The invitation to write for Mundos Íntimos did not arrive on any given afternoon: I received the message on the very day my grandmother passed away.
Maybe it's just a fluke, but I decided to take it as a sign.
An excuse to talk about the woman who lived 93 years in a world that evolved at a rate that was not hers.
look too
Sex as a form of social control
There is something that has always struck me about my life choices and my family, since long before I first heard the concept of “family constellations” (a practice that I have not done yet, I must clarify).
I have always been amazed at how the professions of my ancestors were woven into my own work.
How they beat under each of my passions.
Amalia and Leandro.
Verónica Chamorro's grandparents on her wedding day.
My great-grandmother Ana was a photographer.
He had arrived by boat from Hungary when he was very young and, until he got married, he dedicated himself to taking photos and developing them with a red lamp, which I later used when I was almost twenty years old to reveal the rolls with which he portrayed in the bathtub of my house. the streets of Buenos Aires.
She left her profession, despite being a pioneer for the time, when she married a man of native descent with whom she could barely communicate since she never spoke Spanish.
Even so, they had three daughters and were together until death, as was socially expected.
My grandmother Amalia, the same one who passed away a few days ago, colored photos by hand, when the photograph was still in black and white.
And she was very good at it.
She touched them up, gave color to the skin, cheekbones, lips, hair, dresses.
She was proud when she told that they came looking for Rafael Calzada from the Capital
to deliver her photos and ask them to paint them.
A retouching similar and different at the same time to what I would do myself in photoshop sixty years later.
She stopped working, however, as soon as she got married, because my grandfather did not like that she had a profession instead of dedicating herself only to the house.
Grandma Amalia and her granddaughter, Verónica Chamorro: different but very close.
My grandfather, Leandro, was a great reader.
He transmitted to me his love for books and reading, and although he only accompanied me during the first thirteen years of my life, his imprint was so indelible that it was key to choosing my profession as an editor.
He gave me the last three books in a collection just one day before he died.
My dad has always been writing.
I'm sure it's his DNA and his passion that transmitted to me the beautiful art of bringing stories to life from the written word.
Sometimes we played to tell him words that he would later use to make up a story or write a poem.
My mom is a financial wizard.
I have never met anyone capable of optimizing every penny so much
, especially in hard times.
I have surprised myself a thousand times recognizing the same ability in front of an eternal excel (editing is not just working with texts, there are a lot of numbers behind it) or looking at one's own bank account and the days that remain to reach the end of the month and discover what juggling to do so that the numbers give.
Thus, in my multiple task of writing, photographing, editing, maternity, I feel the blood of all previous generations dancing in my veins, feeding my passions, opening paths for me.
But there is something else that my grandmother passed down from generation to generation, because she also lived it firsthand and could never leave it behind: the mandate of the perfect body, the husband at home, the man on a pedestal, the woman always three steps behind, never ahead.
When I broke up, the first thing he told me was to lose weight, so he would come back.
Since then, every time I visited her there was not a time that she did not give me advice on how to look to find another man to marry, taking advantage of the fact that she was still young.
“It is very sad that you are left alone”, “Wasn't she gone because you worked a lot?”
, “If you manage a little more surely you will find another husband”.
And the last thing she said to me: "I am so sorry to die knowing that you are not with a husband who loves you as much as Leandro loved me, it is very sad to leave knowing that you cannot be happy."
It is useless to explain to her that most of the time I am tremendously happy, that as the years go by, I am increasingly loving myself and my decisions.
That in my partner no one left, or we both left.
That a thousand things complete me, and love is not among them, today at least.
That I am not more or less a woman because I have a man by my side.
That there may be other types of links.
I have to admit that at first I tried to explain it to him, but the last few times I preferred to put on careful makeup so that I could skip that part of the talk.
I was never angered by his comments, however.
On the contrary.
I was always infinitely sorry for the fact that at over ninety years old he still carried so many mandates.
She reproached herself for not looking good in old age: the lack of makeup, undyed hair, the marks on her skin bothered her.
The last time she became a girlfriend with another gentleman from the nursing home
.
Although my grandfather died thirty years ago, he felt guilty for flirting with someone else, just the last stage of his life.
It seemed to him that it was being unfaithful to his ghost, who was no longer the perfect widow.
He blamed her for being a little happy.
What happens when the speeches about staying skinny, slender, made up, waxed, combed perfectly go through generations and generations of women?
What happens when you grow up under the discourse that being without a partner and being happy are not compatible options, under the demand to love well and forever?
How much does it cost to finally be free of the voice that is already so deep within ourselves that we feel it is our own every time we look in the mirror?
At nine years old I was diagnosed with scoliosis.
And until I was almost seventeen, I wore a plastic corset 23 hours a day.
Every six months, I would stand almost naked in front of a committee of doctors who would analyze the condition of my back and give their opinion on performing an operation that could leave me paralyzed if not done correctly.
For years I tried to hide the corset with baggy clothes
, avoiding hugs from friends, contact.
I couldn't breathe if I ran, so I had to take it off before doing physical activity (I took it off in the bathroom and a friend took it wrapped in jackets to the address, so no one would see it).
My main torture was not the discomfort of having my chest squeezed in a rigid plastic girdle.
It wasn't not being able to breathe.
It wasn't the awful heat that made you feel in summer.
My torture was noticing the deformed hips that I drew under my pants, and that no boy was going to like.
The fear of being left with a bent back that would prevent me from finding a partner.
Years and years of work to get the corset out of my head;
even long after you have stopped using it on the body.
When I think of my grandmother, and my great-grandmother, I feel like they
lived in a corset all their lives without knowing it
.
It relieves me to think that I am leaving my daughter a freer, more open world, even though there is still so much -so much so- to do.
And it is that sometimes, these speeches seem so old when we put them into words.
She has changed so much in recent times that at times it is implausible to have at some point been bound by these demands.
And yet, it is enough to walk a little through the networks to notice that they are still there, sometimes crouching;
badly disguised, others;
tremendously visible, many.
Luckily, we continue to evolve.
When my maternal grandmother was a baby, butter was made by whipping cream from freshly milked milk.
To give birth, she or her neighbors traveled from Rafael Calzada alone for an hour, by train, to the nearest hospital.
At dances they always waited for the man to take them to the dance floor.
Deceptions were forgiven and hidden.
If you were decent you never stayed alone with a man, there was always a chaperone nearby.
The well-served table and the well-preserved silhouette were the way to keep the man in the house.
The woman did not vote. She was not divorced
.
She did not own her own fortune.
She didn't own her body.
She didn't study: her duty was to give birth and raise children (whether she wanted it or not), keep them alive, support her husband.
While my grandmother Amalia was lucky enough to fall in love with who would later be her husband, my paternal grandmother, on the other hand, was married at the age of 15 to a man she did not know and whom she had never loved in her life.
They both lived just over an hour away.
Sometimes it is difficult to remember that the freedom we have today was because many women from each of the previous generations said “enough” and rebelled against what “should be” (this is not the case with my grandmother Amalia, of course).
Even when that meant facing her own kin, arguing with other women who couldn't see the invisible threads that bound them.
Women who passed on to their own daughters the same ties they suffered, who educated their sons to perpetuate the norm.
Corseted women.
I wonder how many of these mandates escape me, they are still invisible to me despite being trained in feminism.
How much I pass on to the next generation unconsciously.
How much of my grandmother's voice is still in my own voice that directs my movements in front of the mirror every time I get ready for an appointment.
I think a lot about my grandmothers lately.
In Amalia, that she accommodated herself to the patriarchy.
In Zulema, that she threw everything overboard and chose to live in her own way
, implying what she implied.
In the difficulty that she meant for both of them growing up in the world in which they grew up.
Being women born in the late 1920s, early 1930s. I think of the stories and the secrets of which there is no record, which die forever with them.
I think of the fears, the violence suffered and imposed, the concept of love so different from the one we are building today.
I think of my mother, who listened to all these speeches from her first days and gradually retraced them until she joined the women's marches of which I was a part.
My grandmother knew how to be a beautiful, strong, intense, capricious woman.
She was a beast.
She had beautiful hands, soft skin, intelligent eyes.
She was the grandmother she needed to be the woman I am today.
Her failures helped me make decisions.
Her prejudices, to correct mine.
I love her, to grow happy even when my life was so different from the one she dreamed for me.
I wish I could hug my grandmother again.
Tell her that the world she left is a much better place than the one she came to.
And that although I have never been a feminist, a lot of her remains in me: the taste for details that add beauty, the hand for the kitchen, the pleasure of setting the table with a cloth tablecloth and beautiful dishes, the eye for combining colors , the flowers in the house and a couple of songs in Hungarian that cradled my children.
What does it matter if these things make me a better or worse feminist.
Her departure leaves me with a life choice: I will never demand perfection from another woman.
Not even her.
She not even myself.
After all, we all do what we can during the time we have to live.
---------------
Veronica Chamorro
.
She is a writer, editor, graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, and graduated from the Master's in Books and Children's and Youth Literature from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
She is currently the editorial director of The Orlando Books and teaches workshops in which she accompanies writers in their creative process.
He has published more than fifteen works, including “Tobías y Perro” (Edelvives), “El gran partido” (Edelvives), “La piedra lunar” (Ralenti), and “The princess who conquered the desert” (The Orlando Books), of recent edition.
She lives with her daughter, her son, a cat and some lizards that hide among the pots in the patio.
She loves taking photos, riding her bike, dancing the tango, and traveling.