"A Slap in the Face"
It
is Saturday, the 21st of June, 2003, and my birthday. On that
morning, Edith and I went to the funeral of a dear friend in
It reminded me of an expression Giuseppe used to say:
"Hey, you toucha my car I breaka u face."
After the funeral we went home to the desert. On the afternoon of the longest day, I went for a walk in the desert. There, I met a dear friend, Robin. During some point in the journey in the desert with Robin, we had an argument, when I slapped her in the face.
Robin was really hurt, but didn't say anything. She wrote in the sand with her finger;
"Today, my friend slapped me in the face."
We kept on walking until we came upon the Oasis, Tecopa, where we decided to take one of those healthy mineral baths together. While in the mineral baths, Robin got stuck and was drowning, but I saved her.
After Robin recovered from her near drowning, she wrote on a sandstone outside Tecopa:
"Today, my friend saved my life."
It was then, I got to thinking and asked Robin: "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now you write on stone, why?"
Robin replied: "When someone hurts us we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it on stone, where no wind can ever erase it."
"Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in stone. It only takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but an entire life to forget them.”
"It’s only me, Paschal.”