expresses herself softly and genuinely, and looks up at you with a smile and a few blinks from behind her glasses. She is in her late 40s.

A couple of weeks ago we took the metro together; as we walked towards the Mont Royal station, she was explaining what paperwork she needs to do in order to have her dentist's diploma recognized here, and I was trying to adjust my strides to her smaller steps. Once on the platform, she opened her bag, pulled out a notebook and looked intently at the lined rectangular page, covered in clear, drawn-out, large handwriting. Smiling as if in excuse, she told me that those are the instructions in Spanish, written by her husband, about the train directions, bus numbers, exits, street names and addresses which would help her find the place she was looking for. Apparently, he always does it for her so she has nothing to worry about. She was still smiling, with the tiniest little glimmer in her eyes, that sparkle twinkling inside a person who knows she's loved, and taken care of, and protected by someone. At Berri we parted -- I went up to the library, and she walked towards the other metro line, studying her page with instructions and looking around for the landmarks and signs.

And that's just it. It's precisely in such infinitesimal moments that I like to see love resurfacing, oozing through the cracks and fissures of an anonymous day. I still remember a parcel I received from my parents several years ago, because it made me think of the same thing. Inside, wrapped in sheets of thin white paper, were a letter, a book in Serbian (Despot i žrtva by Nenadić -- I had told them I would have liked to have some good text in Serbian, to keep me in touch with the beautiful sounds of my language), and three pairs of thick woollen socks (pristine white, bluish-purple, and striped brown), which they had bought from the second-floor neighbour, a widow who supplemented her meagre pensioner's cheque by handiwork. I was happy with my goodies, arranged in a line on the bed so I could see them better -- but it was, in fact, the box in which they travelled that got to me. It was clearly custom-made. As parts of words and pictures on the outside indicated, it used to be a box for a small walnut-grinder (an essential kitchen tool in Serbia), which they had bought who knows when and kept the box -- but some parts were cut, and pasted, and trimmed, and tightened by scotch-tape, to make the box smaller, stronger and more compact for its trip across the Atlantic. I could easily see my father carefully designing and remaking the box (no doubt very content to have remembered that he had it), and my mother placing the skotch tape around the edges with the precision of a pharmacist, and then folding and securing the contents inside, imagining me opening it in some alien room, somewhere.

A real work of love, that; I kept the box for a long time afterwards. When I walk, I take long elastic strides, I hold myself upright, and look the world in the eye, and perhaps it's because of the little things like that box. It's the little things that stick. I'm sure Rosalia knows it too.