Ya lo pasado pasado

This past weekend I finally started reading a book I've had for a very long time. My mother in law gave it to me about three years ago, but I never got around reading it for a variety of reasons. I first had mixed feelings about the subject, I then got so busy that reading books fell off my priority list, and finally I just forgot I even had it. I found it again, or it found me, as I was looking for something to read during the flight to Las Vegas. The book's name is "Once upon a quinceañera". Quinceañera parties in Latin countries are - or were - very much a tradition, similar to the "sweet sixteen" in the US. The author is from the Dominican Republic, but her family moved to the US, under very stressful circumstances, when she was about twelve years old.

In one of the initial chapters the author talks about one of her high school teachers, a young strong woman just out of college that she really looked up to when she was in boarding school. The author goes on to describe a particular instance when the actions of the teacher were so inspirational to her and her classmates that she remembered it for years to come. Then, many years later, as she is writing the book I am reading, she decides to track her teacher down. When she finally does, she is highly disappointed by the fact that her teacher does not even remember the inspirational story at all. "Really? I did that? It does sound like me, but I don't remember at all". That's about all the teacher had to say. It is then that the author starts wondering if the teacher was really that inspirational at the time, or if she made it all up in her head. Was it that she needed somebody to guide her, to look up to so badly, that she gave her teacher these mystic qualities that she never really had? And does it really matter anyway since this phenomenal person -real or not- met the author's needs at the time?

As I was reading the story about the teacher I couldn't help but look at my own life. And I thought about the people who throughout the years, knowingly or not, helped me overcome difficult times. Maybe the thing that cheered me the most is the thing they thought about the least. Maybe they never even knew how important they were to me. Maybe they were not as funny as I thought, as smart as they appeared, or as special as they were in my eyes. Maybe they don't ever think of me anymore. Maybe it's best if I just never know.