There is no formal medical definition for what she calls a surplus of attention, the opposite of ADHD. Yet she believes she has it. Concentration comes easily. She does things one at a time and rarely acts impulsively. This has followed her since childhood, or girlhood, as her Aunt Tere would say, a memory anchor she will return to later.
It has never been something she had to work at, a capacity built to compensate for other flaws, or external pressures. She has always been this way. She withdraws while reading and writing; when watching a film or a TV episode it makes no difference where she sits. Even in conversation, if she is speaking to someone, it means she is listening with full attention, her gaze fixed on the other person and never wavering. She behaves the same in interviews, whether she asks questions or is being asked; she is fully present, nowhere else.
Her editor notes that when this trait is channeled well it yields results. There are advantages, such as delivering the manuscript, the author’s note, the acknowledgments, and extra material from the book well before the deadline, though that outcome owes more to self-imposed standards than to mere attention. Attentiveness, as described, enables her to listen and not forget almost anything she hears, even though memory remains a fiction, a subjective narrative.
On a recent morning, she had coffee with Julia Navarro, a close friend who has long understood the realities of Latin America through years of travel across its countries. While the decaf cooled, they discussed Donald Trump and his return to the White House. “We cannot change what people think or impose our own views. We should try to understand why they think that way, what has led them there,” Julia said during their conversation. Julia pointed to the high share of Hispanics who backed the Republican candidate in the latest U.S. elections, 46 percent, 12 points higher than in 2020, the best result for the party since Richard Nixon, according to Edison Research data.
Back home, a notification arrived on her phone with a headline about a priest denying communion to neighbors in two Segovian towns for being homosexuals. This Spain of ours, she thought, recalling a Cecilia song, and she remembered what Julia had said to try to understand why people think as they do and what has led them there. Yet she felt anger and sadness. Later that day, Aunt Tere called to wish her a happy new year. She is eighty-four, widowed in recent months, and has always lived in the village connected to the writer’s maternal family. Conservatism shaped her; she was raised to be what others demanded and simply a devoted Catholic who could only watch the mass on television when arthritis made attending difficult.
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When the book Una homosexualidad propia was published, the author’s younger daughter, her cousin Ana, explained what it was about and warned her in case a spiteful neighbor tried to spread rumors. Aunt Tere answered with a line that expresses deep affection: I will always love my Inesita no matter what, which is all that someone with her life and circumstances can truly offer. On that day, before hanging up, she asked to pass the greeting to L., saying she wanted to congratulate her as well. The writer did so, moved. She has never revealed who L. is, nor that they share a life, but the aunt knows everything. That faith in the writer and in them remains the only thing that truly matters to her.