We lived in a small apartment, the four of us: my mom, my dad, my brother, and me.
My mom worked at the hospital in Facatativá… sometimes for 24 hours straight.
My brother, who is very special, has always looked out for me and kept me company, but he also loves playing soccer with his friends. He’s a Santa Fe fan, and whenever he can, he heads to the neighborhood field.
My dad is also special: he tells me stories, listens to me, and when I ask him for something from the heart, he almost always says yes.
We loved each other very much, but we hardly saw one another… we were a beautiful family, just without time.
Mrs. Carmen lived in 503; I lived in 501. When I came home from school, I would stop by her apartment to say hi, do my homework, and visit her parrot, Fermín, who was named after her late husband.
She used to say he talked a lot, which is why he was named Fermín. She would tell me stories about her life and her memories, and she often said I was like a granddaughter to her. Her kids never visited… they lived far away and only called now and then.
I used to talk to her, but mostly with Fermín.
He listened to me… made me laugh… it felt like he knew when I was sad.
I had a game with Fermín: I’d tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was free, flying high, in a big place full of wind… to feel it so it could come true. Fermín almost never closed his eyes, but I did, and I’d picture myself running across a wide-open field while he circled above me like a green comet.
The day God made parrots, He must’ve had a lot of green paint…
One day, Mrs. Carmen got sick; they called us… we called the ambulance. She was taken away and two days later, they told me she had died. I cried a lot. I thought they’d take Fermín away, but no one wanted to take care of him.
How sad —I thought— her kids never visited her and now they don’t even want Fermín.
I begged my dad to bring him home: “Don’t leave him alone, like they left her.”
At first he said we had no space, but in the end, my mom said yes.
That’s how Fermín came to live with us. We kept him in his cage because we didn’t know what else to do. I cared for him, talked to him, sang to him… but he was very sad: he pulled out his feathers, didn’t eat, didn’t move.
One afternoon, I stood by the window and looked at the other apartments… and I realized we were all locked up. Every window was a cage: an old man staring blankly, a lady pacing back and forth, a man leaving at dawn and coming home at night, kids like us… all little birds longing to be free.
I asked my dad for a plan: “We need a place where Fermín can fly… where we can breathe differently too.” After asking a thousand times, one day I found a truck parked outside: we were moving to the Tisquesusá neighborhood, with a yard bigger than the house, feijoa trees, wind, and open sky.
The first thing I did was open the cage… Fermín flew. He went to the trees and, not long after, he came back. He slept in my room; the cage was his bed… it was never shut again.
Life changed: mom still worked a lot, but everything felt different; my parents spoke more kindly to each other; my brother played soccer in the yard and Santa Fe won another star; I didn’t feel lonely anymore.
For years, I thought we had rescued Fermín… I believed I was a good girl, imagined Mrs. Carmen smiling from the sky. But over time, I understood:
We didn’t save Fermín from being alone… we didn’t give him a home… we didn’t give him freedom.
Fermín saved us from loneliness, gave us a home… he came to set us free.
Because when Fermín was free, his joy, his flights, and the way he came back without fear took us out of our own cage.
Now, every night, I tell him:
—Close your eyes… imagine you’re with other parrots, that you have a whole family… dream that you fly with no cages or bars.
He looks at me… he doesn’t always close his eyes.
But I do.
And every time I do, something magical happens: I understand that we’re all prisoners… until we choose to fly… and help others out of their own cages too.