I know I wasn't a docile girl when I went from childhood to adolescence but I couldn't stand being forced to do things I didn't like or to comply with social protocols, while my parents loved to organize or participate in every stupidity be it family, neighborhood or religious, for them it was my duty for me to be involved in those matters. I could stand going to mass on Sundays and listening to the same sermon over and over again trying hard to repress my transformation into the girl from The Exorcist, or forcibly attending the boring verbenas organized by the neighborhood, but what bothered me the most and what I wanted the least in this life was to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, not because of her who was very sweet but because I had to travel with my family to a city 6 hours away from home.
My grandmother lived in a city called Maracaibo, something like the branch of hell on earth because of the extreme heat there. Every year it was an obligation to go to that point on the map of Venezuela because my grandmother's birthday coincided with Christmas, so obviously the whole family took advantage of the moment to celebrate my grandmother's birthday and Christ's birthday. For my rebellious brain the truly infernal thing was not the city of destination but the whole process of traveling; from the moment of packing the suitcases, putting them in the car along with the passengers, the road, the music, the conversations, in short, a whole situation to go crazy was in sight.
In the 80's and 90's children and teenagers were simply little slaves of their parents, at least here, in this small tropical paradise between the Caribbean, the Andes and the Amazon, it was the style to treat children with total severity, in the absence of laws there was the custom of the elders to "mistreat to educate", where the strap of the father or the flip flops of the mother were what today an Iphone or the Playstation: artifacts to tame children. Obviously, if I contradicted an order, they would most likely end up convincing me by force of leather on my back or a soap opera slap that would put an end to my arguments.
Not blindly obeying one's parents in the Catholic world is one of the worst sins there can be (is that why I was punished by being forced to travel with them?) To begin with, once all the suitcases were packed in the car, well, most of them on the roof, we all got in like tetris pieces, my father at the wheel, my mother as co-pilot, my sister and brother at the windows and me in the middle, enduring the heat, screams, cries and horrible music from the radio. Once we started on the road, the same thing always happened: my mother left something behind that was necessary to support my brothers and me and that she couldn't buy anywhere in the world, so we had to return home to get it back, no matter how much my father protested.
It was unbelievable, but in the junker my father called a car, a '76 Malibu, something always failed halfway to its destination: a spark plug, an oil leak, a loose wire, anything to extend the agony of the trip at least two hours longer. Of course, my mother would immediately reproach the driver for not checking the car before leaving, while my father would spew all kinds of swear words from his mouth while checking the insides of the car, and after several hours we would end up with the three brothers and the old man in the back of the car pushing it to help it start, hoping it would not suffer another mishap and repeat history.
On the other hand my brother is one of those beings capable of turning the Dalai Lama into a serial killer or the Pope into the most fervent Muslim almost effortlessly, just by being himself. If he is not thirsty then he is hungry and if not the urge to urinate. It just never fails, he looks like a little animal in heat leaving his trail in the trees every 2 kilometers, as if demarcating territory. But my sister is not far behind, always crying about everything, because it's hot, because it's cold, because my brother pulled her hair, because she is sleepy and can't sleep, in short, she is a trunk of complaints.
When we finally arrived at grandma's house the first thing my mother said to me was: "Say hello to your uncles and cousins as if you really wanted to be here", at that moment smiling for me was an act of extreme hypocrisy, when I tried it it seemed more like a grimace, my lips were halfway there like those of the Mona Lisa. I only said hello to my grandmother, the rest I said hello as I analyzed how to make myself invisible that week of hell from Christmas to the end of the year. Surviving a bedroom full of 15 cousins and cousins who emit all kinds of sounds and fumes while sleeping is a brave thing to do, like for a Marvel or DC universe movie.
Fortunately all family vacations have their end and the torture comes to an end, the whole process of going is repeated in the return home, except this time when I find my room and my bed all the bad things are forgotten, until the next day begins another story with the same protagonists.
