The Christmas parties stopped as soon as I left Venezuela. And with it, childhood friends and family. Fifteen years later and already living in Canada, the Christmas that I celebrate consists of spending the 24th at my wife's parents' house, seeing my daughters open their presents, and the end of the year, which is my turn to declare it a Monday of rest. Having my family so far away (everyone lives at 8 hours flight time) I am interested only in sharing a modest (but emotional) dinner with my wife and daughters and at 10pm: bye-bye and bed. That's how I was for a decade.
But the strange thing happened.
My wife convinced me, almost at the last minute, to break routine. We went to visit, then, a couple of Colombian friends. Already at home, we met another couple of Chilean friends. We were only 10 adults, but between their countries, the country of La Maga (my wife) and mine, there were more than 100 million people shouting and dancing like mad. It was, and I write it proudly, one of the most genuinely fun nights I've had in a long time.
I felt, in fact, that during those six hours of late night, the whole of Sucre Avenue where I grew up in Caracas was recomposed in such a way that I saw, there in the middle of that room, how the trick-tracheus and tumbarranchos of my memory merged with the authentic laughter of everything around me. How nice it was to feel alive through each other.
And I want to thank God, especially my mother's god, for that. For having invented El Baile del Perrito, Juan Luís Guerra and Oscar de León, but, above all, the unscathed existence of rum shot, which, by the way, I, who don't drink, forced myself to take a couple with my eyes closed and in a very, very effeminate way.
That's why thank you, God. Yeah, you, who'll be reading me on your hyper-modern Facebook. Thank you, I repeat, for the youth you gave me last night. For the noise and hoarseness that I suffer today, and for so many other things that you will not understand, but which today are immortal in my head.