Mind the Gap is a collection of fiction short stories. They vary in style, themes, tone, characters and length. The aim is to provide a different lens colour to look to reality. It's also the sandbox where I tried different voices, where I experimen...
I only have a picture of my great-grandmother. She is dressed in black. She looks directly into the camera lens, stern. I have the feeling that she wants to tell me something, deliver an important message. Beside her is my great-grandfather, a much less sophisticated person with the face of an earnest man. Their children sit around them. Two of them will die later, one of illness, one because of the war but they don't know it yet, oblivious of what is coming. She doesn't look particularly happy. It is almost as she doesn't belong there, as if, after the photograph is taken, she would walk away. Of course that is not what happened, she loved them all. She died not long after the war, still young.
I wonder what would she think of me, my chosen singleness, my chosen childlessness, my freedom to come and go as I please, my shameless ability to say "no" to what doesn't interest me, my undiplomatic tendency to confront those I disagree with, being so carelessly outspoken. What would she say about the countries I've lived in, the languages I speak, the mixture of happiness and void of becoming what I always wanted to be.
Maybe silent messages pass through generations until they find the right recipient or, maybe, there are no silent messages at all.
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