When Your Body Says No

By Fabiana del Valle

HAVANA TIMES – I’ve never been one of those people who believe that if a mirror breaks or a cat crosses your path, you have to change your plans. I’m not superstitious, but there are days when my body somehow warns me that I’d be better off staying home.

My friends had organized a trip to the river for Sunday. It was a simple plan: head out, spend the day surrounded by water and nature, eat something together, and return when evening began to fall. Throughout the week, little problems kept cropping up, as though life itself were putting obstacles in our way to keep us from going.

That Sunday morning, we hadn’t been able to charge the motorcycles, and I had to prepare food in case we got back late. To top it all off, the charcoal decided that this was a good time to refuse to light. Despite the chaos, little by little we managed to solve the problems, and at noon we set off as planned.

Of course, we had to get lost. None of us had ever been there before, and the directions we had been given weren’t enough, so we ended up going around in circles on roads that seemed to be taking us anywhere but the river. Finally, sweaty and thinking about turning back, we found some local people who showed us how to get there.

The river is in Bermejales, about ten kilometers from San Cristóbal, in Artemisa. It’s one of those places that reminds you that Cuba can also be cool water, trees, rocks, silence, and friends joking around while you try to forget about everything else for a few hours.

There were several people along the river, and since we wanted some privacy, we walked along the bank until we found a quiet spot. We decided to cross with our belongings and put them on the opposite bank, where we would have a little more space and visibility.

I was carrying a backpack, and inside it was my phone. An old one, with a screen covered in cracks, but it still worked. It held photographs, contacts, documents, conversations, and a whole lot of things you accumulate without ever thinking that one day you could lose them all at once.

It all happened in a second. I stepped on a rock, slipped, and fell. When I managed to get out, I knew the phone wasn’t going to survive. The water found the cracks in the screen and seeped through them with astonishing speed.

My friends tried to console me. Some looked for solutions, while others told me it might still be possible to save it. I made jokes and pretended the whole thing was funny. I preferred laughing to crying. Thinking about it, what had happened seemed to confirm my initial suspicion that I should have stayed home.

If I had stayed home, the phone would still be working. I wouldn’t have lost the photos and information stored on it, and I wouldn’t have to find the money to buy another one. But I also wouldn’t have felt the cold river water or enjoyed that landscape while listening to my friends’ jokes and my husband teasing me, and that afternoon wouldn’t now be part of my memories.

Sunday was already there, and I didn’t want to waste it regretting what had happened. Some things can be recovered and others can’t, so I stopped thinking about my problems, got back into the water, and enjoyed myself.

In the end, someone lent me a phone, and with it I can keep working. Much of the information I lost won’t come back, but at least I have a tool that allows me to carry on. Maybe all those problems during the week really were a sign, although not one telling me to stay home.

Maybe it was life reminding me that nothing turns out exactly as we plan. Sometimes the charcoal won’t light, there are blackouts, prices go up and the money isn’t enough. Sometimes a phone falls into the water, taking years of photographs and memories with it. And sometimes, in the middle of all that, a river appears.

That Sunday, I was able to escape the charcoal, the blackouts, the prices, and the everyday life that lately seems determined to crush me a little more.

I feel the time has come to decide whether I’m going to keep thinking about what is no longer there or lift my head so I don’t lose sight of what I still have in front of me. Maybe that counts as a kind of luck, too, even if my drowned phone would disagree.

Lee más del diario de Fabiana del Valle aquí en Havana Times.