Take care everyone and I hope to see you soon. To keep your self from crying (which is so annoying), I suggest you should cry your eyes out a day before departure. The trouble with crying over a family member is that once they start to leave and the tears begins to fall, next thing you know you cannot stop. I don't know whether that's ever happened to you, but I have to confess it's happened to me, many times. Mother used to say it was because I was very sensitive, just like my great aunt, Noah .
Noah was so sensitive, any time they were leaving, they say she would cry and cry; when she was still in my great grandmothers womb her sobs were so loud that even the half deaf maid Nina could hear them easily. Once her wailing was so violent it caused an early labor. And before my great grandmother could let out a word or even a whimper, Noah made her entrance into the world, prematurely, right there on the patio amid the smells of sunflowers and daffodils. Noah had no need for the usual slaps on the bottom, because she was already crying as she emerged; maybe that was because she knew then it would be her lot in life to be denied a mate. The way Nina told it, Noah was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the patio and into the yard.
In couple hours, the lawn and the little colorful flowers dried up because of the salt from the eyes, Nina swept up the residue of tears that have been left on the concrete stone floor. There was enough salt to fill up a one - pound sack it was used for cooking and lasted for a month. Thanks to her unusual birth, Noah felt a deep love for the outdoors, where she spent most of her life from the day she was born.
When she was two years of age, Noah's father, my great grandfather, died from a rouge attack and Mother Jasmin's milk dried from the shock. Since there was no such thing as powdered milk in those days, and they couldn't find a wet nurse anywhere, they were in panic to satisfy little Noah's hunger. Nina, who knew everything about cooking and much more which doesn't enter the picture until later offered to take charge of feeding Noah. She felt she had the best chance of "educating the innocent child's stomach," even though she had never had a mate or had pups. Though she didn't know how to read or write, when it came to cooking she knew everything there was to know. And the kitchen ended being her second love; Mother Jasmin accepted her offer gratefully, she had enough to do between her mourning and the enormous responsibility of running the ranch and it was ranch a couple meters away from the house that would provide for her children the food and education they deserved without having to feed her newborn baby on top of that.
From that day on, Noah's domain was either outside or the kitchen, where she grew vigorous and healthy on a diet of teas and thin corn gruels. This explains the sixth sense she developed about everything concerning food. Her eating habits coincide with her physical habits, for example, were attuned to the kitchen routine: in the morning when the sun is just breaking, she could tell that the morning glory is just about to open and that beans were ready; at midday, when she would be outside playing she the water was ready for plucking chickens; and in the afternoon after her bath when the corn bread was baking, Noah knew it was time to be fed.
Sometimes she would cry for no reason at all, like when Nina chopped onions, but since they both knew the cause of those tears, they didn't pay it any mind. They made them a source if entertainment, so that during her childhood Noah didn't distinguish between tears of laughter n tears of sorrow. For her laughing was a form of crying.
