Against all odds

It’s six o’clock on a Friday afternoon in Caracas and I’m heading home, wavering through rivers of cars and buses showering fumes and noise all over me, windows dangerously rolled down, no air conditioning at the moment, a moment that has already been here for three years. All I want is to get home, especially today, one of those days that I have already forgotten twice in my life, while living up north, when my “only-mother” called to remind me yet another year had gone by. In any case, this is 2004, and twenty five years later I still prefer to forget such day. And while I drive and swerve over that pedestrian who had just jaywalked right in front of me, ignorant that my insurance has recently expired, which in tropical terms means at least two years, … I’m just dreaming about getting home, taking a shower, having a snack and forget about another hectic day… hoping it doesn’t rain because that would mean overcoming a river-like stream that runs down the sidewalk, right in front on my garage door, which I have to open manually due to some repairs the automatic door opener has been needing for a while, and let’s not even get into how long a while is…. Forty some long years ago I wasn’t even here yet on a day like this, at this hour, and I wonder about my mother running about an empty green metal medical bed, on a empty room with shinning dark green floors and barren white tiles covering the walls, literally screaming her guts out, while splitting in two, in pain, not being able to deliver a huge baby boy that was supposed to be out 20 days ago. My father had already made all arrangements with doctor Lamanna, more a male mid-wife than a doctor, who didn’t know much about C-sections and had allowed all my mother’s suffering, and my own, struggling to be out that thicket of membrane and amniotic fluid. “Should he be anything but normal, please, get rid of him”, pleaded my father. But, I’m still here… Fortunately, against all weather forecasts, it’s not raining today, and the heat and the exhaust fumes are still hitting my face, while I approach the only soothing experience about driving in this mad city, the road of dreams where, side by side, huge billboards announce my life-to-be if I had that apollonian ebony body that sells cellular phones over the mountainous geography of a chest, and a huge valkirye by my side, selling bear beers in a thong and moist lips, reminding me that some lives are larger than life itself, particularly mine. And I’m already getting there. A white two-flat fifties style house approaches in sight, the old ladies strolling slowly their bad health habits, the dogs barking at anything that moves, my mother, suspiciously readily dressed, sitting on the balcony, hides away and appears by the front door. I step out of my car, roll up the windows, as my mother approaches with a great smile and whispers into my ear: “Happy Birthday, son”