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My grandmoher's cane
Many years ago, before I was born, my grandmother had an accident and broke her hip and the doctors implanted in her a kind of metal hip, but they told her that from there on, she would have to use a cane in order not to force it too much. Since the moment I met her, she had this wood cane my father had bought her when she had the accident. It was very weird to see her without it; she took it wherever she went and used it since the moment she stood up from bed until she went to sleep. But what really caught my attention was that she gave to it so many uses; she used it on her garden to make holes for plants or other stuff, also she used it like a lever to open the door of her house because it always got stuck; she even used it to hit my uncles or my dad when they said bad words, or to hit the dog when he misbehaved. It was a very old cane, and my father used to tell her that she needed a new one, and offered himself to buy it, but, although the cane could break any time, my grandmother didn’t want another one. That made me understand how she appreciated it, although it was a material thing, my grandmother became very attached to it; it had been like a partner to her for so many years, and she never left it. Even when she used a wheelchair, she always used to carry it. I remember once I asked her why she took it anywhere she went if she didn’t need it anymore and she answered joking “because your father and his brothers know that if they misbehave they would receive a hit with it, so I have to carry it anywhere to maintain order”. There was a time that she couldn’t get out of bed because she could no longer walk or stand up, and there it was, next to her bed, there was that cane that she appreciated so much. In my opinion, it is amazing how we can get close to material things, although for other it may be just a thing, just a cane, for us it means more than that because of all the time we have carried or used it, because of how it had fulfilled our needs or comforts.
