Marisa

Marisa, Blanca’s former nanny, is remembered as far more than a household employee: she was an extraordinary caregiver whom Blanca regarded as a second mother. Her place in the family endures through holiday memories, the everyday comforts associated with her, and the plans Blanca never got to carry out with her. After Marisa’s death, her daughter Elenita also died, extending the loss across a bond Blanca had experienced as part of her own family.

Identity and Family Role

Marisa cared for Blanca when she was young and became a maternal presence in her life. Blanca describes her as an extraordinary woman and her second mother, a description grounded in years of shared domestic and family life rather than in blood relation. Marisa’s daughter, Elenita, was also part of that intimate circle: she regularly came on holiday with the family, making mother and daughter familiar presences in Blanca’s childhood memories.

Marisa accompanied Blanca’s family on journeys to Cadaqués. In one recollection of the family car, she is among the passengers alongside Blanca’s brother Bruno and Elenita, while the family’s dogs travel with them. Marisa’s giant poodle, Lali, completes the lively group; the dog’s dislike of Cadaqués and of the family’s refined dachshunds supplies a small, comic detail in an otherwise affectionate account of those journeys.

Home, Food, and Memory

Marisa’s presence is attached to the recurring rituals of the family home. Recalling a house through its accumulated history, Blanca remembers Marisa’s gazpacho alongside long breakfasts of buttered toast, beach towels drying on the railing, and the other patterns of summer life. The gazpacho is not simply a recipe in this inventory: it is one of the recognizable comforts by which the family’s shared past remains vivid.

Blanca also remembers a promise connected to Marisa’s food. While Marisa was in hospital, they planned that she would stay for a time at Blanca’s mother’s house after leaving hospital and teach Blanca to make her famous gazpacho and celebrated croquettes. The plan gave their relationship a future shape, grounded in an exchange of time, knowledge, and care. It remained unrealized.

Illness, Death, and Unfinished Plans

Marisa died of a heart attack. During her final illness, she and Blanca had spoken of going to Rome, and Blanca hoped to learn Marisa’s recipes once she came out of hospital. Blanca was not present for Marisa’s sudden death, nor for the two preceding days. In remembering this absence, she recognizes how quickly events can move inside a hospital, at a pace that those outside it may fail to understand.

Marisa’s death preceded that of Elenita, who was gravely ill with cancer when Blanca last saw her. Elenita received Blanca wearing one of her mother’s flowered dressing gowns. Blanca recognized the garment immediately; its return to view made the closeness between mother and daughter tangible and lent the encounter a painful foreboding. Later recollections place Elenita’s death about two years after Marisa’s, turning the loss of the caregiver who had been Blanca’s second mother into the beginning of a further bereavement.

Legacy

Marisa remains present in Blanca’s account through specific acts of remembrance: the crowded journeys to Cadaqués, the remembered gazpacho, and the recipes they had meant to make together. Her death is also part of the chain of losses through which Blanca measures family history. The intended visit to Rome and the cooking lessons never took place; what survives instead is Blanca’s memory of Marisa as a caregiver whose importance exceeded her formal role, and whose ordinary gifts of companionship and food became part of the family’s lasting idea of home.