English translation below

Los mecedores

Nada se me hace más necesario en una casa costeña, después del abanico del techo, que el mecedor. El mecedor, no mecedora, que ése es un término cachaco, habla más que nada de nuestras tradiciones, como si éstas se hubieran ido entretejiendo con la trama original de la paja.

Casa que se respete tiene por lo menos cuatro mecedores estratégicamente ubicados: a la sombra, donde sople la brisa, y orientados siempre hacia la vida, hacia la calle.

En mi casa fuimos muy afortunados porque un amigo de mi papá, carpintero sensible, le fabricó con sus propias manos cuatro mecedores grandes y sólidos como barcos, pesados como secretos culposos, con brazos anchos, con vetas marrón y marfil.

Cuántos sueños no mecimos en aquellos mecedores, como dejamos remontar nuestra imaginación mientras perfeccionábamos el arte de impulsarnos sólo con un movimiento afirmativo de cabeza, ya que los pies todavía no nos alcanzaban hasta el suelo.

Y los ritos del mecedor…los sábados temprano los arrodillábamos de dos en dos y con sábanas de algodón encima, los convertíamos en flamantes tugurios para jugar muñecas… y después de la siesta cuando mis hermanas grandes volvían del colegio nos sentábamos las cuatro a darnos mecedor mientras esperábamos el desfile de los señores con las queridas, los primos fumando el primer cigarrillo, los enamorados de mis hermanas, las primas que ya manejaban.

Por fortuna los mecedores de la casa nunca tuvieron mala fama porque a los de Rosita Campo les decían “los mecedores que hablan”.

Cuando nació mi hermano menor yo tenía siete años y mi hermana cinco, entonces mi mamá se sentaba en el mecedor que se ponía especialmente en la sala, a hacerlo dormir, cantándole un rosario de canciones de amor. Cerraba los ojos, y con expresión plácida imprimía a las balanzas ritmo de nana. Mi hermana y yo nos acomodábamos como mosquitos en los brazos del mecedor, y con los ojos cerrados dejábamos que el mundo girara al compás que mi mamá marcara.

A los nueve años gané el derecho-deber de entrar los mecedores de la terraza a la casa cada noche para que no se los robaran. Con supervisión materna los cargábamos entre dos para que no se nos fuera a descender la matriz y quedáramos imposibilitadas para procrear. 

Cuando nació mi primer hijo, mi suegra trajo una mecedora gorda de balanzas y brazos delgaditos que forré con tela azul de pepitas blancas. Entre sus cojines me acomodaba con el bebé para hacerlo comer, dormir, o a veces sólo para arrullarlo. 

Cuatro años más tarde, viviendo en el exterior, invertimos la tercera parte de nuestro precario presupuesto mensual en una mecedora de pino y estambre grueso, de balanzas cortas, unos días antes del nacimiento de nuestra hija menor. No me sorprendió en absoluto que mi hijo participara de los ritos del mecedor con un brazo alrededor de mis hombros y sus piernitas acomodadas como las de un mosquito.  

Los mecedores tenían veinticinco años cuando mi papá se murió. Habían sido pintados y empajados recientemente. Mi mamá, por su columna, ahora prefería la silla dura de tijera, pero mis hermanas y yo nos sentamos con nuestros niños en el regazo y cada tarde, por nueve días, rezamos el rosario a ritmo de duelo, es decir balanceo corto y rápido.

Ana Valencia

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The Rockers

In a coastal house, nothing is more necessary, after the ceiling fan, than the rocker. It ends with a masculine “o” in Spanish on the coast, as opposed to the interior feminine version of the term. More than anything, rockers speak of our traditions, as if they were interwoven with the straw weave.

Any respectable home on the coast will have at least four strategically placed rockers: in the shade, where to catch the breeze, facing the street, and aimed in the direction of the horizon .

We were so lucky in my family because a friend of my father’s, a sensible carpenter, made him four big rockers by hand. They were solid as ships, heavy as guilty secrets, with thick arms and brown and ivory grain. 

We rocked so many dreams in them, imagining other places while we perfected the art of rocking with an affirmative head tilt because our feet could not yet reach the ground. 

And, the rituals of the rocker… early on Saturdays we would flip them upside down, two by two, put cotton sheets on top of the fort where we played with dolls… and, after napping, when my older sisters would come back from school, the four of us would rock while we waited for the parade: men with their lovers, cousins having their first smoke, my sisters’ suitors, and the cousins who could already drive.

Thankfully, our rockers never suffered a bad reputation, as opposed to Rosita Campo’s who were called “the rockers that speak.”

When my youngest brother was born I was seven years old and my sister was five, so my mom would sit on the rocker that she would put in the living room just for him to put him to sleep and sing him a rosary of love songs. She would close her eyes, and, with a placid expression, she would rock back and forth following the nana rhythm. My sister and I would perch ourselves as two mosquitoes on each arm of the rocker and would close our eyes to let the world turn at the beat of my mother’s singing.

When I turned nine I earned the duty/the right to bring in the rockers from the terrace every night so that they would not be stolen. Under maternal supervision, we would carry them between two sisters so the weight would not make our wombs drop, which would turn us into infertile women.

One Sunday, when we returned from the beach, the rockers were not on the terrace, so my father went to look for them. Some thieves were taking them on their bikes, and he caught up with them, chastised them, and came home with the rockers so everything went back to how it was supposed to be.

When my eldest son was born my mother-in-law brought a thick rocker with narrow arms. I upholstered it with a blue polka dotted fabric. I’d sit between the cushions with the baby so he could eat or sleep or sometimes just to rock him. 

Four years later, when we were living abroad, we invested a third of our meager budget on a pine and thick wool rocker with short steams a few days before our youngest daughter was born. It didn’t surprise me at all that our son would participate in the rocker’s rituals, one arm around my shoulders and his little legs like a mosquito.

The rockers were twenty five years old when my father died. They had been recently painted and the straw, rewoven. My mom, because of her back, now preferred the hard folding chair, but my sister and I would sit with our children on our laps and each afternoon, for nine days, we would pray the rosary to the tune of grief, meaning a short and fast swing.

Ana Valencia

Translated by Constanza Jaramillo