Valentina Torres

My name is Valentina Torres. I am fifty-two and I live in Oaxaca de Juárez, in a two-storey house with a brick patio that is, without exaggeration, my favorite place in the world.

I have been a primary school teacher for twenty-seven years, nearly all of them in fourth grade, which I think is the best age: the children can read fluently but they still give you drawings. I have graded thousands of notebooks and I still get excited when I find a good sentence in the middle of a page full of smudges.

On Thursday nights and on Sundays I sing alto in my parish choir. It is the voice in the middle, the one nobody hums, and it suits me very well.

I have two sons, Rodrigo and Daniel. One lives in Tijuana and the other in Mexico City, and both call me on Sundays. For the past two years my mother, Amparo, has lived with me. She is eighty, forgets many things, and forgets no plant at all.

I started this blog because a friend told me my WhatsApp messages were far too long. I thought she was right, and that perhaps they deserved a different home.