Like every afternoon when she returned from work, Ruth prepared a mint tea, put three biscuits in a saucer and took it all out to the garden. There she sat and watched the sunset, her flowers and her suitcase of dreams, as she liked to call it.
Her grandmother gave her that suitcase for her school trip. They had planned a tour around Northern Europe. Ruth was looking forward to it. She had bought dictionaries, travel guides and maps. She carried so many books that her clothes hardly fit.
A few days before the departure, her mother fell ill and had to stay at the hospital. Ruth cancelled the trip, packed the guidebooks in her suitcase and never left her town.
Since that day, more than thirty years ago, she has been packing guidebooks, postcards, travel magazines and anything else that reminds her of the places she would have liked to visit.
She has never prepared a real trip again, «she’ll do it next year» that what she always said to herself.
As she contemplates the postcard that her friend Carla sent from Thailand, a ball falls at full speed into her rose bush. Ruth gets up angry and goes for the destructive ball. A girl peeks through the gate, apologizes and asks for the ball. As Ruth heads to the gate telling her to be more careful or next time they won’t get it back, a gust of wind blows and the open suitcase falls scattering its contents across the garden, the small pond and the street.
My memories! shouts Ruth.
The girl rushes to save the much as possible. When she approaches Ruth to give her what she has, she tells her not to worry. She lost the photos from last summer and although it was a shame not to be able to see them, her memories would always be with her. At least she still had the shells she and her brother collected and the friendship bracelet her friend gave to her.
Ruth smiled at her a bit embarrassed, she didn’t dare to tell her that in fact, she had never been to those places. She didn’t dare to tell her because if that girl asked her the reason, she wouldn’t know what to say. At that moment, she did not understand why she had preferred to stay there, living through a suitcase.
She said goodbye to the girl and went to her room. She emptied what was left of the suitcase on the floor and began to fill it with clothes. Would she need a swimming costume? She didn’t know where she was going to go, wherever the wind took her!
She called work to report that she was taking holidays, turned off the light and left her house, heading for the airport.
The girl didn’t know what she had triggered until one day, when she was older, a familiar suitcase arrived at her house. It was full of postcards and photos of that lady from her neighbourhood, in countless places. Among all those memories, there was a letter thanking her for that ball stroke that destroyed her roses but restored her life.
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