Plants and Animals don’t have a Voice, let Us be Theirs
Photo from: www.papergenocide.org
43 years ago, my parents owned a public swimming pool. In the summer season, there was a lifeguard that I remember fondly. He was a handsome, kind and idealistic young man, always with a pipe in the corner of his mouth. He studied to be a priest and wanted to visit the Amazon someday. He could talk about it passionately for hours. He was fond of saying that the Amazon region was “an adventure, an immense place, nearly twice as big as Europe.” He warned: “These regions are the lungs of our world, along with other tropical rain forests.”
Our whole family was present at his ordination, but after that we lost contact with him. It later turned out that he had fallen in love with my mother, a love that was unrequited. My mother was a particularly beautiful and strong woman, mother of six young children, and she had to tell him that he should finish his studies, and that there could be no future between them. Discouraged and severely depressed, he left for the Amazon as originally intended.
