Her hair is tied back. Her uniform is so exquisitely pressed that there is no room for even the slightest imperfection. Her mother watches her from afar. She is proud. It seems like only yesterday that she was cradling her in her womb, afraid, between the desire to hold her in her arms and the fear of the stories about childbirth.
But time flies. On September 2n, she had to dress her early in the morning. Her little girl was at the Che Square, in the city of Santa Clara. Like her, other children celebrated the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year very close to the Heroic Guerrilla, because in the place where his remains rest, tender children's hands have placed a flower. There, to accompany the children, were the member of the Political Bureau and Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz; the Deputy Prime Minister, Jorge Luis Perdomo Di-Lella; and the heads of Education and Higher Education, Doctors of Science Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto and Walter Baluja García, respectively.
The National Anthem is sung. The solemnity is followed by the hustle and bustle of the crowd. The theater group Travesía Remediana and the dance group Los Soles captivate the audience. The colorful gymnastic band fills the place and no one can remain indifferent to the sympathy aroused by the little ones of the rhythmic band. They look so excited. They have been practicing for days and can't contain their desire to enjoy the experience.
Trujillo Barreto spoke to his students, inviting them to begin this school year full of opportunities and challenges, inviting them to study the history that precedes them and to work for the common good, to bet on a school that every day is closer to their yearnings for self-improvement.
When the "changüí" is played, no one manages to stay still in his or her chair. Some embrace friends they did not see during the vacations. Others put on their uniforms for the first time, nervous, like the girl with the symmetrical buns and combed hair.
Every new school year has the magic of transporting us to the past. To provoke a tender return to that moment when I was the little girl with red bows. My parents, in times that were also complex, filled my modest backpack with books, aware that in each one of them they instilled values and dreams.
This Tuesday, the party for the beginning of the school year said goodbye amidst laughter, balloons, with that peculiar tone of the children's joy. A mother kissed her little girl with red bows, just as I was kissed too, and I think of my daughter, at the moment when I place on her shoulders the only weight for which the children are ready: the weight of the books and take her to school, holding her hand, while she gives those little jumps, which only come to her when she feels happy.
