[ESP-ING] Celebrando la vida de mi hijo

! [ENGLISH]

July 4th is Independence Day in the United States, but on this day I celebrate my baby’s birth—he turns 20 today, a full-fledged adult. It’s incredible how time flies; to us parents, our children never grow up—they’re still those little kids who came out of our wombs. To me, my children are my greatest pride.

Life must be cherished and celebrated. That’s why, despite everything that’s happening in Venezuela and the fact that we’re in a period of national mourning, I couldn’t let my son’s birthday slip by unnoticed. Even if it was just a cake, we had to sing to him—and that’s exactly what we did, with a soda and a delicious cake we bought.

My son really likes cream-filled cakes, so we decided to go buy one. It was just my neighbor, my father-in-law, my son’s girlfriend, and the four of us. We didn’t celebrate with music because of the national mourning, but we did play “Stop” and a game where we had to step on a glass while blindfolded. We had a lot of fun with that game. too bad we didn’t have balloons to play other games we’d had in mind, but we laughed a lot. The only one who didn’t play was my father-in-law, who’s getting on in years, but he helped us with “Stop” by calling out the letters.

It’s not about the number of people, but the quality of those people, and the best thing is to be surrounded by those who love us. Of course, we don’t invite more people over because we’re not in the mood for parties, but we do need to celebrate those we love. This earthquake taught us that life is very short and that we must love our loved ones and show them our love now that they’re still with us.

One of the things I love is that my children are close-knit and always show each other that sibling affection; that makes us think we’ve done a good job. I hope they stay that way forever, with God’s help, so let’s not stop celebrating the presence of those we love—we only have one life, and it goes by quickly.