When the blood calls

One of the most interesting stories has heard my father's voice many moons ago, when I was a 16-year-old teenager who left the house to explore the world. It's not that you consider me a rebel guy, you have to have independence, work on something that produces some money to buy a car and leave home because you're the person I like the most.

The old man told me he was 2 years old. My grandmother was forced to leave the city where we live to get a better job in the city of Caracas. Although Caripito was a place known to the oil industry of the time, the truth is that this does not translate into welfare for the majority. At that time, the extraction, distribution and export of black gold was controlled entirely by foreign companies, mainly in the states of the United States, at the same time that the city was arrived with the worker from the north of the country.

Because the presence of "gringos" in Caripito, the town was divided into two parts separated by a fence near by: on the one hand it was a community with its suburban-style houses, with swimming pools, drinking water, gardens, besibol stadium, golf course, pie of apple in the windows, men, women and children. The other side the children, those who play with the big belly to the air, the coconut canning, the rag ball and the dancing weekend . There were two towns in one, the rich man who speaks in English and the poor man who speaks in Spanish.

Obviously, my old man's Caripito is the poor man, the one who has to live in childhood and remember it with nostalgia. My grandmother who was a very hardworking woman in the emancipated era one day became my grandfather, a dark judge of Trinitarian origin, athletic bearing and the few Creoles with a job in the oil industry. He was a man who took advantage of these conditions to attract the ladies, throughout my life without more or their things), he turned his back and never saw again until the day my grandfather left this earthly plane. My father that he was 2 years old when my grandmother left home to seek a better life in the Venezuelan capital citty Caracas. My grandmother hoped to get a good job and buy a house for later in her children.

The truth of the matter is that this project cost my grandmother 12 years of her life, that is, my father was already a 14-year-old boy, raised by my grandfather and his second wife whom he never referred to as his mother but she felt it as such. It should be noted that my father only received letters from my grandmother, in them she swore that she would go looking for him and his older sister, not to forget her because she loves them with all her heart. To all these they were never sent photos, nor were they spoken by phone, the only way they communicated was by letters sent via postal mail, that is, my father did not know how my grandmother was because he did not remember his features or his voice, the same case in the opposite direction.

One day my father stood in front of my grandfather and said: "Dad, I don't want to be here anymore, I love my brothers but I don't have space in this house anymore, it's time for me to go where Mom lives." My grandfather agreed with his decision and the next day he sends a letter to Caracas, addressed to my grandmother, in it he gives notice that my father will arrive there in two days, that he is attentive to go to receive it. My father who was a 14-year-old boy boarded the bus to meet his mother, a woman who did not remember his face, voice or perfume, an unknown mother. When my old man arrived at the bus terminal in Caracas, he simply stood still. I wanted to see if he could, by some filial instinct, locate the woman who gave him his life among so many people, among so many faces. dissipating the tumult of people in the distance he saw a woman, it seemed that he was waiting for someone, he said to himself mentally "will she be?!! it has to be her! Without approaching the woman becomes aware of the presence of the boy, without a word either of them quickly approached and merged into a big hug They never questioned whether one was the son or the other was the mother, both the heart and the blood gave them faith that they both belonged.

Internacionalist Carlos D. Pérez / @waraira777