Home > Work > The Blue Line
1 " Julia is happy. She tugs impatiently at the lock on the frame and forced the window open. Leaning out, she allows the vagabond wind to sweep in and fill her entire being, breathes in deep lungfuls of its sharp air. She closes her eyes. She recognizes that salty, tarry smell. This Connecticut wind is strangely similar to the wind of her Buenos Aires childhood. It's not as intense, perhaps; lighter, more delicate. Or perhaps not. She knows from experience that memory can't be relied on to capture the true essence of things. The present often seems less vibrant than our recollections of the past. "
― Ingrid Betancourt , The Blue Line
2 " Julia didn't want to leave Colonia. She liked her little world, the cobbled streets that wound upward as if searching for the sky; her own sloping, rickety house with its roof of crooked pink tiles - the exclusive domain of the neighborhood cats that Julia fed in secret. She felt she was the mistress of this small, safe world where should do as she pleased with her days; where Anna alone was allowed to enter; and where everyone except her mother respected her desire for childhood solitude. "
3 " Mama Fina insisted on celebrating Julia's eighteenth birthday before she left the family home. She wanted to mark the occasion, not only because Julia had come of age but above all because her granddaughter was about to start life as part of a couple, and without getting married first. It wasn't a question of propriety as far as Mama Fina was concerned. She understood that the younger generation had made freedom in love their credo. But she was convinced that one's choice of partner was a fundamental decision that necessarily involved a change of identity. This change was not confined to a new name, as people were inclined to believe. It involved primarily a transformation in the personality of each partner. To become one with another through love required a process of reflection. And the ceremony, the vows, the preparations, the family gathering - all of it helped construct this new identity. From experience, Mama Fina believed that words exchanged at crucial moments of life worked in a mystical way, as shields against adversity or catalysts for doubt and difficulty. She would have liked Julia and Theo to have this time for reflection, not so they would have the opportunity to back out but so they could become grounded. "
4 " Theo's words had seeped into her and calmed her immediately. The 'we' had been an epiphany, revealing to her a new identity founded on the strength of love. It existed both inside her and outside, through Theo. Never again would there be emptiness. Mama Fina had been right: there was magic in words. The 'we' had eclipsed her fear. "
