We are so used to really complaining about everything that we don't like, about everything that bothers us and about everything that we see wrong, that people have forgotten to say thank you. Remembering how we have come to build and be who we are, thanks to those little details that have helped us and given us strength to get where we are; not just us, but the people we love.
My mother is a very fighting person, tremendously hardworking. I suppose that, like all her generation, she was born on February 18, 1947. And I'm lucky that despite her condition I can still enjoy with her.
My parents have both been hard workers. My mother worked two jobs (like all your parents at that time), she cleaned and was also a hairdresser, a beautician and her hobby was sewing.
Now that I'm older, I have to admit that when I look at things I've done it by myself, I value them very much. But at that time when all my classmates wore clothes bought by their mothers and my mother made them all by hand. -What you all like to call customization nowadays- I wasn’t so happy about it when I was a kid.
And the dresses and blouses, she loved to embroider them for me. Today they are true works of art, although at that time I preferred some jeans…
Joking aside, we were a normal family and one night like any other, my parents went to sleep and when my mother woke up, she couldn't move on her own. She was only 35 years old.
Now everything has advanced a lot, we don't realize what progress is being made and the improvements that medicine is making. We are used to being given solutions; we don't see all the research and effort behind it. You only realize when you have a case. She had a stroke. Now you know what it is and the guidelines to follow.
We met when she came home, not only that she couldn't move a hand, but she couldn't walk and it took her a very long time to do it again. That's when I discovered what the word "love" means, for better or for worse, because my father not only lived up to it, but he exceeded expectations. It was very difficult because character changes and my mother needed to feel active and useful. Big problem in that situation she was in.
We were very lucky that the doctor who was treating my sister, who was asthmatic, saw the recovery process and my mother's effort, as my father was involved in making her home recovery at that time. She only wanted to be able to work because she was in a depression and felt useless. She put us in contact with an entity that was totally unknown to me at that time, even though I was small and didn't understand what we were going for, the o.n.c.e. (For those who are not Spanish the O.N.C.E. means National Organization of the Spanish Blind).
It's that organization that you all see and are used to buying a number to play and to which no importance is given, because it is always said that it helps, but no one really explains and from the heart, in what way it helps.
I want to explain it to you in the first person. My mother is handicapped, her name is Gloria Pérez Muñoz, and her sales number is 2,547 with a severe handicap. They gave her the opportunity to work, they taught her how to sell, they supported her. She was regularly visited by the inspectors who are the people they call them.
Today we would give them another name as a counselor, advisor or coach. But I was the person who regularly worried about how my mother was doing in her job; if she needed anything or to inform her of any news. This is a team effort they make for their staff.
There are many other things you don't see. When you have a child, the first thing you think about is enrolling him/her in a school, of course this is public. Because here in Spain education is free… but what if your child is blind, what do you do, who helps you, where do you go, who trains them, where will they find a job? We don't ask ourselves all these questions, because thank God we don't expect to find ourselves in that dilemma. But if we need it, they are the support.
That's what the value of buying a coupon means. That's why for me it's not a simple game, it's a moral support, as far as one can.
And as a child I had to start accompanying my mother to the Barcelona headquarters, which is where I live. There they did the paperwork, they also took the numbers that had not been sold, and they asked for a number for the next day that they had asked for. All this had to be done by hand, there wasn't that much technology and the truth is that the team was incredibly friendly. I liked going there.
They began to teach me things; first because I was small, also because they saw me regularly and because in the same building that is no longer there, there was the medical team that attended to the workers. What was called the family doctor.
Now this is no longer in any of the city offices, because a mutual insurance company is in charge of it.
I would like to thank each and every one of these doctors and nurses in each center throughout Spain, because I am sure that the same attention and care with which they attended in Barcelona, they did in the rest. And for that it had to be done really from the heart, because everyone arrived tired, they came with a chronic disease that they knew in advance they could not solve. They had to continue working under the pressure of having to make a few sales and in a hurry, and I was out there seeing all this many times in a bad mood, I never saw them lose their smile. And they were always looking for ways to encourage us.
Much of that vision, plus what I lived at home and what my grandmother explained to me, has made me who I am.
It is important that you are given solutions or asked the right questions so that you look inside yourself, that you want to change. Because not everything will always be favorable, but you can always move forward and you can always achieve everything you set out to do.
Being with them I learned day by day, so I personally have to thank them a thousand times. Because you cannot imagine the obstacles they have had to suffer, overcome and save in order to get where they have gone, and you have never heard them complain. So thanks to all of them, from the first or founder and to the last worker.
And we must all be aware of the great work they do, because one day I hope that it will not be like that, you may need them and they will always lend you a hand. Thank you.