I met Roberta about three years ago. At first glance she seemed to me to be a stern woman, but it only took a few minutes to know that she was not like that.
We were classmates in a literary workshop and in the second session, when I read her work, I thought that she was a frequent writer, with experience and good technique, who wanted to write about her brother's life, a topic to which she dedicated all the time that she extended the workshop.
What would be my surprise, and with it my admiration was born, knowing that she was a novel and that those charming texts were something like her debut in letters.
Over time, my interest in her and her personal story grew, until we had the opportunity to sit down for coffee and chat about this woman, an example of self-improvement and love of life.
letter lover
“I am doing open high school, Mathematics, Chemistry and Computer Science are complicated for me, but I am going to achieve it, imagine that I learned to read at 6 years old with the newspaper with which the cones were made in which they gave you things in the shops of the town. At that time, having books was like having a treasure, my dad taught me the alphabet on those pieces of paper and with that I started with letters”.
“I was born in Durango, near El Progreso, in the old Hacienda Los Pinos, I grew up there, on the hill, far from civilization. My dad was a farmer, so our life was in the fields.”
“My dad was a widower when he married my mom, so I have seven older half-siblings and two younger than me. As children we lived far from everything, he rented the land of the exhacienda to plant it. The closest house to ours was two kilometers away, that's why I think I have this great love for nature, I remember that I buried myself in the furrows, to feel the contact of the earth!”, and that was the life that Roberta she knew until she was 7 years old, when she was sent for a time with her grandmother to go to school.
“I felt imprisoned, a few months later they returned me to my house, where we stayed until I turned 9, we moved to Progreso for three years and I went back to school, so when I turned 12, I finished the fourth year of elementary school and even I arrived there, because my father got new land and we returned to the countryside”.
Just a few career goals: - Work at a AAA studio full-time - Feature on a @KindaFunnyVids Pod - Write my own book -… https://t.co/DKmD3X9NkN
— Brandon Dean Wed Jul 21 21:48:45 +0000 2021
An opportunity to excel
When he was 17, one of his half-sisters convinced his father to sell everything and come to live in Ciudad Juárez, “when I was born, my father was 71 years old and my mother was 28, so when we arrived in Juárez he was already 88 and the illusion that I was coming to rest, but that was far from reality, soon we ran out of money and I had to go to work, I sold things door to door, dishes, cleaning supplies and I started doing sewing jobs”.
“I got married at 32 and had my daughter at 35. When I was pregnant I started working at a fashion house on Lerdo, as I had separated from my husband, I needed a fixed income, I lasted five years there. It was a very absorbing job and I learned haute couture, until one day my daughter told me that she wanted me to take care of her, which my mother had done since she was born and I left him. I went to work in the kitchen of a commercial store and continued sewing on weekends”. And she reflects: "I love my daughter so much, we are very close, I would do anything for her, then and always."
Years later, a client introduces him to who would be her partner for 20 years, who recently passed away, "we lived together for several years, until my mother got sick and I returned home to take care of her, he understood, we are still together, each in his house, until the day he died”, he tells me with regret.
Owner of your story
Now with the maturity of his age, his life brought him a gift: he discovered the literary workshops and in them the possibility of making one of his most precious dreams come true, telling stories, his stories.
And let me tell you that when she does, because she surely will, I assure you that I will be among the first to read what Roberta writes, because the fluidity of her narrative is exceptional and the depth of her stories catches the reader, and that is just learning to polish what he naturally has: literary talent.
At the moment she is still sewing, lives with her daughter, her dog and her cats, is preparing to finish high school, helps the neighbors and continues taking literature workshops, because she is a one-piece woman and puts all her efforts into making your dreams come true. And you know what? I admire her deeply.
