'The routine'

'La rutina'

by Jaime Serra Palou @jaime_serra

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(Automatically translated from Spanish)

Piece composed of forty-two photographs displayed in a certain chronological order.

Just as every day, the sun was setting as he returned from his day in the fields on the back of his donkey. She was little more than a little girl playing at the door of his house when he dismounted to give her—the woman who would later become his wife—a wildflower he had picked for her.

She was 16 and he was 22, and from that day on, the routine continued for the 48 years their relationship would last—three as a courtship and 45 as a marriage. Upon returning home from work, he would give her a flower every day, almost always of the same species.

She dried them and kept them in a trunk that, over time, became a diary.

At times, the routine became an exception, eventually disappearing, making her fear it would never return. But it remained, even when they moved to the city, where flowers were scarce in the working-class neighborhoods. Although the routine had to change to the pink of some flowers growing in a plot near a cemetery.

Only when they returned to the village, when he was very ill, did the routine return to its original yellow, her favorite color since that distant summer day in 1963.

· The dating of the first year begins in July, and the dating of the last year ends in March, when he died. It had been two hundred and seventy days since he had given her the last flower.

· The flowers in the bouquets he gave her on occasions such as wedding celebrations, the birth of their children, or anniversaries are not included. She never counted them because she understood them to be part of social conventions, outside of her personal routine.