I recognize that emotion - Reflections on childhood emotions

With this publication, I propose to begin a line of autobiographical writings focused on the recognition of emotions that marked a pattern in my psyche when I was a child, seen with the eyes of an adult; retro bringing back not only the lived history but also the motivation, to complete or fill, if necessary, with current information or images, the gaps or mental gaps.

In this context, I tell you that I was born in Yaguaraparo, a town on the Paria peninsula in the state of Sucre-Venezuela. In the days when the television signal didn't reach that far and there were only written and radio publications as connections to the world, I'll tell you about this soon.

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I opened my eyes to the world in another neighboring pariatal town, Irapa. My family had moved to follow my father who was a National Guard and had been assigned to that population. At that time, we were four siblings: two boys and two girls, the third was me and, although I was only three years old at the time, my mind has always kept many experiences from there. I even remember the day of my 4th Birthday, when my father's cousin lifted me in his arms and mounted me on a table, saying: "China" is already four years old!

As a child, I was called "China," supposedly because of my features and straight hair, but most people believed it was my real name, because of my sister's name: France. Then, they assumed that my parents gave us country names.

The most giant emotion, for me in those times, was the vision of the sea in the afternoon, when the gulf was full, because the Gulf of Paria has tides. From morning to afternoon, during the low tide its waters were brown, like dirty and in the afternoon blue-green and big, so big that my eyes were impregnated with its immensity and filled my chest with astonishment, an astonishment that still lasts me with the contemplation of the sea, especially in the sunset.

In Irapa, we only lived two years and then we returned to live again in Yaguaraparo, my hometown, until I was thirteen years old, because we moved to the state capital: Cumaná, where another gulf bathes the city: the Gulf of Cariaco, which has no tides and yes a long stretch of beach, called San Luis.

However, trying to revive emotions of places in Yaguaraparo, I must say that only one place awakened in me that almost sacred emotion that inspired in me the sea of Irapa, the crystalline pool of Santa Cruz, closer to Río Seco than to Yaguaraparo, to which we went on family walks with certain frequency and subjugated my sight and inflamed my chest with such beauty, when we arrived early, before other people arrived.

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The Gulf of Paria, in Yaguaraparo, was not inside the town, as in Irapa, and one reached it through a dirt road called "El camino de la playa" (The road to the beach). A road that I never traveled with anyone, except with a cousin from Caracas who was on vacation with us and insisted that we go on bicycles. I was about eleven years old and she was about seventeen, so we both headed for that "beach", unknown to me, because my mother had always scared us towards the gulf because she said that people were "swallowed" with their muddy shores. With my big cousin, I dared to try that adventure, but a strong and negative emotion overwhelmed me when I began to hear the sound of the waves, in the distance, I turned around without seeing it yet and I returned at a higher speed than the one I was carrying on the way. A visceral fear took hold of my interior and not even the cries of my cousin asking me to wait for her stopped my escape. Then, at home, she laughed at me and the face I put on, according to her, but we didn't tell anyone that we "almost made it" to the beach, to avoid a scolding.

Whenever we both remembered that "feat," my heart beat louder. Even today, forty years later, if I immerse myself in the memory, the emotion of that moment returns and oppresses my chest in a different way than the emotion of approaching and ceremoniously contemplating the sea of Irapa, even if it was the same gulf. There is so much magic in that connection between memory and emotion that we can relive the sensations and settle in the moment.

Today, I've been told and seen by photos on the web that built a better access to the beach and a recreation area with a pier.

I lived at 42 Cantaura Street, I remember, in a house whose front had a large yellow sun in relief, on a blue background with wavy edges, which my father had built without any reference, which made it unique in the village. He said that they would always recognize the address as "the house of the sun", but in reality what I remember is that they said: "The house of Sergeant Lamb" and after he sold it, they told me that it was remodeled.

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Original by @zeleiracordero
22 September 2018

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Source of the images:

Patito-Pixabay
Yaguaraparo
Irapa
Separator

¡I embrace you infinitely, @onthewayout!

 

For accompanying me, reading to me and always being there... Simply THANK YOU.

[Image created by @wilins]