Dear Child:
The moment has come for me to give you this object, it will be yours from now on. It has seen war, revolutions, love, death, has heard music and the sound of the ocean.
My great grandmother took it from Russia when she was just a kid, it traveled for over 10 years in suitcases and lived in temporary homes.
And finally arrived to Asunción, Paraguay. It lived through the Guerra del chaco. It later on belong to my grandma, she took it with this cloth in all her adventures, when she lived in Colombia, France, Peru, America, Chile and finally Spain. Over the years the object sat on her living room, I remember going up to her house and hearing the stories about how it manage to run away from the Russian Revolution.
My mother got it for christmas a few years later, when I was 10 years old. It entered a suitcase again, traveling all the way back to South America to Chile. Where it once had lived before in the Pinochet dictatorship. She put it next to her bed, I remember falling asleep next to her, and having the object in the night table. In 2019 it lived the Chilean Revolution, it heard the chanting of the people when the country finally woke up, and it witness the news of terrible things happening. It lived through a movement that I didn't get to live myself, only thought a distance.
Your grandma, my mom gave it to me a few year later, and I put it back on a suitcase, and took it with me to every place I lived. It was in the living room in the house you grew up in, giving us company. And now it is time for you to have it. For you to take this family heirloom and take it wherever your life brings you to. Having this object means that now you carry with you the traces of a family always in movement, you carry what made every foreign place feel like home. Now you carry with you the story of all the women in this family before you, you cary us with you, the attraction to change, our nomad spirit, and every language we have spoken. The object will be back in suitcases, and it will cross oceans again, and maybe someday it will go back to its place of origin.
It carries your heritage, your home, keep showing it the world.
With love, Mom.
The moment has come for me to give you this object, it will be yours from now on. It has seen war, revolutions, love, death, has heard music and the sound of the ocean.
My great grandmother took it from Russia when she was just a kid, it traveled for over 10 years in suitcases and lived in temporary homes.
And finally arrived to Asunción, Paraguay. It lived through the Guerra del chaco. It later on belong to my grandma, she took it with this cloth in all her adventures, when she lived in Colombia, France, Peru, America, Chile and finally Spain. Over the years the object sat on her living room, I remember going up to her house and hearing the stories about how it manage to run away from the Russian Revolution.
My mother got it for christmas a few years later, when I was 10 years old. It entered a suitcase again, traveling all the way back to South America to Chile. Where it once had lived before in the Pinochet dictatorship. She put it next to her bed, I remember falling asleep next to her, and having the object in the night table. In 2019 it lived the Chilean Revolution, it heard the chanting of the people when the country finally woke up, and it witness the news of terrible things happening. It lived through a movement that I didn't get to live myself, only thought a distance.
Your grandma, my mom gave it to me a few year later, and I put it back on a suitcase, and took it with me to every place I lived. It was in the living room in the house you grew up in, giving us company. And now it is time for you to have it. For you to take this family heirloom and take it wherever your life brings you to. Having this object means that now you carry with you the traces of a family always in movement, you carry what made every foreign place feel like home. Now you carry with you the story of all the women in this family before you, you cary us with you, the attraction to change, our nomad spirit, and every language we have spoken. The object will be back in suitcases, and it will cross oceans again, and maybe someday it will go back to its place of origin.
It carries your heritage, your home, keep showing it the world.
With love, Mom.