Sunday, January 18, 2009
I
am wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. It is a dozen degrees
below freezing in my hometown of Watertown, MA, U.S.A. I, however, am
settled for a couple of weeks at a small farm in Nogales, Chile. It is
Sunday, January 18, 2009, the equivalent of a late June day in the
southern hemisphere, So yes, I’d be happy if all I did today was watch
the sun arc from foothills of the Andes and set behind the Coastal
Range that shoulders into the Pacific Ocean.
My hostess Susaan
has more ambitious plans. She’s delayed the annual family birthday
party she holds for her husband Ricardo, who was born ten miles away in
Quillota, so I could participate in the event. I am in for a
festividado grande.
A
bi-hemipsheric couple, they spend spring and summer in Boston then
spring and summer in Nogales.They're ambitious, too. They've put sweat
and dinero into a plan deliver an income stream from the orange trees,
melons, corn, and vegetables they've been assiduously planting here for
the past several years.

The farm is smack in the heart of what is called Chile’s
breadbasket. You can practically hear food ripening on vines or popping
out of the rich soil. Fruits and vegetables and flowers you buy at your
local market might have come from within a few miles of this little
farm situated on a cerrillo overlooking fifty acres of orange grove and
melon and corn fields. The gentle breeze cools, the sun dazzles.
People begin arriving at noon … the party ends
when it ends. Believe me, the guests are not here out of obligation.
They’ve driven here to Nogales from Santiago, from Viña del Mar,
Quillota, and Valparaiso. You don’t drive hours to a birthday party of
a gregarious favorite father/uncle/cousin and then sit around like a
wallflower. You pitch in with your presence, whether with the
occasional wry remark or an outlandish story or to toast Ricardo German
Ceriani Inostroza.
The
invitees are young marrieds, some couples married longer than the age
of the trees surrounding the farmhouse, some couples on a second
marriage or having ridden a rocky road and survived, and children from
assorted marriages. They have one thing in common today. They are going
to have a grand time.
The adults gather under the farmhouse’s wrap around porch, the backyard swimming
pool beckons the younger generation with a call as mighty as the Sirens drew Ulysses.
Add
plenty of good Chilean wine, assorted liquors that match the tastes of
certain aunts or uncles, limes from the trees on the farm for gin and
pisco sours, soft drinks for the kids, bottled water, and you have
enough for the entire entourage to relax.
It may be a universal phenomenon but for the first hour the place
looks like a Shaker meeting.

The men find the makeshift bar and talk
man stuff… the stock market, cost of living, politics, and tell jokes.
The women congregate and confab about their children, their husbands,
and things I probably couldn’t have understood even if I were fluent in
Spanish.

This was a time for stories, a little gossip, and for the live wires
in the family to shower some sparks with their comic routines. I
laughed heartily at one comedienne’s story that brought the house down
and drew the men into the audience. I was clueless about content but
had no doubt about her exquisite timing, mimicry, and total control of
the audience. I didn’t need to understand the language to feel a part
of the goings on.
Ricardo,
naturally gregarious and fun-loving, was holding his own. He’s a master
at teasing people in a charmingly disarming way. 
He was indeed the life
of his own party, horsing around with Susaan and including everyone in
his joking around. It’s easy to see why people would drive hours to be
here today
Elders
doted on the assorted children in the crowd and, gasp, the teenagers
actually seem to enjoy being a part of the party.
Kids and young teens
were in the line of fire of adoration. A walk past an aunt or uncle
routinely resulted in a tender pat on the head, a bear hug that lifted
them off their feet, or a giant smack of a kiss on the cheek.
This
was the kind of intergenerational festivity you’ve seen in foreign
movies, al fresco with blue skies, ripe sunshine, gentle breeze, and filled with people who need no instruction on how to have a good time. I have dreamed of experiencing a party like this. Today is a dream come true.
After a couple hours of splashing and laughing and
eating olives from local trees and cheese from local goats, guests are
enlisted to assemble a long table along an entire side of the porch. It
is heaped with huge bowls of pastas, salads, vegetables brought by the
guests.
The
dinner’s last course is the presentation of el torte, the birthday cake
made by Ricardo’s sister Uka, Instead of the Happy Birthday song, a
vigorous meringue of a chant and response is hollered, the exclamation
mark being everyone raising their arms straight up to the sky. The
energy from this is nearly enough to blow out every candle on the cake.

Traditions
are born here for the youngest and reinforced for the oldest as they
listen to the new or the well-worn stories, oral history passed on down
the line, In twenty or thirty or forty years the younger ones here will
be telling the stories and kissing a future generation of children on
the heads or wrapping them in hugs when they pass by.
Parties like this are the glue that
binds families together. Way better than weddings and funerals. All
there is to do is to soak up the warmth and love and add a few drops of
your own.
Snapshots of some of those drops...
swim with your sister's son...
sing...
hang out with your cousin...
share with your dog...
enjoy the outlandish stories...
that are being told...
relax...
hug your uncle, Tio Raul...
be wished Happy Birthday from an old friend...
and a nephew who can't wait for the cake...
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