House of Mirrors

"Olivia"

[2007]

(Liv)

I remember the daily mornings when I was a child, living in that cold, colorless house, breathing in the tension built up between each silence with the recurring beat of the big old clock that hung on the living room wall.

It was my 7th birthday, I was sitting in the small, worn wooden dining room, eating a bowl of cheap cereal for breakfast and thinking about how much I wanted to try one of the boxes of the expensive cereal I noticed when I passed the big grocery aisle shopping with Mom.

While my thoughts were obsolete rambling over the endless bowl of cereal, Dad was making his way to the dining room, reading the day's newspaper like any other morning, babbling adult stuff about politics and boring topics.

Dad always arrived with a firm bearing and a serious countenance everywhere he went. He used to have an important military position, however, in recent years he has suffered from some anger management problems, causing an incident about which I don't have much information, my parents decided not to talk about it and I never managed to find out exactly what the real reason was, consequently he had to say goodbye to his beloved job of years, the only thing that remained of him was his religious fanaticism, which grew rapidly with the passage of time, but not only in him, but also in my mom.

After that he started doing his church service in our small, faded town church, located somewhere in Denver. And it was something that, well, didn't support us as well financially as them might have thought.

When you are a child the least you worry about is how much money comes and goes, although it is something that my parents began to instill in me with little various signs, such as the stories they read me every night, about the handsome prince charming full of riches who falls in love with a girl who lacks them. Those classic love stories where both fall in love in a matter of two crossed glances, in which they end up with leading or very important positions in royalty, with castles full of riches and stuff. What a dream life, or so they wanted me to believe, and yes, I believed for many years that my duty was to give that dream life to my parents, because supposedly the job of a son was to reward his parents for all those years and sacrifices they lived to be able to give us everything we needed. As if at birth I had already signed a lifetime debt. And yet, yes, I believed it.

As Dad arrived in the old dining room, Mom came out of the kitchen to head towards him, she never spoke or had much of an opinion, the only one who led the conversations was my father.
I thought that I had inherited my shyness from my mother, but of course I hadn't learned to speak for myself any more than my father allowed me to.

Turning on the old TV that was in front of the dining room, Dad turned on his usual sports channel, then he placed a box in front of me, I looked up from the mysterious box and my Dad began to speak.

-Olivia, it seems that you have forgotten a very important date, and for this reason your mother and I have saved to buy you a good gift, you have behaved wonderfully in recent years despite the changes we have suffered as a family, and even if we don't have enough money yet to buy you new and expensive things, we know that it will help you somehow.

While my father spoke, I dragged the box and opened it, finding an object that would change my perspective of seeing the world and would stay with me throughout my life. I took the old analog camera out of his box and looked at it like it was the most valuable diamond necklace that ever existed, running my hand over all the buttons on it. I can't complain one bit about that birthday, that camera marked my course for the love of photography and art, however, that was not the path my parents would have wanted me to go, an artist? How would you make them rich by taking pictures with an old camera? Sure, they saw that camera as a hobby or a toy that they could go out with to socialize a bit, but I saw that camera as an instrument to capture whatever I wanted and express new ideas or thoughts of the world from the eyes of the lens. I saw my future reflected in the sensations and emotions I felt when I held that camera, I knew that it complemented me and I complemented it.

-You have asked a lot for a gift of this type and well, we also give you the chance to refresh your little head with this. You can also go out and show it off with your friends, so you won't spend so much time isolated in your books or drawing little things alone as always, locked in your room. And Liv, I hope you use it wisely and don't blow our money.

He approached me and put his hand on the camera to lower it and let him see my excited face, with an angry look he asked me

-Deal?.

Still with an enthusiastic expression, I looked at him and happily nodded, not really knowing what he meant with all that speech, I just wanted to take pictures of the entire universe.

After what happened I hurried to finish my breakfast and head to school. That was one of my best days, and one of the few that I remember about my childhood.

It's true that I have memories of many other days, but not ones that I really wanted to keep.