This is, verbatim, an essay Adalid wrote yesterday. She edited it once, but pretty much is the original version. I think it is absolutely amazing:

Do Not Be Quiet

As we get older, many of us have noticed that certain things become easier for us because the knowledge we have acquired and the confidence that the years have given us. A child usually does not know when it is appropriate to not say or do something, but over the years she begins to understand why sometimes silence is better than words. Over the years she also has to learn how to act with family, friends or others. We must to know our culture and how to live in it. In the Mexican culture there are certain topics that can’t be mentioned in vain. For most Mexicans their religion and their mother are sacred. In other words, a person has to be really careful if he wants to talk about those things, otherwise he will be in trouble. My mother isn’t a saint for me, but without question she is the greatest woman in my life. She is devout to her faith and family. Although she always has loved her family, her faith is the reason why our family exists.

It was a day in the winter of 1991, when the mornings in my town are frozen, but during the day the temperature reaches up to ninety degrees. The day seemed to be normal; my sister and I were coming back from school. Our daily route took us one hour walking from home to school, and one hour going back from school to home, since there were no taxis or buses to ride at that time. For us winter was the worst season because in the mornings we had to wear warm clothes that we then had to carry all the way back, walking under the suffocating heat. That day, just like every day on the return trip, we made our usual stop to ask for some water in a house owned by a kind noble lady, whose name we didn’t even know. Yet after several months of giving us water, she knew us very well. Sometimes she had prepared plastic bags filled with water, and to make it easier for us, she used to close the plastic bags making a knot and putting a straw into them. That way we could take the water with us to continue on our hot journey.

Our walking was slow, as it almost always was, and we weren’t talking; we were too tired to say anything. We had left behind the town where our school was, and we were approaching to the first houses of our town. My sister was a few steps in front of me, stopped, turned and looked toward me nodding. I knew what that meant: we had to get ready to run. I despised that because the only fresh shade we could get was there, right where we had to go running past. I hated that dog, but I hated more that older woman because she never did anything to stop her dog. She just sat in front of her house, embroidering. While we were running and yelling “buenas tardes,” hoping she would do something to help us, she would just sit there, watching us.

Finally, we got home. My mother wasn’t outside washing clothes as usual. I opened the door. The house was fresh, almost cold, and there was a tenuous smell of soup. The concrete floor was still humid after my mother had mopped it. My mother was seated next to the table in front of the window with her hands resting on the table, holding a New Testament that my father had given to her a couple months before. My father was seated across the room, in front of my mother. The light coming through the window was hitting his face, so his gray-green eyes looked even more beautiful. He was wearing his typical Charro clothes: white shirt, black vest, gray pants and black boots. His gray hat was resting on the floor. I suspected something was going on because he was supposed to be working, and of course, we wanted to know what was happening.

“It’s so hot out there Mami,” I said, while I was walking toward her to kiss her. “I’m so glad you are here honey,” she said. I kissed my father too; then my sister and I dropped our back packs and coats under our chairs and sat next to each other as if we were ready to eat even though we were taught to go away when adults were talking. But I was really hungry, and I’m sure my sister was too. I really wanted to hear my parents’ conversation, and I’m very sure my sister wanted to hear it too. To our surprise, my mother let us stay there.

After heating the tortillas and serving us soup, she went back to her original place and position. “You decide,” my father said to her. My sister and I had food in our mouths, so we couldn’t talk, but my sister hit my knee with hers; again I knew what that meant. We both knew what they were talking about. “I have told you that if some day I would leave you it would be for someone better than you, and definitively I prefer him,” answered my mother. I stopped eating. My father looked at us then toward my mother. He didn’t say anything else. He grabbed his hat and stood up. My mother got up too. My sister was crying, and I was almost. My father opened the door and the sun came into the house. It was still really hot, and I could feel the heat in my face. He looked outside and wrinkled his face. I wasn’t quite sure by the expression in his face if he was trying to hold back tears that were already in his eyes, or if it was caused just by the bright light that was hitting his face. He looked at us again without saying anything. My mother had called my younger brother and sister to say goodbye. I didn’t know if that was a definitive goodbye or if we would see him later that day, so I stood up, kissed him and hesitated a little before hugging him. Nobody said anything, and he left.

I was seven years old when he left; after that I saw him twice, may be three times over the next fourteen years, but we never talked. My mother had been a mediocre catholic for thirty years until the day she read the New Testament my father had given her, and she discovered someone that loves her so much that he had died to save her family and herself. After that my father forced her to choose between him and her new faith. I remember my mother cried many nights. I thought she missed him, but she wouldn’t say it though she asked us to pray always for him.

Two years ago I went to invite my father to my wedding. It was hard to recognize him because he looked much older than I remember him being. While we were talking, we were walking down the school’s corridor where he works now. We stopped in front of a big window; his eyes looked as beautiful as in that winter day, fourteen years before. I wrinkled my face trying to avoid tears in my eyes, and pretending it was for the light coming through the window in front of us. “You have my same look.” He said. I wanted to tell him many things, but I didn’t because I wasn’t sure it was appropriate to say anything. I left, and now I ask myself why I did. Why it is so difficult to say “I love you, forgive me” and “I was wrong?” I don’t know, but I would like to tell my father that I have forgiven him and how much I love him. Some day I might tell him. I hope there is time.