The weekend niece. from the book, Searching for treasures

     Seen from the perspective a such a young girl, her grandparents were gloomy and bleak, at least that was her perception. They seemed to be coated with an inflexible determination and barely prone to display affection toward her. But, they surely were rigorously strict and absolutely demanding in their dealings with their granddaughter.

     Her grandmother Katalina treated her as if she were a child that is incapable of understanding them. Consequently, Dora avoided them as much as possible.
Setting a distance from her grandparents was done with little difficulty, for the first ones to be interested in keeping aloof from the girl were her grandparents.

     Because of her tender age and her inexperience, she couldn’t easily understand that her grandparents hadn’t passed through childhood at their time. Different to Dora and her friends, they had been brought up as grown-ups since childhood. They could easily be considered to have been old-children. In reality, her grandparents hadn’t enjoyed a happy childhood, and much less a carefree one, mostly because of their character, but also, because that’s how they were educated.

     Serious and mature, it was difficult for them to get along with genuine childhood, mostly, due to their inability to understand it. That magical world of infancy consisted in an unexplainable enigma, and, most certainly, an illogical one. For Don Abundio and Doña Katalina, it was a sadly unknown world. When they had the chance in their grasp, they let it go and pass unnoticed, looking for security in the world of the elder ones and in the extreme rigidity of the pre-established social conventions.

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