The bread of forgiveness

Gandhi once wrote "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."


Dear fellow explorers, how has the week treated you? Last time we met, I encouraged you to be as fertile as you can and have lots of children by means of your imagination. Have you attempted to conceive many children, many ideas? Have you become loving parents and, more importantly, has this brought a new colour to your day, a new flavour to your table, a new sparkle to your eye? Please bring more babies of your imagination into this world.

Today we are going to take a morning stroll in the gardens. Please take your children by the hand, let's walk up to Gandhi's statue and then tell them to play in the grass patch while we sit on the bench that's right under the pine tree. The Mediterranean pine tree, or Pino, as it prefers to be called, whispered a story to the statue last night. I've asked Gandhi to retell it.

"Lluis is a good man, so has whispered to me Pino from its lower needles. Everyday, very early, just at the wake of dawn, he crosses the gardens in search of one loaf of bread. He will eat half of it for breakfast and the other half for tea.

Lluis is a well-organized man, Pino has assured me. He has carried the loaf inside the same textile bag for ten years. Pino remembers it well because the bag shows a drawing of high factory brick chimneys, exactly the same Pino can see from its highest branches.
Lluis loves arriving to the forn de pa, the bakery, just in time for the first batch. They know him well and they  have already separated for him the prettiest loaf with the healthiest crust from the whole tray. Lluis shows his gratitude with a wide grin, densely populated with many and very white teeth despite his years.
Lluis is a self-assured man. His walk is rhythmic: cane-step-step, cane-step-step. Very seldom does he stop at the gardens, maybe to admire an early-rising mother who's dragging her sleepy little one to school.
Lluis is a man of few but firm words, continues Pino. He utters them in a low, pleasant, musical tone, which the trees love. Yet Lluis is afraid.

He likes the lady in her fifties at the forn de pa. He would love to ask her to share a cup of coffee with him during her morning break, or after her shift. But he's afraid. He thinks of himself as too old. He thinks he should keep loyal to his memories, to his past. Pino knows because it can hear Lluis muttering to himself everyday, just after meeting the lady and on his way home.

But today the lady at the forn the pa has given Lluis a little present.She has placed the daily loaf inside a new bag, one with a drawing of children playing in the park. His eyes instantly welled with tears.

About eleven years ago, Lluis used to cross the gardens every day by the hand of a woman, the most beautiful woman he ever saw and whom he married in his youth. The woman contracted breast cancer and died in the period of one year.


This woman used to carry a bread bag with a drawing of high factory brick chimneys, exactly the same Pino can see from its highest branches."