—40 Years old! Oh God. —She told herself while she smiled and turned the dishwasher on.
Fernando, her thirteen-year-old son, was playing at Juan’s his best friends. Oscar, her husband, was at the office, or at least that’s what he said when he called her to inform her that he will be late. Again.
— How many Christmas had she been with Oscar? —The truth is that if she didn’t stop and think about it, she didn’t truly know exactly how many years they’d been together. All our life, she thought. You could say that her life was what society called “normal” Very…Very… Normal!
She left her childhood hopes and dreams behind. She still felt how her skin got irritated as she imagined herself walking through the halls of a great company, working with a team of professionals that would smile at her and praise her for her work and she nodded and thanked them as she grabbed her bag to go off for her next trip…
The sound of the washing machine woke her up from her old dreams.
That train had left the station many years ago. She had only the illusion of what could’ve been and had so close but that, nonetheless, disappeared like the sun’s heat on an afternoon in January.
—No —she told herself— I’m not going to dream of what could have been and wasn’t. —It’s this birthday’s entire fault —she told herself over and over while she grabbed the recently cleaned clothes, ready to hang.
She had never talked with anybody about these things, but she knew that losing her job over a pregnancy that wasn’t even planned wasn’t fair, at all.
“Susy, we are really sorry but a pregnant lady can’t tackle the business plan that we had projected” Ryan told her, the International Director of the company.
And that’s how she started losing all her responsibilities until one day Ryan told her that she was no longer needed. It had nothing to do with her maternity, or so they said, but she knew from the very beginning that they would work thoroughly to fin an excuse to fire her. And that’s exactly what happened.
Of course, after Fernando’s birth everything was an obstacle run. He was a baby and she had to take care of him and now that the boy was old enough to survive without the constant care of his mother there was a new problem: Susy was out of the professional world.
That what they told her every single time she went to the thousands of interviews she tried over the years
“—We are sorry but we need somebody that is more up to date.”
—No. That ship had sailed —she told herself again— Fernando is everything —She would never regret about that particular change in her life.
She was now a housewife and did small freelance jobs that she found on line. That was the price she had to pay for her maternity.
—But what can I do? I’m not the first or the last one— no parents, no family, alone with Oscar. It was the only thing she could’ve done. And she did.