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being post-war children, we would not readily give in; we had been taught,
and believed, that we should be ‘impervious to disappointment’.
In recalling these things, I cannot but feel a deep gratitude and great tenderness for my deceased wife, María Anselma Almeida, the mother of my
children. A beauty from a provincial capital brusquely transplanted to remote,
strange, and very challenging surroundings. But her upbringing had instilled
in her the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, which were understood in that epoch to be sufficient reason for any sacrifice. Those first years
were hard. I keep a black and white photograph in a prominent place at home
that vividly expresses the panorama. There it stands like a still from a surrealist
film: a beautiful, surprised, and anxious young woman standing before a peeling wall, clutching three boisterous, almost identical children. Without her,
my life and work would have been very different.
Fig. 2.4 My wife, Mary, with three of our children standing before our lodgings in
Izaña. (Credit: F. Sánchez)
F. Sánchez