Todas las mañanas salía para la playa y solo volvía cuando mamá o la abuela me llamaban para ir a comer. Cada juego que hacía o cada aventura que tenía, se los contaba a mi madre y prometía:

_¡Cuando vuelva, se lo contaré a Andrés! –repetía una y otra vez, como estribillo, y jamás reparé en la mirada triste que tenía mi madre cuando con la cabeza me decía que sí.

En aquella época no tenía noción del tiempo, pero me parecía que ya era hora de volver a casa y en varias oportunidades, le pregunté a mi madre:

_¿Cuándo volvemos a casa? –preguntaba en la merienda o en las tardes frente al mar.

_¿No te gusta estar aquí, con la abuela? –me respondía con una pregunta como era su costumbre.

_¡Sí me gusta, pero extraño a Andrés! Ya quiero jugar con él y contarle todo lo que he hecho aquí en la playa –era mi respuesta de siempre. Mamá también me daba la misma respuesta:

_¡Nos vamos luego! Deja que pasen unos meses.

HASTA UNA PRÓXIMA OPORTUNIDAD, AMIGOS

![Click here to read in englis]
Remembering the summer of 1983 is one of the exercises I do from time to time. It has become necessary for me to go back to those days in order to understand everything.
I remember mom waking me up in the wee hours of the morning and telling me that we would be traveling to Grandma's. I asked her if I could say goodbye to Andres and tell him that I would not be playing that day. I asked her if I could say goodbye to Andres and tell him that I would not play with him that day and not the next day either, but my mom told me that it was still early in the morning and that Andres and his family would surely be asleep.
Andres and his family were immigrants who lived in one of the shelters that the government had created to give asylum to those fleeing the war. Andres was my age, although he was smaller and skinnier, perhaps because of the little food he had eaten in his life.
We lived far from grandma's house, so I guess I slept a lot because when I woke up, we were already in the pink house where my maternal grandmother lived, which was near the beach. One of the first things I must have felt strange was the welcome from grandma, who had a sad and lost look, somewhat random; also, that instead of putting our things in the guest room, we put everything in a room at the back of the house, which had its own kitchen and bathroom.
Every morning I would leave for the beach and only come back when mom or grandma called me for lunch. Every game I played or every adventure I had, I would tell my mother about it and promise:
When I come back, I will tell Andrew about it, I would repeat over and over again, like a refrain, and I never noticed the sad look on my mother's face when she would nod her head and tell me yes.
At that time I had no notion of time, but it seemed to me that it was time to go back home and on several occasions, I asked my mother:
_When are we going home? -she would ask at snack time or in the afternoons in front of the sea.
Don't you like it here, with grandma? -she would answer me with a question, as was her custom.
Yes I do, but I miss Andres! I want to play with him and tell him everything I've done here on the beach,” was my usual answer. Mom also gave me the same answer:
_Let's go later! Let a few months go by.
But years went by and we never went back to our house. I made other friends and Andres, my immigrant friend, passed into oblivion. For many years, I never remembered or heard from him again. And the fact is that oblivion makes people invisible. It was only after my mother's death that someone told me that Andres had died that summer of 1983. Andres was a child like me, that's why I come back again and again to that summer looking for the clues of that death.