On my first night at Aunt Rosa's house, the room felt too big for who I was at that moment. The suitcase against the wall, the neatly stretched sheet, the lamp glowing softly. The house was quiet, but my head wasn't.
I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, as if searching for answers in the shadows. I thought about everything we had lived through until we got here.
The bankruptcy wasn't just an event; it was a chain of hard days, one after the other. But it was also the time when I discovered how much people can surprise you.
I remember a neighbor who showed up with a basket full of vegetables from his garden. He didn't have much, but he shared what he could. My mother cried when she saw it, as if those tomatoes and potatoes were gold.
There was also the teacher from school who lent me books and notebooks without ever expecting me to return them. She would only say:
— Study, Helena. The future feels lighter when we know more.
And there was my father's former employee. His wife had been ill, and my father had paid for her treatment, though he never spoke much about it. When our time to fall came, that man appeared at our door. He brought his son along, and I remember seeing him speaking seriously with my father, offering what he had.
I was sitting on the sidewalk, clutching a stuffed animal, when the boy started making little tricks to distract me. Funny faces, balancing pebbles, blowing on a dandelion. And suddenly, I laughed. Maybe it was my first laugh after so many days of silence.
It wasn't just them. Everywhere, there was an unexpected gesture: someone who fixed our kitchen fan for free, someone who gave us a ride in the rain, someone who simply stopped to ask how we were doing.
Lying there, I realized all that help had something in common. It wasn't luck, it wasn't chance. It was return. My father always believed kindness comes back, sooner or later. And somehow, it did.
I closed my eyes and wondered what kind of memories I would build from now on. Which people would cross my path? Which stories would be added to the ones I already carry?
The world seemed huge, but that night, inside my aunt's simple room, I felt there was space for new memories—some I would choose, others that would arrive by surprise.
And I could only hope that, in the future, when I looked back on this time, there would be more smiles than silences.