A few months ago we were talking in this blog about breast cancer, specifically about the importance of breast self-examination to detect lumps in the chest: “touch or not touch”, that was the question. And is that the prediction for this year 2015 is 227,076 cases of cancer in Spain, among which about 22,000 correspond to breast cancer.
Last Sunday the Women’s Race took place in Madrid in which more than 32,000 women participated. I was in the subway with my children surrounded by women in pink shirts and even pink wigs and the children hallucinated, they kept asking me questions. With 3 and 4 years old they are still small to understand many things in life (they are lucky) but it was their first contact with this serious problem.
Those of you who know me know that running is not exactly my thing, that my physical effort does not go much beyond the limits of a ping pong table, but I did want to collaborate with another initiative that Solán de Cabras is developing together with the Spanish Association Against Cancer. Do you remember the fuchsia-colored bottles that flooded supermarkets last year? Well, this year they have returned to the shelves and are already in line ready to fight back. This is a campaign called #GotasDeSolidaridad thanks to which Solán de Cabras is going to donate 20,000 hours of psychological care for cancer patients.
In addition to the almost 10 million pink bottles launched on the market between the two sizes (the one in the fridge and the little one that we all have next to the computer or, now that it is the time, in the library), we are looking for support through messages of mind on social media and on the campaign website. You can participate by entering the web and leaving your drops of solidarity, or if you prefer, using the hashtag #GotasDeSolidaridad on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. A limited edition of this cool bottle will be raffled among all the participants, which right now is guarded by my favorite androgynous angels.
And although the pink glass bottle is beautiful, and the brand’s iconic blue bottles are, I am going to tell you why I am a weirdo and for me Solán de Cabras is hopelessly associated with green. Apothecary stories.
You know, because I wear it very well and it seems to me a competitive advantage, that I am from Cuenca. And although my town is more than 200 km from Beteta, where the source of the Solán de Cabras water is, we Cuencans are very much a homeland and nothing else has ever been drunk in my home.
However, 30 years ago, Solán did not distribute blue design bottles, much less pink ones. What we had at home were huge and green jugs of thick glass, I think I remember that they were 8 liters, which every fifteen days the water delivery man brought us on time. The arrival of the delivery man, who was depositing in a row in the hall of my house up to ten bottles, one after another, was an event in my life. I was amazed how this gentleman, for me a true strongman, was able to lift without disheveled bottles that I could not move even three centimeters. Because I felt important, I would bring the empty jugs to him to take back, and I felt very important.
After the exchange of carafes, and despite being rain-fed, our particular “rite of the La Mancha water” arrived: the moment when my mother took the funnel and transferred the water from the carafes to 1.5-liter plastic bottles ( for that it would fit in the refrigerator). Guess what? I was in charge of holding the funnel. I remember seeing the same rite at the home of my uncles and my neighbors. I got to professionalize that of holding the funnel. And I also remember the day when I was finally considered “old enough” to be the one holding the heavy carafe instead of the funnel (despite the initial illusion of considering myself older, I later realized that I lived better by holding the funnel that the carafe).
And with this traditional story I say goodbye, not without reminding you to leave your solidarity drops on the web or with the hashtag #GotasDeSolidaridad. Another day I tell you what happened the weekend that my parents took my brother and me on an excursion to Solán de Cabras. I was very intrigued to know what happened to the empty bottles that were taken from my house and how was the process to get them back full, and my poor parents had to give me the whim. I tell you, stories from the Apothecary.
