Hummingbird (English version)

Chapter 1: "Genesis"

It seems like yesterday that my grandmother was telling me about orange afternoons spring, the fields looked spectacular, radiant between the hues reddish and yellow that formed that special orange that only in the Staunton lands could be observed.

However, the most vivid memory I have of my grandmother is the one where the most incredible creature of creation is involved, something so big and so small at the same time that it seems a paradox of life.

I remember her telling me how she ran through the beautiful meadows of the farm, barefoot, for these pastures looked like a freshly velvet carpet acquired, the wind blew and swayed her red hair, making it look like a trail of fire, her radiant smile and childish laugh flooded those fields alive, but what was it that made her so happy?

She was never alone on her evening walks, she was always surrounded by thousands of small hummingbirds that flew by her side, it seemed that she talked to them and they answered her questions, they were the ideal companions of any innocent soul. They danced, they played, they slid through the air in a choreography that only nature could coordinate.

These small birds did not measure more than 25 centimeters, in fact the smallest I remember seeing was only about 5.5 centimeters, flapping its wings almost 70 times per second and its heart beating a thousand times in the same time; But what made this ruby-throated hummingbird so special? of the more than 330 species of hummingbirds in the world? ... Its color... white.

But this story is not as happy as the memory of my grandmother, in fact, begins long ago, across the vast ocean and beyond our continent, on the coasts where our roots arose, in beautiful Ireland. Ireland is a magical, mysterious country, with landscapes so special that only withstanding on their lands you would realize how small you are in this planet, of happy and hardworking people, but that joy could not be forever.

Between the years 1845 to 1851 to the potato crops, one of the products and food that sustained Ireland's economy was attacked by a plague, many say that due to mismanagement in the administration and supplies to tend the plantations, others say it was a curse of another nation for the prosperity and abundance that the country enjoyed at that time and the envy that generated to the entire non-Irish population wanting to have that condition; Whatever the reason, the only thing that caused was the great famine that struck Ireland violently, causing the largest number of deaths of people and a huge phenomenon of migration to other countries in where more than a quarter of the population was lost.

My ancestors began to lose all their assets in this situation, they saw starve colleagues and neighbors, even though they wanted to help to reverse the agony, all their effort was not enough and their resources were too they were beginning to be scarce. Taking only the most essential, they gathered the money that they had left to buy a ticket for that majestic ship that It could lead to distant lands, to lands of hope where they could start again, to get up, to raise the Irish spirit. So they took the unfortunate decision to leave their homeland to save the most important thing that there was ... their life.

With great difficulty she got the 3 tickets she needed to get escape from misery, from him, his wife and my great-grandmother Niamh, who boarded the ship with a great sense of helplessness for abandoning the lands that they saw them born and they gave them everything they were at the time, their values, traditions, customs and they vowed never to lose and preserve for future generations who would be born in another country and thus fulfill it.