Family Matters

Like every year for more than twenty-five now – almost thirty, I quickly recalculate – we’ve come here to Lidia’s house to celebrate her birthday. Nearly everyone has arrived, except for Jaime and his wife, who always show up late, and Luisa and Jorge, who announced they would be delayed. Aunt Clara fetches Lidia from her room and brings her in only when we’re all present, not before.

Maybe because Lidia is turning forty this year, and half of us are also around the same age, as I wait I start to think about the reason that brings us to this house year after year on the same date, till it’s become a sort of expiatory ritual, a useless one, though, since it’s more like a family sentence we’re obliged to serve because of some unmentioned covenant, one that none of us would dream of avoiding, let alone dare to break.

I cast my eyes over those assembled here, one by one. Several of my cousins sport round little bellies, a product of their prosperity and the sedentary lives they lead, though they also might well be the result of the poor eating habits typical of shopkeepers or office workers, whose terribly long workdays force them to wolf down sandwiches and sweets due to a lack of time or interest in food. I look at their heads, which in some cases reveal overly broad foreheads, suggesting the likelihood of imminent hair loss, while on others a natural tonsure already proclaims baldness as a confirmable fact.

Except for...