The Dream of the First Thursday
The village of San Telmo was nestled in a valley where the air smelled of damp earth and blooming jasmine. It was a place where time moved slowly, marked not by the chime of a clock but by the shadows stretching across the plaza. And in San Telmo lived a boy named Jorge, who carried a dream far grander than his simple surroundings.
From the time he was a small child, Jorge was obsessed with the concept of a rendezvous. He didn't know the word then, but he knew the feeling. His father, a quiet, meticulous clockmaker, would often talk about the *precision* of time, how every month began with a singular, unrepeatable moment. Jorge latched onto one of those moments: the first Thursday of every month.
It wasn't a holiday, nor a market day. It was just an ordinary Thursday, which to Jorge, made it sacred. To him, this day was a blank canvas, perfect for the ritual he envisioned—a day when the scattered threads of his life would weave back together. His dream was simple in its form but epic in its persistence: to gather his three closest friends—Mindy, the fiery storyteller; **Ricardo**, the thoughtful cartographer; and **Mariana**, the pragmatic baker—on that specific evening, every single month, for the rest of their lives.
The Pact of the Old Sycamore
The friends grew up chasing each other through the olive groves. When Jorge was sixteen, under the shade of the oldest **sycamore tree** in San Telmo, he finally proposed his pact.
"Every month," Jorge declared, his chest swelling with the gravity of the promise, "on the first Thursday, we will meet. No matter what. If we are in this village, or across the sea, or sick with a fever, we will try. We will tell each other everything."
Mindy laughed, a bright, clear sound like a shaken tambourine. Ricardo drew a tiny, perfect star on a piece of parchment, marking the first proposed date. Mariana, ever practical, simply nodded and promised to bring **empanadas de carne**.
And so it began. The first meeting was awkward and wonderful. They shared dreams and secrets, sitting on a sun-warmed stone bench behind the church.
The Test of Years
For the next five years, the pact was unbreakable. Their lives began to branch out, but the first Thursday was their root.
When Mindy left to apprentice with a traveling theatre troupe, the meetings became more difficult. Her first missed Thursday was a quiet, almost mournful affair. But the next month, she returned just for the night, having hitchhiked two hundred kilometers. She arrived dusty and exhausted, but her eyes shone with a fierce love for their tradition, and she regaled them with tales of forgotten towns and eccentric performers.
When **Ricardo** inherited his uncle’s land in the northern mountains and left San Telmo to become a shepherd, the ritual had to adapt. The first Thursday now involved **letters**. Ricardo would send a meticulously folded, detailed missive describing the topography of his new life, which the others would read aloud under the sycamore. Jorge, Mariana, and Mindy would then write their collective reply on the spot, sealing it with a drop of Mariana's beeswax.
The biggest challenge came when **Mariana** fell in love with a man from a neighboring city, moving away to open her own bakery. She was too far for a monthly visit. But Mariana, being Mariana, was not to be outdone by geography. She would **bake a special loaf**—her famous *Pan de la Amistad*—and entrust it to a network of reliable couriers. It would arrive in San Telmo, warm and fragrant, usually by Wednesday afternoon, ready to be sliced and shared on Thursday night. The bread became their **sacrament**, a tangible representation of her presence.
Jorge, who had stayed in San Telmo, taking over his father’s clock shop, became the quiet **guardian of the tradition**. He would meticulously clean the stone bench, check the mailbox for Ricardo's letter, and arrange the table settings for the arrival of Mariana’s bread. His clock shop was filled with the rhythmic tick-tock of a thousand hours, but for him, time only truly *mattered* when it was leading up to the first Thursday.
The Legacy
Decades passed. The friends married, raised children, and watched the silver creep into their hair. The meetings changed venue from the sycamore to a corner table in Jorge's clock shop, warmed by a wood stove. The stories were no longer about dreams but about mortgages, children's schooling, and the aches in their joints.
The first Thursday of the month, however, never faded. It was the **constant against the tide of change**. Their children grew up knowing that day was untouchable; a sacred gathering for "Los Cuatro," the four originals.
In his seventies, when the arthritis in his fingers finally made clock-making too difficult, Jorge often sat in the shop, listening to the echoes of their shared history. He realized then that his dream hadn't been about the party itself, but about creating an **anchor of time**. He had built a monument not out of stone, but out of **commitment** and **shared hours**.
When he died, he left behind a simple will. He left his shop, his tools, and his small savings to his family. But to his friends, he left the **stone bench** behind the church.
The following month, on the first Thursday, Mindy, Ricardo, and Mariana gathered. They didn't read a letter, and Mariana didn't bring a loaf. They simply sat on the old, familiar bench, now worn smooth by their bodies. They shared a quiet bottle of wine and talked about Jorge—the boy who had been so obsessed with one specific day that he had woven it into the fabric of their lives.
They continued to meet. Jorge’s chair remained empty, but his spirit—the quiet, precise insistence on **being present**—was the fifth member of their little club. The first Thursday of the month was no longer just a day on the calendar; it was a **legacy of devotion**, a silent testament to a boy’s long-ago dream that had outlived him.