“It was a beautiful experience of solidarity and working together.”
As if that weren’t enough to live with a lethal virus as COVID-19, now Filomena visits us, which is not a virus and, moreover, is beautiful, but which once again disrupts our lives as we knew it.
I live in Madrid, at this moment I cannot leave my neighborhood: it is confined by COVID and, also, by snow. It is a residential neighborhood with narrow streets and many trees, so, between this fact that it is difficult for a machine to come to clean because it does not fit and COVID, anyone knows when we can lead a “normal” life.
Yesterday, with a group of neighbors, we were cleaning the entrance hall and making an access to a more important road, with shovels, picks, cardboards, collectors. It was a beautiful experience of solidarity and working together.
Specifically, as a person with epilepsy, Filomena has caught me a little off-guard. I had planned to go to the doctor for a check-up, but I can’t already go. I am lucky that I have been with this doctor for many years, he knows my case in detail, we have a lot of trust in each other and, today, I asked him to send me prescriptions. But other people are not so lucky.
My granddaughters have had a great time with the snow, making angels and jumping. In some areas the snow reached their waists. The truth is that it has snowed a lot.
“I am proud to belong to the group of caring people; It is an extraordinary emotion that you feel when you do something for others, I advise you.”
There are people who criticize that this is overtaking us. That it is necessary to have more means. In Germany or Sweden, they laugh at us. First of all, the strange thing would be that in Germany or Sweden they had the means that we have here. There they spend three and four months with snow. And, even more ridiculous, that here we had the means that they have there, because they are not necessary, that this happens here once every 50 years or more.
What impresses me is that always, in any general adverse situation, there are supportive people, who care about others, who try to do the shopping for those senior neighbors who can fall with the snow, who go out with shovels to clean sidewalks and roads, who worry about spreading salt, who go to Primary Care Centers, Hospitals, Senior Residences, etc., to clean the entrances. I am proud to belong to the group of caring people; It is an extraordinary emotion that you feel when you do something for others, I advise you.
