Teresa de la Parra’s Mama Blanca’s Memoirs, with its interlaced filtered and unfiltered accounts of childhood memories, illuminated my own long-buried childhood memories. As I reached the end of the book, I found myself struggling to recall the last time I shared my own experiences with someone. I surmised that Mama Blanca’s motivation for creating “Portrait of Her Memories” was to preserve her untold stories for someone she held dear, someone, who would truly appreciate her offerings and fulfill her innate desire to tell her tales, which she knew her sons and daughters-in-law could not fulfill. Mama Blanca chose to express her memories through a serenely flowing river of words, much like how artists capture their wild imaginings in paintings, photographers capture moments through the click of a shutter, and musicians capture their emotions through harmoniously combined notes. I drifted down the river of her now-familiar stories, laughing and frowning as though I were a character within the tale.
As Mama Blanca discovers at the end of the book, “Change is the law of existence,” and “We should fold away our memories within ourselves without ever venturing to confront them with things and beings that life changes.” This realization left me feeling a sense of powerlessness and insignificance in Mama Blanca, whether it be a five-year-old, “uncivilized” girl who has never received formal education moving to Caracas, or simply one who is unable to return to the place they once called home. The ending of this book has left me with questions about the relationship between change and memories, and how to come to terms with feeling insignificant in the face of larger forces such as patriarchy and racial superiority that shape our lives, which I think are definitely worth contemplating.
Blanca’s “filtered” recollections of her initial encounters with Vicente Cochocho also sparked my curiosity. According to her description, their initial interaction was born out of a rebellious act against Evelyn’s command. The human tendency to shy away from that which is unsavory, akin to a three-year-old’s inclination to bestow a radiant smile only upon a relatively attractive individual, stirred within me an incessant ponderance of whether Blanca would have ever initiated a discourse with Vicente had it not been for the influence of Evelyn. This realization led me to wonder if Mama Blanca’s description of Vicente Cochocho in the book differs from her actual perception of him as a child.
Question: Does the acceptance of change mean we should let go of our past and memories? Is it possible to hold onto our past while still embracing change?