We are no longer the granddaughter you loved, nor you the grandmother I loved

PalmaThere was a time when I loved my grandmother very much. And then, a time when I didn't, when I felt I had stopped loving her.

My grandmother used to call me 'pitusa', because I was the first granddaughter. And I think even now, from time to time, she still calls me that, accompanied by the anecdote of one of my misdeeds. My grandmother used to call me 'pitusa' and I would listen to her from the floor, with my gaze fixed on the gold acorn pendant she wore around her neck. 'Extremaduran' is the adjective she has always liked to present herself with: like Iberian ham and cherries. For a while, I fantasized about the evocative power that necklace would have, when she was no longer there, without thinking that the necklace would break before she did. Someone in my family made her pawn it. It hurt me so much that, years later, I gave her another one, a gold acorn. And now that I think about it, it's been a while since I've seen her again.

My grandmother –like so many grandmothers– was a mother and grandmother to me. She hadn't learned to say a single word of Catalan, but she would make me 'Serra mamerra' in her living room armchair, for the entire afternoons we spent together, when the rest of the adults went to work and we were left alone. Then, we would watch Pasión de Gavilanes, El Diario de Patricia and Pasapalabra. In one go. Until we heard the jingle of my grandfather's keys, the slam of the door closing and his footsteps in the hallway. It meant it was time to set the table. I would have lunch and dinner at her house and, in the evening, half asleep, I would return in my mother's arms to our home.

My grandmother took me everywhere she went, that is, shopping and to mass. On summer mornings and holidays, I would accompany her to Eroski and together we would fill the cart with everything my grandfather had told her the night before that he felt like eating. Rabbit with onion, pork chops, tumbet. You name it, she would make it. Upon arriving home, she would lock herself in the kitchen until her hugs began to smell of many hours of work and garlic with tomato sauce. Then we would sit at the table, a Our Father and we had already had lunch. Back to the kitchen: dishwasher, pots scrubbed by hand, coffee maker on the stove and a disappointed look. "What happened, Grandma?", I would ask her, assuming –without knowing it– the responsibility of being her only confessor.

I loved my grandmother all this time and the time that came after. I loved her until the family became bigger than the love I felt for her and the love she felt for me. I loved her until everything fell by its own weight, until there were no more golden acorns left to sell and, even so, the fault was never with those who made her cry. For mental health, I ended up blocking her on WhatsApp. "How could she have done that to her grandmother?", I knew she was asking herself.

Desirée de Fez and Layla Martínez said, a few days ago at La Coma, that family can be the best breeding ground for horror stories. Both test this possibility in their respective novels, No la dejes sola (Blackie Books, 2026) and Carcoma (Amor de madre, 2021). They were talking about how pathological the mother-daughter relationship could be, and I nodded, unable to stop thinking about the huge coincidence of having Susana by my side. Susana Ivorra is the person who, with a single swipe, dispelled my doubts at those moments. How are love and resentment, regret and nostalgia felt at the same time? "Think of Pinochet: before he died, he had apparently become an adorable little grandfather, but he was still Pinochet," she told me during our consultation. And now I had her right beside me again, as I mentally returned to my family horror story.

I thought that anger would never leave me. "That's it, the relationship is dead," I resigned myself, thinking that perhaps one day she would pass away and I would not have been able to forgive her. I felt so many things, with such strength, that I didn't even know if this scenario worried me. And, at some point, new roots began to grow. In the midst of so much barrenness, it was like being in a vase, with water, provisionally, on the condition of transplanting ourselves only if the fruits were not bitter. I couldn't say if our relationship has changed, if we do each other any good. The fact is that now, when we say goodbye to her, besides telling us – each time – "and don't forget the way, come back soon", she gives us a final kiss as if she didn't want it to end. She grabs our cheek, firmly, intensely, awkwardly, trying to make up for lost time. She wants to pour all her affection on us like this, all at once, condemning us to a single kiss and a single hug, only when there is a reason or an excuse; never gratuitously, never just because.u