{"id":5303,"date":"2024-12-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=5303"},"modified":"2024-12-04T10:02:19","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T09:02:19","slug":"hurting-for-people-you-dont-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2024\/12\/hurting-for-people-you-dont-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurting for People You Don’t Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Image: <\/strong>\u00a9 Andreia Abreu Remigio<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author: <\/strong>Andreia Abreu Remigio<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time he invited me to his house, he purposefully did it when his parents weren\u2019t home. I knew it. That was the plan. Weird parents, he said, it\u2019s better this way. I said, okay. How bad could it be, though? I had brought him home to my family after a week of talking, and we slept in the same bed. I had no idea then of how differently we had been raised. I had no idea then that this topic would trigger most of our fights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cried that night. Because he got me a record player for Christmas and because their apartment was gigantic. I cried because my home, which my parents had saved up for their whole lives and had completely renovated themselves, felt pathetic in comparison. I got him a plush that I had sewn myself. Shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Months later, I met his paternal grandparents. How strange it is to be picked up at the train station by his grandpa, a well-dressed gentleman, in a Mercedes. My av\u00f4 doesn\u2019t own a car. I don\u2019t think he can drive one. He has untreated dementia now and wets his pants regularly. We got out of the car. The house is beautiful, I thought. But I probably didn\u2019t say it out loud. Overwhelmed. I felt stupid. At lunch, we talked about culture and politics. No one asked about my family. I thought about how my grandparents never finished elementary school. His grandparents have paintings of royalty next to their library. Art books. History books. For them, knowledge is a legacy as much as material possessions. Every time I sit down to dinner there, I am invited into conversations about philosophy, art, or politics. They toss around cultural references and memories of family vacations, turning to me occasionally, eyes bright, to draw me in. It is a warm place, really, and they are always gracious. But I find myself sitting straighter, picking my words carefully so as not to betray my own upbringing. I don\u2019t think my av\u00f3 can read very well. She has never told me about her own life, but I don\u2019t need to ask anyone to confirm that none of my grandparents have ever been on vacation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back at my grandparents\u2019 place, in a small, rural village, the world is different. Their house, humble and creaky, squished between others, has a tin roof and cracked windows that rattle in the wind. Their walls are adorned with simple trinkets\u2014porcelain animals, faded photographs, calendars from years past. For them, the world is close and immediate. My grandparents work with their hands, waking early to tend to a vegetable garden that provides most of their food. Their knuckles are gnarled from years of working with soil, tending to animals, and fixing what breaks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are the same age as my boyfriend\u2019s grandparents, but they look 20 years older. They never finished school, my grandparents. It wasn\u2019t uncommon where they grew up; education was a luxury for people with means, not something available to farming families with seven or eight mouths to feed. They taught themselves what they could, learned through experience, and kept the family afloat. They know everything there is to know about the land, the seasons, and the history of our village. Ask them about the soil, and they\u2019ll tell you what crops it best yields, which fields drain poorly, and how to coax a good harvest in a dry year. But I was born in another country, where my parents migrated to seek better opportunities. I have nothing in common with my grandparents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we\u2019re at his maternal grandmother\u2019s house. His grandfather passed away a few years ago; they were very close. He seemed like a wonderful person. He rescued stray cats\u2014my av\u00f3 cuts the throats of the chickens she raises, and serves them to me on a plate that has never seen a dishwasher. I watch my boyfriend while he gives me a tour of the place and the tangible memories it holds. The legacy he left behind. But the house has changed since he passed and his wife moved away. My boyfriend\u2019s uncle turned it into a guest house. No one would ever want to sleep in either of my grandparent\u2019s houses. I don\u2019t have anything to cherish from my own family, no deep conversation or passed-on wisdom, no pictures or pieces of furniture. Maybe just the practical tools of a life spent working. Maybe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I still have four grandparents, all alive and doing fine. I\u2019ve never felt a deep connection with any of them, and maybe that\u2019s my fault. I see them once a year, and though I don\u2019t miss them in between, I find myself hurting for them now in a way I never did before. They lived lives of hard work and survival, yet none of the comforts or curiosities my boyfriend\u2019s family enjoys. They never had a chance to explore, to grow old with the luxury of knowledge and leisure. And yet, in their way, my parents broke the poverty cycle and have given everything to give me a future. I know this should fill me with pride, but more often, it just leaves me feeling lost\u2014caught between two worlds I don\u2019t fully belong to, aching for people I don\u2019t quite know how to miss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an ache I feel when I\u2019m at his family\u2019s table. Sometimes I wonder how it will play out, these two lives we\u2019ve each lived that shaped us in ways neither of us can fully undo. But what I do know is that these different worlds have given us something unique, something special to share with one another, right as we\u2019re about to move in together. His family\u2019s history is written in books and intellectual discourse, while mine is carved into the fields and hands of people who had no choice but to endure. I\u2019m learning to appreciate both now, how places shape people, and how people breathe life into the places they call home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comments by the jury:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well-told story focusing on questions of class and social relations (Sally Rooney-esque); an effective penultimate paragraph detailing the problem of not knowing how to miss people.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Love the title. This is a really immersive story, with the protagonists own memories adding a layer of complexity to the narrative.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I found the language particularly beautiful in this one, and the internal point of view is rendered perfectly. The subject is interesting and thought-provoking.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: \u00a9 Andreia Abreu Remigio Author: Andreia Abreu Remigio The first time he invited me to his house, he purposefully did it when his parents weren\u2019t home. I knew it. That was the plan. Weird parents, he said, it\u2019s better this way. I said, okay. How bad could it be, though? I had brought him home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002882,"featured_media":5304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[37,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-5303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-2024-winter","8":"tag-prose","9":"tag-short-story-competition-people-and-places"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002882"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5303"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5482,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions\/5482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}